This year Tuleburg Press and The Write Place started off strong with two new classes, gelli journals, made with gelli plates, and paper marbling. We’ve hosted over 800 people this year including class and event attendance.
The Write Place reaches out to many diverse communities. We hosted youth and adults from Kelly’s Angels Foundation; the Central United Methodist Church; The ARC, for People with Developmental Disabilities; the Children’s Home of Stockton and STAND. We held field trips for Spanos and Kohl Elementary Schools. We also partner with Stockton’s Poet Laureate Tama Brisbane and her project, With Our Words, Stockton’s youth poetry collective.
We participated in every summer/fall Stockmarket event, making friends and getting to know Stockton’s makers, movers, and shakers.
Tuleburg Press participated in ArtSplash, El Concilio’s 50th Anniversary Cinco de Mayo Festival, in an Eleanor Project at The Haggin Museum, Family Day at the Park, and held a team building paper making workshop with the Highwater Brewing Company staff!
Tuleburg Press published and launched two new physical books.
Heather Rule’s book of children’s plays, The Great Chinese New Year’s Race and Other Children’s Plays.
Barron Sudderth’s book of haiku, Lost and Found: A Collection of Haiku on Love, Loss, and Life.
We conducted art experiments at The Write Place, making crystal books and dying handmade paper.
We hosted many guest speakers at The Write Place, including Dana Gioia, California’s Poet Laureate,
and Derek Moore, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.
We held our first ever summer camp this year, where we worked with kids making journals, practicing cursive, and doing writing exercises.
In conjunction with Placeholder Magazine, Tuleburg Press created two zine workshop series, one for adults and one for minors. Each group was allowed to create and print copies of their zines for free, we then hosted a festival where they could show off and sell their zines.
In September we hosted our third annual fundraiser, Fully Booked, which featured classical guitar performances, belly dancers, and slam poetry from the With Our Words kids.
In October we offered a day-long printing workshop and tour of the unique utility covers downtown created by artist Molly Toberer and installed in 2004.
In November, we raised funds for WOW the Stockton youth slam poetry collective as a part of Giving Tuesday,
Finally, this December we hosted our first Holiday Open House. Guests came into The Write Place and were able to participate in hands on demonstrations of the classes we have and peruse and purchase our wares.
Of the 800 plus visits to The Write Place since its opening, more than 90% are low income and 50% of those are very low income. That’s the federal mandate we accepted from the City of Stockton to secure Community Development Block Grants Funds.
In the upcoming year we intend to host a cursive writing workshop for Stockton’s youth to impart the importance of cursive writing and its impact on brain development. We are pursuing other grants to run a veterans workshop where veterans would be able to recycle their old uniforms into paper with which they would make handmade journals.
Thanks to donations from the community, we were able to accomplish all that we did this year. We would be nothing without the people of Stockton, you are the reason we do the work that we do. We hope to see you in a class sometime next year.
Happy Holidays and a Merry New Year!