Mission
Telling It is a community-based expressive arts program that prioritizes the needs of young individuals by offering safe, uncensored, and judgment-free spaces. We strive to cultivate resilience, empower personal strengths, and provide an outlet for processing emotional struggles.
Vision
Our goal is to provide Telling It programming where most needed. We aim to equip young people with essential social emotional skills and mental health support using a fusion of expressive arts and social work practices founded in cultural competence and adaptability. Telling It aims to cultivate a community that nurtures wellbeing and sets young people on a path towards success and fulfillment.
Values
Telling It collaborates with participants to establish a culture of safety with no censorship (excepting weaponized language or bodies towards anyone in the group). Participation is never mandated and each participant is the expert of their own lives. We value laughter and candid exchanges, creative expression and flexibility. The goal is for the young people to have fun and share whatever they feel comfortable sharing. There are no expectations other than meeting young people where they are.
History of Telling It
- Since 2002, Telling It has offered weekly expressive arts sessions in schools, community centers and juvenile detention centers in Washtenaw County, Michigan.
- The program was founded by Deb Gordon-Gurfinkel who was trained in the U.K at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama as a Drama In Education specialist. Moving to San Francisco in 1986, Deb employed the expressive arts to support the literacy deficits of young children who were unhoused.
- Fast forward to 2002, Deb continued the work started in San Francisco serving children and teens from SOS Community Services and Ozone House in Washtenaw County. At that time, the program became Telling It.
- It became clear that Telling It was not only engaging young people in crisis in a variety of art forms that embedded literacy skills but also, by participating in the expressive arts, young people were sharing their trauma stories and celebrating their resilience.
- At this point, social workers and resident artists were hired to provide the necessary skills and training so that Telling It could become what it is today, an expressive arts program that supports the mental health, social emotional learning and wellbeing of young people.
- In the formative years of Telling It, Deb was invited to join the faculty of the Residential College at the University of Michigan. Deb continues to teach an engaged learning course, Community Empowerment through the Arts with her students interning at the Telling It sites.
- The Telling It staff include a team lead, social worker, resident artists, visiting artists, paid team members and social work interns. The support team also includes community volunteers, undergraduate and graduate students from the University of Michigan and Eastern Michigan University.
