[opirgyork] Updates on Alternative Media Workshop

[aruna at opirgyork.ca]

Hi everyone, please note two important updates for the upcoming workshops:

The workshop on Saturday July 30 - Strategies for pain-free activist
writing - is taking place in room 5170 in OISE (not 5140).
Roddy Doucet's workshop on fundraising for alternative media is cancelled
and will be rescheduled for the fall. Sorry to disappoint!
Please read below for more information on the media workshops happening
this week and next:

----------------------------------------------

Upcoming Alternative Media Workshops!

Workshops on July 30 and Aug 4!

In preparation of the Media Co-op's AGM on August 3, OPIRG is organizing
a series of workshops for those interested in getting involved with
alternative media. All workshops are free and open to everyone. There
will be snacks and TTC tokens available. All locations are wheelchair
accessible.

*Strategies for pain-free activist writing
*Saturday July 30**
1-- 4 pm

Location: Room 5170, OISE, 252 Bloor Street West
With Alexis Shotwell

*Snacks and TTC tokens provided*

Writing is an important way to communicate about, work through, and
reflect on our movements and struggles. It is also a vital part of our
struggles.

The capacity to write with ease, joy, and fluidity is rare: it is
crushed in us through formal schooling, bad teachers, and a world that
fundamentally doesn't mind if radicals have a hard time putting our
thoughts to paper so that they can be shared. Many of us deal with the
challenge of writing by waiting for deadlines to run us down so that we
have to produce something, anything -- using crises to force ourselves
through the panic and boredom writing can induce. Others simply don't
write at all.

In this workshop, I offer some strategies and tactics for writing.
Topics include: dealing with anxiety, procrastination, and panic about
writing; organizing the material realities of the writing process;
stopping writing; communicating well with people who can give you
feedback; setting up support structures for writing.

Facilitator: Alexis Shotwell --Alexis is a teacher, activist, and writer.
She has given versions of this workshop to students and activists
formally and informally, and hears good things about the results.

**

*Mastering Google and Going Deeper: Web research skills for activists and
independent journalists*

Thurs Aug 4
2 - 4 pm
Location: Room 321, Student Centre, York University
With Tim Groves

*Snacks and TTC tokens provided*

This workshop presents the skills and techniques that investigative
journalists and private-eyes use to do deep digging research on the
Internet. It show people how to use google in ways most people are
unaware of and how to access the wealth of information on the Internet that
Google can't find. Jammed packed from edge to edge, this session will be
a chance for novice and expert researchers alike to pick up skills they
can use everyday.