Community-Engaged Learning: First Year Writing and Upstream Arts
WRIT 1401: Community-Engaged University Writing satisfies the University’s First-Year Writing requirement and includes a community engagement component. Each section of 1401 partners with a non-profit community organization whose mission includes supporting social justice. The course carries the University’s Community Engaged Learning designation and offers students opportunities to consider how writing works and what work it does in a community setting and to engage deeply in a particular subject or issue. In 2025, FYW is working with Upstream Arts, Wonderlust Productions, College Possible, and Friends of Lake Hiawatha, the Center for Climate Literacy and the Saint Anthony East Neighborhood Association. WRIT 1401 intentionally works to develop trust and reciprocity with our community organization team members through long-term partnerships.
Dr. Elise Toedt, FYW faculty member, is in her fourth semester of partnership with Upstream Arts, and leads her WRIT 1401 students in an exploration of disability justice, access and advocacy.
Here’s how Dr. Toedt describes students’ experience in WRIT1401: My section of WRIT1401 partners with Upstream Arts, whose mission is to “use the power of the creative arts to activate and amplify the voice and choice of individuals with disabilities.” The community we develop together and what we learn together about disability is shaped by our community partnership. We begin the semester by educating ourselves about the social model of disability and considering our own lenses and prior education regarding disability. Each student writes their own narrative of misfitting or fitting in institutional designs.
By week four, the director of Upstream Arts, Matt Guidry, comes to visit, captivating our class with his passion for arts and for disability justice and the powerful work of Upstream Arts. An ease of being develops as we continue to develop a sense of common purpose and community. Next, in pairs, UMN students join one of Upstream Arts’ classes. Students regularly comment how the Upstream Arts teaching artists infuse their work with respect, play, and consent.
Inspired by site visits, each writing student teaches an engaging learning activity for our class that activates play-based, arts-based, and socio-emotional learning. We might enter class and create a collage to represent our ideal learning environment, play a game where we communicate only with the words “yes”, “no”, and “maybe”, or color different patterns to match the music playing prior to a discussion about communication. Once students develop familiarity with Upstream Arts mission, they work on a multi-semester project of developing and curating a research resource for Upstream Arts that identifies and annotates scholarly work in a variety of areas including play-based learning, arts education, disability rights, and sensory friendly learning environments.
Reflecting on course activities, students say they learn there are many ways to communicate; we can use our bodies, the arts, music, and much more to build relationships with each other. Students also say they learn about how the structure of education and of curriculum have historically prioritised an ableist mindset, and understand disability access and inclusion as a structural issue. Students remark that they enjoy doing writing that matters in the community, and that it gives them a sense of purpose and motivation.
Matt Guidry, Upstream Arts’ Co-Founder and Artistic Director, describes the collaboration: The research that the students are doing around the topics most important to our work and the disability community has been invaluable. As an organization that counts advocacy as one of its main goals, it’s been wonderful to watch the students develop a whole new perspective on disability, communication, and what true inclusion means. I imagine the students will take this new perspective and share it as they move into their careers.
