The Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture at the University of Manitoba, the first institute of its kind in North America, is a place for creativity, for scholarly research into oral and literate cultures, and for making connections between the University and the community. Opened in the fall of 2008, the Centre provides crucial support for students, faculty and community members who are working to create their own stories or who are studying the stories of others.
The Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture is an interdisciplinary, research-based facility that permits artists, scholars and students from diverse backgrounds to explore the transformative possibilities of the spoken and written word.
To view a video of our facilities, please click here.
To view photos of our grand opening on September 10, 2008, click here.NEWS
CCWOC wishes to thank its outgoing Winter 2012 Visiting Storytellers, Kay Stone and Mary Louise Chown, who kindly shared their expertise in oral culture via weekly storytelling circles at the Centre throughout the dark winter months. Thank you so much to Kay and Mary Louise, and to the many participants of their lively circles.
On February 21, 2012, the Centre received Yves Melanson, coordinator of media relations from CFI - Canada Foundation for Innovation. It was a pleasure to receive one of the partners and supporters in our facilities, and to talk about our work and projects. Moreover, it was exciting to see CFI’s effort to reach out and interact with their partners. The CFI has put together a new website featuring a number of communication tools such as blog, Twitter, YouTube channel, and Facebook. These tools are meant not only to be a resource for information about the research CFI supports, but also to strengthen the relationship between CFI and researchers, and to create a community of researchers across Canada. Yves toured us around some of these tools and showed interesting projects that relate to our work here at the Centre, about which we will talk in future posts. Please click here to view one of the videos available from CFI's YouTube channel.
On Friday, February 3, 2012, Manitowapow - Aboriginal Writings from the Land of Water, was officially launched at the Tower Atrium, The Forks Market, Winnipeg, Manitoba. Edited by Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair and Warren Cariou (CCWOC's Director), the anthology of Aboriginal writings from Manitoba takes readers back through the millennia and forward to the present day, painting a dynamic picture of a territory interconnected through words, ideas, and experiences. For more information about this rich collection of stories, poetry, nonfiction, and speeches, click here.
WHAT ARE HUMAN RIGHTS? Many of us take our rights and privileges as citizens and as individuals for granted, and yet there is much political and social debate surrounding the many definitions of human rights. The Centre's Dr. Warren Cariou, along with Dr. Neil McArthur of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics, set out to investigate this issue in a documentary that asks, "What are human rights?" For more information about this work in progress, please click here. To see a clip of this documentary, please click here.