7 Swimming Pools is open! And… should we start a membership program?
A blow-up beach ball floating in a blue swimming pool. Photo credit Raohaël Biscaldi, shared via Unsplash.
Right into the pool today — Seven Swimming Pools is open for registration!
This is like a national holiday for us — we love running this program every summer.
It works like this: Every year, we each choose one thing we can’t stop thinking about, and we turn it into a 90-minute workshop. Then we work together to plan and host that workshop, and we run one a week for seven weeks.
Since we’re six now (we miss you Ailsa!) we’ve made the final evening into a showcase for participants to share some of what they’ve created — an online Open Mic Night.
This program is designed as a fun, easy way to reconnect to your creative energy through a host of different doors.
It’s sliding scale, and if the lowest amount is a barrier, get in touch! We want you there.
And, we have a question. “Firefly Membership Program” — good idea or bad idea?
We’re always looking for new, low-barrier ways to create community with you. It feels like everyone is running membership programs these days… so maybe we should get in on the action? Maybe not?
We love connecting, and have endless ideas for what we could provide. But also — do we already offer too much? Would this make our offerings feel crowded? And is there something weird about a “membership”? We’re not a golf club…
As usual — we’re turning to your wisdom. We made a quick survey to let you help us figure it out. We’d love your thoughts.
Finally — we have small-group summer writing workshops!
This is where our favourite magic happens. Small group, multi-week invitations into chemistry and grace.
Let’s go babies! Please share these if you know someone who would love them.
Write with Kim this summer.
The Fiction Workshop will give you structure and support for the next steps of any fiction project.
Keep Your Pen Moving will give you a little bit of everything, to start or re-start your creative drive. (This one is in person!)
Write with Mari this summer.
Brief Bursts is workshop about writing short, true things to help you tell the tiniest true stories you possibly can.
Keep Your Pen Moving is eight weeks of lists and rants and poems and play. Just like Kim’s session, but this one is on Zoom.
Write with Britt this summer.
The Life Stories Workshop will help write some of your big stories, with loads of feedback and encouragement.
Rising Tides is for people with projects on the go who want to get seriously (and joyfully) productive.
Write with Sophia this summer.
Permission Slip is a big, sweet invitation to write your own permission slips this summer.
Sophia also has space for new 1-on-1 clients.
Write with Asifa this summer.
Flight Paths is an experimental space for anyone curious about poetic forms.
Worlds of Words is our summer fiction writing camp FOR TEENS! Spread the word.
Write with me this summer.
Writing Our Way Back to Each Other is my new pet project: a writing workshop that will dive deep into what community means to us in this moment. This one is in person.
Or, write with ALL of us.
Seven Swimming Pools is a large-group program (so less sharing, less connection, and less price) to help you try on a bunch of different approaches to writing as the summer unfolds.
And, of course — a poem.
This one is called “If” and is by the ever inspirational and compassionate Imtiaz Dharker.
I miss the pool.
I go every once in a while now, but it’s not the same as it was when I was a kid.
The endless excitement of water, time and friends. The way turquoise seemed to have a taste to it, burny but non-threatening. The word dunk. The rubbery feeling of limbs at the end of a long afternoon there, floppy and exhausted but still bursting with life.
I am wishing you a fractal of that freedom today.
In it with you,
