Neighborhood Bridges 
Neighborhood Bridges is a comprehensive program of storytelling and creative drama for elementary and middle schools. Founded in the fall of 1997 by Peter Brosius, artistic director of The Children's Theatre Company of Minneapolis (CTC), and Jack Zipes, Professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota, Neighborhood Bridges develops children's critical and cultural literacy and transforms them into storytellers of their own lives.
Brief History 
Neighborhood Bridges was originally sponsored by a generous grant from the Open Foundation in New York, and the syllabus was based on Zipes' book Creative Storytelling: Building Community, Changing Lives (1995). The initial purpose of Bridges was to set up a year-round program in which actors would meet two separate classes in two different elementary schools - Whittier and Lucey Laney - for two hours a week.
Over the course of the year, these two classes explored different genres of storytelling, writing, drawing, and improvisation and established contact with one another. In May, each class presented their own, original play at their school, then at their partner school, and finally at CTC itself. Reflecting the program's name, these three performances served to create bridges within the school, community, and theatre and between children, teachers, artists, and relatives.
After a successful pilot year, Zipes led an intensive summer training that prepared actors and classroom teachers for the first year of Neighborhood Bridges. Our success in developing the talents and skills of over 100 students during the program's first two years enabled us to obtain more support from other foundations, allowing us to expand our program.
Nine years later, Neighborhood Bridges has exciting programs in eight different inner city schools throughout the Twin Cities. More teaching artists have been trained in seminars taught by Zipes in collaboration with the Perpich Center for Arts Education and Hamline University. The program now involves eighteen classes and reaches 500 students. The Bridges program does not only collaborate with teachers and schools but also with organizations like the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, the Center for Applied Research and Education Improvement (CAREI) at the University of Minnesota, and a wide variety of media groups.
Throughout the year, the children form pen pal relationships with Bridges students at other schools. Each December, the classrooms perform a Peace Play at their own schools. In the early spring, the students meet their pen pals when all the Bridges classrooms attend a show at CTC. And, as the ultimate celebration of the year's work, they return in May to perform their own plays on CTC's main stage at The Crossing Bridges Festival.
Over the years, Neighborhood Bridges has grown in both volume and content, but the truest measure of the program's success is still found in its classrooms and students. Children from diverse backgrounds, with varying degrees of academic development and English comprehension, grab notebooks and pencils and enthusiastically begin to write. Later, they share their stories with their peers and work collaboratively to create and perform original plays. Their voices are heard - in their own classrooms and beyond - and they really do become storytellers of their own lives.
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The Neighborhood Bridges Program 
