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2021 was a challenging year, but Austin Bat Cave never stopped supporting our community. This year, we served over 1000 students in 59 programs across 22 schools, and partnered with 14 community organizations. Throughout the pandemic, we held nonstop virtual programming that helped young people build community, have fun, and keep their spirits up while schools were closed. Our 2021 anthology, Pandemic’s Labyrinth, features student work produced during this uncertain, isolating time. Further, we were able to give 260 books away via our Bat Mobile, and over 300 adult writers joined us for 34 workshops and seminars.
For more than 14 years, Austin Bat Cave has provided safe, accessible, and free writing programs to Central Texas youth (ages 6-18) by connecting young learners with local novelists, poets, journalists, fiction writers, and other artistic professionals through our in-school, after-school, weekend, and summer creative writing workshops. By implementing engaging curricula and working with students one-on-one, ABC’s volunteer instructors inspire our students to take creative risks while building critical writing skills that pave their way to academic and personal success.
By partnering with Title 1 schools and organizations that cater to vulnerable youth, we serve young people who come from low-income families, are BIPOC, and whose voices have been historically marginalized. We celebrate and amplify student voices through an annual anthology, small batch publications, readings, exhibitions, and collaborations with online news outlets. Recent anthologies have featured work representing diverse voices: young refugee women, incarcerated middle schoolers, first-generation college-bound students, and LGBTQ+ teens.
Like our youth workshops, ABC’s adult programs fill a gap in accessible literary arts programs in Central Texas. Our adult classes are affordable and accessible; they strengthen and diversify our arts community by offering scholarships, paying teaching artists, and providing participants with unique publishing opportunities.
Founded in 2007, Austin Bat Cave (ABC) works with young authors ages 6 to 18 in Central Texas. We provide free programs in creative writing, journalism, college essay writing, resume writing, expressive journaling, and more. We make our programs safe and accessible for all students, and prioritize partnerships with Title 1 schools and communities that have limited access to creative arts programming.
With Austin’s rising housing costs and shifting demographics, we continue to adapt. ABC is expanding its geographic reach to increase program equity and accessibility, activating youth civic engagement through op-ed programs, integrating therapeutic journaling into classrooms, and providing workshops for system-involved youth.
Since 2018, ABC has broadened our programs to serve adult writers, building a nontraditional adult literary arts program that values equity, flexibility, and excellence. We aim to support writers across all generations and from all backgrounds to build an inclusive and sustainable literary arts ecosystem in Central Texas. Further, when COVID-19 restrictions were in place, we continually offered our youth and adult participants opportunities for creative outlet and connection via virtual platforms.
To remain as accessible as possible, ABC brings engaging programs to students in their own communities. Our “Bat Mobile”—a mobile classroom and bilingual library built from a repurposed city bus—removes geographic and linguistic barriers by taking our programs to rural areas. When possible, volunteer instructors are recruited from the areas where our students live and learn.
Volunteers are the key to the success of ABC’s programs. ABC creates a dynamic community by providing our volunteers with training and field experience that enables them to not only make a positive impact on our students but also grow in their own professions. We give our volunteers the opportunity to create programs based on their skills and interests, bringing passion and excitement to the classroom. Our volunteers demonstrate that writing is a valuable skill and viable career path, and illustrate how the creative arts are an outlet for self-expression, self-reflection, and community engagement. Finally, we elevate our volunteers' abilities with mandatory trainings that include anti-racism, classroom management, and trauma-informed practices — important knowledge they can take into their own communities.
Young people have so much to say, and Austin Bat Cave helps them bring their words to life.
ABC helps young people tell their stories and express themselves in writing. We believe that everyone is a writer and that while creative self-expression is transformative for any young person, it is particularly so for those whose voices have been historically marginalized—ABC strives to amplify these students’ stories.
Our workshops leverage the literary arts to foster self-expression and personal well-being. Our programs are not only fun and creative (although they are always both of those things) but they also push Central Texas towards a more equitable future. We offer workshops — such as op-ed journalism, food advocacy, online activism, and more — that equip students with lifelong tools for self-expression and the ability to advocate for their ideas and beliefs. Our publishing opportunities provide students with tangible affirmations that their voices are important and should be heard.
ABC has continued to serve our community virtually during the pandemic. In 2020-2021, our volunteers provided writing instruction to 835 students through 58 youth programs. Our virtual workshops for youth mitigate learning losses, social isolation, and increasing mental health concerns. We developed the Online Writing Lab, which is accessible without high-speed internet, as an extension of our in-person programming for youth and families.
During this time, ABC’s adult programs also served 750 adults through 31 classes and series. By setting moderate tuition fees, paying instructors competitive wages, and providing scholarships to writers-in-need, these adult classes create a more equitable and diverse regional literary landscape. In adapting to the pandemic, we now serve individuals we had not reached before, including those suffering from chronic illness and living in rural areas.
In the summer of 2007, on the Webberville campus of Austin Community College, local fiction writers, playwrights, and poets taught a three-day writing workshop to 27 students ages 11 to 15. By week’s end, the instructors had helped these students write enough material to fill a book that was then published and distributed to the workshop participants. This was Austin Bat Cave’s first creative writing workshop and the published volume was our first anthology. Since then, ABC has grown to annually serve 800 students (ages 6 to 18) through our school-year and summer creative writing programs as well as adult writers.
ABC’s creative community of trained artists and writers impacts youth by teaching different mediums of expression such as poetry, screenwriting, and more in a safe space where students are able to create. Collaboration is our best innovative asset. For example, by listening to our community, we created the Mobile Program to better serve youth living in suburban and rural communities beyond Austin’s city limits.
We strive for a more equitable future. Our programs equip young people with tools to advocate for themselves and their communities, and our mandatory anti-racism and trauma-informed trainings help build a coalition of supportive allies. Further, we develop curricula that introduce students to restorative practices for creating relationships established on principles of cooperation and trust.
While ABC is known for our outstanding youth literary arts programming, we’re distilling our role in Austin’s creative community by serving adult writers. Very few venues in Austin offer accessible writing courses. ABC’s “unMFA” approach to creative writing instruction provides benefits similar to traditional MFA programs without the expense, demanding schedule, or cross-country move. Our innovative classes allow students to experiment in multiple genres, develop their skills, and broaden their literary networks at an affordable price and flexible schedule.
ABC uses surveys to evaluate program quality and define our community’s accessibility needs. This feedback informs ABC’s choices when developing new classes. In 2020 - 2021, 89% of youth participants felt more confident about their writing after taking an ABC workshop; 99% found the program useful; and 100% found it fun. For adult workshops, 98% of survey respondents said the class was useful to their writing; and 99% would take additional classes with ABC.
Additionally, ABC’s yearly anthology is always an indicator of hard work and learning. The publication is validation to vulnerable youth throughout Central Texas that the community is invested in their stories and their voices.
“Thank you for everything, the opportunities y'all provided and continue to provide are life-changing. Your support in giving me and others the opportunity to be published in a real book is inspiring and motivating in a draining time.” — ABC student author
“I’ve taken three adult writing classes at Austin Bat Cave and each one has been incredible. I’ve not only learned new skills and read new-to-me writers but also been able to connect with myself (personally) in meaningful ways I could have never imagined.” — ABC adult class participant
In 2020-21, COVID-19 and subsequent learning interruptions negatively impacted truancy rates and heightened levels of depression and anxiety in youth of all ages, which mental health professionals warn may have long-lasting effects (Education Week 3/31/21). Now, more than ever, school-based interventions that support both social-emotional health and academic engagement are urgently needed (Texas Tribune 12/22/20). Further, teachers and school support staff are responding to these realities with limited resources and time, which has only been exacerbated by the pandemic. Additional funding will allow ABC to continue to nourish students’ learning and social-emotional needs and provide critical support to teachers as we all navigate the complex challenges of returning to classrooms this school year.
Would you give $4 a month to support four nonprofits that are making a big difference? Join forces with other 52andChangmakers to automatically give to every Cause of the Week. Every Monday, you’ll wake up knowing you’ve already made a difference! As our community grows, so does the impact!
Together we’ve become volunteers in places we would have never expected, planted milkweed for butterflies, provided books to kids in need, helped save endangered turtles, helped turn excess food into nutrition, helped bring art to youth, educated one another about how we are connected to our delicate food systems, helped save abandoned horses and given old dogs new hope, watched foster youth shine in the spotlight of movie making, helped clean tires out of rivers… we could go on and on and on. It is an absolute joy to be a part of such an amazing network of humans making a difference.
“ALMA reconnects the lives of the formerly incarcerated back to the fabric of society. Our participants have the chance at attaining gainful employment and becoming self-sufficient. Urban Farming helps everyone involved explore the relationships between plants, animals and humans as a way of creating a profound connection to both nature and their community.” - ALMA Backyard Farms
While we’re writing this and you’re reading it, Pajaro Valley Loaves and Fishes is out there, finding ways to provide food to more people in need throughout Santa Cruz County, where one of three residents are reported to be food insecure.
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