About Inkwell

  • InkWell works from a trauma-informed, anti-oppression framework.

    We understand trauma not as a psychiatric diagnosis, but as a response to injuries that are extremely common in our society.[1] We are committed to taking steps to avoid re-traumatizing each other by building trauma-informed systems that prioritize individual choice and community care. In this way, we hope to support our staff and participants on their healing journeys.

    Trauma is often caused by systemic oppression, including the historical legacy and ongoing reality of colonization. We recognize that Canada was built on violence towards the first peoples of Turtle Island/North America who have been subject to land theft, invasion, and genocide.

    Furthermore, we acknowledge the ways that oppressive systems affect mental health, and recognize that these systems are often invisible and can inform our behaviour, even unconsciously.

    We do not tolerate racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, sexism, ableism, classism, homophobia, transphobia, heterosexism, ageism, anti-Semitism, fatphobia, or any other form of discrimination. We commit to actively working against these systems of oppression on an individual and collective level, in ourselves and in others.

    In light of ongoing violence against racialized communities during the COVID-19 pandemic, we have created an anti-racist mental health resource sheet for BIPOC folks and their allies.

    We are open to your suggestions on how we can do better: info@inkwellworkshops.com

    [1] Linklater, Renee. Decolonizing Trauma Work. Fernwood Publishing, 2014.

  • We are grateful to live on the Ancestral shared territory of the Huron-Wendat, the Haudenosaunee Six Nation Confederacy, and, most recently, the Mississauga of the Credit First Nation. This territory was the subject of the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement between the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and the Anishnaabek and Allied Nations to peaceably share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes.

    Settler-colonialism and the residential school system continue to harm the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing of the peoples Indigenous to this land. We acknowledge this territory in order to witness and act in solidarity against these ongoing injustices, and in the spirit of upholding our treaty obligations.

    We also acknowledge Indigenous land and economic resources to which we as settlers are beneficiaries by committing to one or more of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 calls to action to come together in a concerted effort to help repair the harm caused by residential schools and move forward with reconciliation. http://trc.ca/assets/pdf/Calls_to_Action_English2.pdf

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Our History

Since our founding in 2016, InkWell Workshops has remained unique in Canada: we are a peer-led organization by and for writers with lived experience of mental health and addiction issues, and our staff are not only peers but accomplished creative writing professionals.

InkWell is recovery-oriented. Rather than focusing on symptom management through medical interventions, we believe that people with mental illness need holistic support to live good lives. And we believe that the voices and cultural achievements of disabled artists are no less than vital.

In February 2016, InkWell founders Kathy Friedman and Eufemia Fantetti began running writing workshops for people with lived experience, in partnership with CMHA (Canadian Mental Health Association) Toronto. Later that year, InkWell received funding from the Toronto Arts Council and Ontario Arts Council. This support over subsequent years enabled us to grow our programming: in 2017, we began publishing anthologies of creative writing by InkWell participants; in 2018, we mentored three professional writers with lived experience in running writing workshops at community organizations; and in 2019 we partnered with larger organizations including CAMH, TIFF, and the ROM. In 2020, merely two weeks after the COVID-19 pandemic was declared, we transitioned to online programming and began working with writers and organizations across Ontario.

Then, in 2021, we published our latest anthology Brilliance Is the Clothing I Wear with esteemed Canadian publisher Dundurn Press. Recommending it for their 2021 summer reading guide, Quill & Quire called the anthology “a polished, triumphant collection.” We ended our weekly drop-in workshops at CMHA Toronto in June 2021, and began offering free courses instead with CAMH’s Collaborative Learning College. In addition to these courses, we continue to offer free mentorship on book-length projects through the Reinhilde Cammaert Memorial Scholarship.