A poster advertising Write Down the Line at the MARTA Lindbergh station.
If you’re one of the thousands of Atlantans who use MARTA every day, you may have seen posters advertising Write Down the Line, a weekly creative writing challenge that’s part of a collaboration between MARTA’s Artbound public art program and Atlanta-based creative writing nonprofit Lostintheletters.
The challenge, which began on August 4 and continues to September 22, features a weekly writing prompt, accessible via the QR code on posters around MARTA’s transit system, each week for a total of eight prompts. Every piece of writing submitted as part of Write Down the Line will be published on Lostintheletters’ website, and program organizers will pick one piece each week to turn into a digital animation by Maite Nazario, this year’s fall artist-in-residence for Artbound and Fulton County Arts’ Public Art Futures Lab.
According to Scott Daughtridge DeMer, Lostintheletters’ founder and director, the prompts are meant to “give people an opportunity to think or reflect or consider their immediate surroundings but also their own personal stories [and] their connection with the city’s history,” with each phase of the project feeding into that larger goal.
DeMer explained that Write Down the Line’s structure was devised to help participants develop a writing practice of their own. “It’s not just a one-time prompt where we just give them one thing to write about and then it’s over,” he said. “If you’re writing for eight weeks in a row, building that momentum is a really great way to say, ‘Hey, maybe this is something I want to continue doing.’”
MARTA Art in Transit Director Katherine Dirga said that working with Lostintheletters has been something of a match made in heaven. “We have both a visual and a performing arts component to our program, and we have somewhat struggled with how to address the literary arts,” she said. But Lostintheletters’ objectives meshed well with MARTA’s goals for Artbound.
“What we’re doing is so in line with Lostintheletters’ mission: getting people to write wherever they are,” Dirga said. “When you ride transit a lot, you have a relationship to it. You feel an ownership, and [you] also can sometimes feel a little bit dependent.” But Write Down the Line gives riders something to think about instead. “It gets back to using your imagination when you’re bored — and thinking and expressing,” Dirga said. “It’s kind of cool, giving people something to do while they’re on the train that’s not passive.”
Dirga hopes the project will help build Atlantans’ creativity and access to the arts. “If people aren’t apt to go to a museum or find a gallery,” she said, “they may not encounter [visual art] otherwise.” But with public art from accomplished and celebrated artists increasingly available throughout MARTA’s transit stations, people who don’t have other access to art can experience it during their commute.
DeMer took it a step further. “Atlanta has something that the world needs,” he said. “Atlanta is such a unique place, and there are so many people here who have amazing stories to tell. We want them to feel inspired to continue to share that and to continue to think about that and continue to activate that.”
“The more that we can create these opportunities,” he added, “the more that Atlanta can be a hub for that. And that way, Atlanta as a city can inspire the region, the nation, the wider world.”
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Rachel Wright has a Ph.D. from Georgia State University and an MA from the University College Dublin, both in creative writing. Her work has appeared in The Stinging Fly and elsewhere. She is currently at work on a novel.
