This article looks at an inner city playwriting project that brought professional writers and artists into inner city classrooms to help students explore the cultural history of their community and begin to find their own voices as writers. This project was set up by Larry Hunter, an African American playwright who worked as a writer-in-residence in public schools and also ran a summer drama program for urban youth, to bring the culture of jazz alive for local children. Through his project, third, fourth, and fifth grade students not only listened to, learned about, and wrote about jazz, but also accompanied Hunter on his journey as he completed a play, "The Rawley Street Whistler," which wove together the story of a young musician and his community. At the beginning of the school year, students heard the basic story line and learned about the cultural context within which the plot unfolded. As the year progressed, students witnessed the gradual elaboration of the story line into a fully developed dramatic performance. For young people traumatized by high levels of neighborhood violence, the intergenerational connections built up during the project had special value. Through talking about the characters in a play, personal experiences were shared by old and young in a way that might have been difficult in other circumstances. A sense of community was created.