Wow, we’re approaching the end of the summer. That went fast didn’t it? I’ve just got back from a holiday and I think it’s about time I told you what we at SlamFresh got up to before the end of the last school term.
So the week before the school closed, myself and Donald Jenkins were doing a bit of filming with our group in Walker Riverside Academy and finishing off our pilot project there. It’s been such a rewarding experience. I’ve been so impressed with the quality of the writing. And I’ve been especially impressed by how the young people have helped to guide the project in what has been some pretty challenging circumstances.
For those of you who missed our last post, the original plan was to help each young person write at least one slam poem. We would then organise a poetry slam in an out of school venue, which would be open to friends and family members.
But as we approached the final week of term, this started to feel a little problematic. Lots of venues were having to close due to a surge in Covid cases. Events were being cancelled and me and Donald had to make the difficult decision to move away from the out of school element.
It was tricky. We knew doing this final show would have helped the group take more ownership of the project and make it feel like something that was truly theirs. But we decided we just couldn’t risk the event being cancelled last minute.
So we threw the idea back to the group. One of them, Lilly, suggested we make some Youtube videos of the poems instead. It sounded like a great idea. We took a vote and the young people unanimously went for this option.
We then spent a few sessions editing our work and researching what a good Youtube poem looks like. We watched some Hollie McNish videos and talked about speaking with confidence, as well as using eye contact and clear body language. On the final session, Don led us all through some really fun warm up games, before we each took turns going down to the library to film our poems with a professional film maker.
I was really moved by the commitment of the group. One of them, George, had to go into isolation a few days before. He joined us virtually and recorded his poem over Google Meet instead. Another student, Favour, who has only been learning English for a matter of months, stood up and read her piece with such confidence and pride it brought a tear to my eye.
The films themselves are currently being edited and we’re hoping to be able to share these with you sometime around mid-September. We’ll also be putting written copies of them up as we go.
Until then, stay tuned!
Spoken Word Workshops 