Meet The Team

Rowan McCabe

Director, Producer, Facilitator

Rowan McCabe is a poet, performer and workshop facilitator from Newcastle upon Tyne. His poetry has been commissioned by the National Trust, BBC Radio 3 and Channel 4. He has performed across the UK and Europe.

Rowan is passionate about taking poetry to people who otherwise wouldn’t see it as something for them. He has led large-scale projects on behalf of New Writing North, Newcastle Council, and Seven Stories, often working with young people from lower economic backgrounds.

Donald Jenkins

Director, Producer, Facilitator

Michael MacDonald (pen name Donald Jenkins) is a performance poet, rapper and workshop facilitator from Newcastle. He won the Great Gateshead Poetry Slam 2018 and has performed at Glastonbury Festival and the Royal Albert Hall.

Michael is a qualified youth worker and English teacher, and has twenty-two years’ experience engaging young people from hard to reach communities. He has delivered workshops for organisations including Curious Monkey Theatre, Skimstone Arts and Apples and Snakes.

Jeff Price

Director

Jeff has a Masters degree in Poetry from Newcastle University and has performed his work at venues around the UK and Europe, including the Prague Fringe Festival and the Bristol Poetry Festival.

Before joining SlamFresh, Jeff spent 13 years running Radikal Words, a CIC which worked in schools, prisons and community centres delivering workshops, writers’ groups and performance poetry events.

Tahmina Ali

Facilitator

Tahmina’s work has featured on the BBC’s ‘Words First’ programme and on Radio 3’s The Verb. She was awarded the ‘ABC Arts and Culture Award’ for 2018 and 2019 and presented a poetry radio show on Fast FM.

Tahmina has over a decade’s worth of experience working with children and young people from a wide range of backgrounds. She has delivered large-scale projects for New Writing North and GemArts, and has provided mental health-focused workshops for the NHS.