2013-035 EDC-Arts - St Joseph's Historic Foundation $1,500

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witness performances from nationally-renowned spoken word poets, and compete in the Word Rivalry inter-high school poetry slam. Through outreach visits and workshops, poetry club participants will learn how to craft and perform original works of poetry and storytelling that explore their identity and experiences, and which utilize powerful figurative language and performance techniques. The final festival event will bring youth from diverse races, ethnicities, socioeconomic backgrounds, genders, and neighborhoods together to learn about and from each other through the power of their own stories and voices. We strongly believe that interaction between high schools must go beyond just sports, and give students the opportunity to build relationships among themselves through recreation, fellowship, group learning, and creativity. The project will feature workshops that will be run by highly experienced facilitators Kane Smego, CJ Suitt, and Will McInerney of Sacrificial Poets, along with recent high school graduate and former head of the Carrboro High School poetry club, Jasmine Farmer, who will serve as a key youth leader on the project. In addition, there will be special guest-facilitated workshops throughout the program that bring in renowned artists and local community leaders. Workshops will take place at the respective schools during lunch or after school hours. The Word Rivalry and Fellowship Festival will be held at a venue in Chapel Hill or Carrboro, with an expected attendance of over 100 people. The Blue Ribbon Mentor-Advocate program, the Chapel Hill High Arts Academy, and the Street Scene Teen Center have all agreed to help recruit youth for the workshops and publicize for the festival. These partnerships will help bring a diverse and talented group of youth to the workshop series, and build on the dynamic youth advocacy and empowerment movements flourishing in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro area. In the past, poetry club and Word Rivalry participants have been extremely diverse, and historically youth of color have composed over 50 % of total participants. Comparable numbers are projected for this year, and new teams from Riverside, Hillside, and Durham School of the Arts are expected to take part. All of these school poetry clubs are nearly 80 %African American or Latino. Participants from Lakeview School, which is nearly 100 %African American and Latino, will be performing at the event as well. Phoenix Academy and Durham Performance Learning Center participants represent a similar demographic. In terms of gender diversity, our youth participation is usually pretty even, sometimes leaning towards 60/40 male to female participation.