2014-391 Arts - Sacrificial Poets for Spring 2014 Arts Grant Agreement $1,500

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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 as we continue to add new schools to the program from across the Triangle. In terms of gender diversity,our youth participation is usually pretty even, sometimes leaning towards 60/40 male to female participation. Changes and Improvements After running the festival for 6 consecutive years,we have learned a lot,made many improvements, and responded to constructive feedback from students,teachers, and fellow youth organizers. This past year was no different, and after reviewing both our successes and our areas for improvement we have put together a list a changes,updates, and enhancements for the program next year. 1)This past year we began the process of more actively involving teachers in the program. By bringing teachers onboard as allies we were able to gather valuable feedback and make adjustments to better serve each individual student population. This year, our hope is to not only include teachers as allies, but to incorporate them as co-facilitators and leaders of the project as well. This past year we developed a database of teacher contact information for the schools we work in and we plan to use this information to communicate with these individuals about ways they can actively take a leadership role in supporting the students and the Word Rivalry program. Teachers will be given workshops,worksheets, and online resources to help them facilitate with Sacrificial Poets during the year-round program and the build-up to the festival. 2)We want to bring more volunteer poets from the local colleges into the classroom. This past year we also experimented with having youth poet mentors from UNC, Duke,and NC State join our professional teaching artists in the classroom. This produced great results and is an initiative we want to expand this upcoming year. By bringing college students into the classroom, we are providing the youth with young, powerful, and supportive role models that they can look up to and learn from. This process is beneficial for both the students and the college poets who are gaining valuable teaching practice and hands on volunteer experience. 3)We would like to continue our development of warm-up events in preparation for the Word Rivalry Festival. This past year we experimented with having events prior to the festival for the participants. While the logistics of this proved to be quite challenging and getting the youth in one place a struggle, we nonetheless believe this is a crucial growing edge for our program. This upcoming year we hope to expand the warm-up events to include practice slams, open mics,and social events for the youth to participate in. We hope to create a large,powerful, and diverse community of youth that meet regularly, not just once a year at the festival.