2017-029-E Arts - Chapel Hill High School Arts Academy - Fall 2016 Arts Grant Agreement

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DocuSign Envelope ID: CF1E5821-41D3-41 CA-BE86-7063BD8D1470 is Kane Smego calls himself NovaKane,but he's anything but numb—especially as he prepares to leave the Triangle for a new adventure. He's crammed his books in a car and is about to motor off to Los Angeles,into the unknown."I'll be on the road for about 10 days,"Smego says."It's like the metaphor of'the path,'just riding out by myself,you know?" The restless performer,writer and educator has rocked major poetry slams and inspired countless Triangle students through Sacrificial Poets,an educational spoken-word nonprofit he helped start in 2005. He's also been a poet-correspondent from the Arab Spring,a turning point when five Chapel Hill High School buddies running a slam team dedicated themselves to a more serious social-justice mission. In the summer of 2011,Smego,fellow Sacrificial Poets founder Will McInerney and N.C.State students Mohammad Moussa and Sameer Abdel-Khalek spent two months in Egypt and Tunisia,collecting oral histories and writing poems from the midst of the revolutionary wave. Although the big protests happened earlier in the year,the countries were dealing with their much dicier aftermaths.Sacrificial Poets captured the faces and voices of this social and political uncertainty in a project called "Poetic Portraits of a Revolution,"producing a weekly audio segment that aired on WUNC program and earning a 2011 Arts Award in the process. "It was eye-opening for us,as artists,trying to synthesize all of that and create a piece every week that we had to write,script and record huddled under a blanket,"Smego says."Every Tuesday,we were up until 7 a.m.producing that piece[for a Wednesday deadline]." Smego wasn't just making documentary art; he was meeting activists and artists who were transforming their country.He and McInerney knew they couldn't just return to the slam circuit once they came home. "The Sacrificial Poets didn't become a nonprofit until we came back,"Smego says,noting that cofounders CJ Suitt, George"G"Yamazawa and Jake Jacoby had also been thinking along revolutionary lines."Egypt and Tunisia was the impetus behind thinking,'Yeah,I think we can do it.We can take this to the next level and develop a strategy so we can reach way more kids." Fast-forward to the present.Smego is now an experienced teacher who has conducted high-energy spoken-word workshops and led powerful youth slam performances in 17 states as well as every corner of the Triangle. He's developed Sacrificial Poets's"YouTh ink"curriculum and founded an afterschool program called Poetic Justice for underserved Durham youth. Sacrificial Poets is well integrated into the educational landscape here,and the organization's name commands respect in big slam scenes around the country. Smego himself has serious spoken-word mettle.A Bull City Slam Team mainstay,he was part of the 2010 squad that finished third at the National Poetry Slam in St. Paul, Minnesota.That same year,he won the Southern Fried Poetry Slam Regional Festival in Knoxville,Tennessee.