The Seattle Area Youth Performance Poetry Project

Purpose: "The Seattle Area Youth Performance Poetry Project is dedicated to enriching and aiding the development of the communication, public speaking and leadership skills of Puget Sound area youth through participation in performance poetry on a local, regional, national and international level."

Goals:

To select a Slam Team to participate in the National Teen Slam Championships in Ann Arbor, Michigan in April 2001.
To help ensure the best possible outcome for a Slam team through regular performance and literature workshops.
To fully fund a trip to the Nationals, allowing 5 young people and three chaperones to travel with comfortable transportation, lodging and meals.
To ensure that young poets develop multi-voice poems and other performance specialties.
To insure that the Seattle-Area Slam team best represent the youth of the metro area on and off the stage and through this experience learn leadership, marketing, organizing and fundraising skills.
To further develop the regional Teen Slam literary community and create more opportunities for youth to participate in competitive performance poetry as an alternative to acting out and as an in-road to healing.
To demonstrate the effectiveness of integrating arts and social services and illustrate the true value of arts funding in a way that will lead to higher levels of arts funding in King County and the State of Washington. (We currently rank below 50 in the 50+ United States and protectorates in per-capita arts funding here in this state.)

Background: We have seen a year with an unprecedented number of violent acts by teens. Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado is perhaps the best-known. Similar events in Roseburg, Oregon, Paducah, Kentucky, Jonesboro, Arkansas and other towns suggest this is a trend that deserves our society's most careful attention.

In her book: "Stop Teaching our Kids to Kill" local media-literacy activist Gloria de Gaetano suggests the roots of violence are two-fold:

Early exposure and de-sensitization to violent acts through extensive exposure to televised violence &
Extensive use of violent video-games, machines frighteningly similar to the simulators used by the U.S. Army to train soldiers to be effective marksmen.

In the book Gloria explains that through extensive exposure to televised violence and the fearful state created by this activity, the young person's brain is incapable of the critical thought needed to value human life. "The brains of violent people are different from the brains of non-violent people. Violent or aggressive people have decreased activity in the prefrontal cortex, leading to troubled thinking and problems in the left temporal lobe, leading to a short fuse." (2) In the book she suggests development of the imagination is the best antidote for the damage done by extensive exposure to violent media and video games. "Some researchers believe that literacy skills actually prevent violent behavior." (3) Reading and writing are perhaps the two best ways of developing the imagination and poetry perhaps the best modality to achieve this purpose.

Since 1997, It Plays in Peoria Productions has integrated the emerging performance art of the Poetry Slam with social services to create a model for other communities wanting to use the literary arts as youth crime prevention and positive youth development. Inspired by the success of IPiPP's Teen Poetry Slam at the Northwest SPokenword LAB or SPLAB!, the Redmond Association of the SPokenword produced a Teen Slam this past year with very successful results.

Now these two organizations have united for the second year ion a row to help a team of young poets to refine their communication, writing and leadership skills. This will be done through a collaboration entitled: The Seattle Area Youth Performance Poetry Project. The collaboration will facilitate a series of Poetry Slams, (competitive performance poetry events), Literary and Performance workshops, and a trip to ann Arbor, Michigan for the teen slam team to compete in the National Teen Poetry Slam Championships in April 2001.

It is our hope that through this collaboration, we may be able to achieve the goals listed above and begin to merge the arts and social services EXTENSIVELY on a regional basis to ensure that such tragedies will never happen around here. Furthermore, we hope that area youth may be able to develop the communication and leadership skills necessary to fully achieve their own personal potential and to continue the process of integration to improve the quality of life in the Puget Sound region for years to come.

As all non-profit organizations are chronically under-funded, we ask for your support in the way of a tax-deductible contribution to the administrating organization, It Plays in Peoria Productions, the non-profit which created the Northwest SPokenword LAB. All contributors of at least $100 will be recognized on the Teen Poetry Slam CD that will be produced and contributors of $500 or more will be recognized on the syndicated IPiPP radio program and at the performances.

The Puget Sound area is known world-wide for its innovative products, services and trends. We hope we can add the merging of arts and social services to that list through a successful collaboration and subsequent strengthening of the local literary scene that a fully-funded collaboration will achieve.

1 - The Essential McLuhan, Eric McLuhan, Frank Zingrone, eds. - 175
2,3 - Stop Teaching our Kids to Kill, Grossman, DeGaetano - 58, 60

Last updated Sunday, July 16, 2000 09:35:42 PM