Spoken Word Power: 

SPOKEN WORD POWER is a three year national spoken word poetry programme for school age young people, starting in 2021.  The project is led by Eastside Educational Trust in London and Grimm & Co is one of three delivery partners across the country.

Spoken Word Power embeds spoken word poetry teaching, practice, writing and performance skills into the nation’s school life, engaging 24,300 young people from 315 schools in training programmes. Through participation, young people will develop the confidence, skills and creative acumen to write and perform their own spoken word poetry, showcased at over 180 school slam events, 15 major regional spoken word events (celebrating World Poetry Day) while becoming published in annual Spoken Word Power anthologies.

Year two (2023):

In year two of the project, Grimm & Co worked with seven primary and secondary schools in South Yorkshire. Children and young people worked with professional poet-facilitators to create and shape their poems around the theme The Places I’ll Go. The winners of each school slam went on to represent their school and performed at the Rotherham Civic Theatre at our celebration event, hosted by Quinton Green. We invited Writing East Midlands and their young people to join us too!

Year one (2022):

Grimm & Co worked with ten KS2 classes across six schools in South Yorkshire and Derbyshire in year one. The theme was Speaking My Truth and pupils worked with professional poet-facilitators to create and shape their poems. The imaginative interpretations of the theme were inspiring and all settings participated in their own school slam. The winners of these went on to represent their school and performed at the Rotherham Civic Theatre at our celebration event, hosted by Helen Mort.

Here are two of the fabulous performances from the year one celebration event, featured on the BBC Uploads show on BBC Radio Sheffield:

Millie the Monster

Molly Moon’s Fantasy

This project is possible thanks to funding from BBC Children in Need, Esmee Fairburn, Tudor Trust, National Lottery Community Fund and Arts Council England.