Our Manifesto...
The Poetic Empowerment Project aims to bring self confidence to the youth whilst allowing them to articulate their frustrations, emotions and creativity through the art of wordplay. Furthermore the P.E.P aims to empower the youth regardless of race, religion or creed. The young people involved in the project will also come out of it acknowledging and implementing the famous idiom that in fact 'the pen is mightier then the sword.' The P.E.P whilst also giving the youth a chance to express themselves will also target important youth issues at the same time. Issues such as 'knife crimes' will be addressed as well as 'extremism' and 'loneliness' etc.
All these issues will be listed and targeted in workshops separately and we hope to include at least one famous poet or spoken word artists or even rappers. Anyone who is respected by the youth thus creating a healthy, mutual environment. So rather then the local MP speaking we would prefer to choose the local MC! However we do want politicians to work closely with the project to help build a relationship of respect with the local youth.
I have articulated some of these points on the Barnet Times, the link is below:
http://www.times-series.co.uk/blogs/8223323.Poetic_Empowerment/
Copy and Paste the above link into the address bar to access it!
Activities and WorkshopsThe implementation of activities and workshops is solely dependent on whether the P.E.P receives funding or not. However the core of the P.E.P will be poetry circles which will be circulated and held on our website:
www.PoeticEmpowerment.blogspot.com and will also be advertised on social networking sites to encourage young people to get involved!
The P.E.P will have an annual Charity Poetry Slam at the end of the year using the young poets in our project to express their poems on stage in front of an audience. We also plan to book one poet to perform as the headline act. All the money raised from this Poetry Slam will go to charity. However the young poets will not be forced into performing and can create their own type of performance using video’s or pre-recorded spoken word segments.
Aims and outcomes
By the end of the year we hope to:
Have at least one group of young poets to start off the project headed and chaired by mentors and Poetic Leaders
Have at least one workshop with the youth trying to tackle issues which concern them
Organise our first Charity Poetry Slam with the local MP speaking, a local poet or rapper perform and of course have our young poets express their art to the audience if they want to.
The aims outlined above are both attainable and realistic
The outcomes of the project are as follows:To create a better more rational population of young people who are empowered with the knowledge that the 'pen is mightier then the sword.'
The above outcome will hopeful eradicate problems like knife crime to radical extremism
To give the youth self-confidence and treat one another with respect. Also crucially to give the youth the oral skills to deal with parents in a respectful manner thus leading to a more healthy family life.
Most importantly let the youth enjoy their work and give them full artistic control in terms of how they want to present their poetry. Each young person will have their own creative means to an ends.
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The Poetic Empowerment Project requires volunteer's to help in anyway possible, if you are interested please contact:
mohamedzaind@googlemail.com
Thank you for reading our manifesto.
