We send two coaches and five super-fierce poets to travel to Chicago to represent out city at the International Brave New Voices Festival in August. From March-July the team works diligently to craft, shape, and practice their poetry pieces that will be performed at BNV. In the mean time the youth leadership group of YSS is planning two community performances, including YSS 10 year anniversary party, to help support the team to build confidence and perfect their pieces in front of a loving community.

This year we employed four youth-interns to manage, coordinate and run the 6 month slam series. The investment in youth leadership and outreach paid off and we had out most successful slams to date. Every prelim brought in over 100 community members and we broke records for 600+ people at our Town Hall Grand Slam on March 1st.

Consequently we want to continue to engage our large community in support of the 5 member team. While the poets are making their way through the various bouts, workshops and overall life-changing experience in Chicago we would like to send and additional two youth interns to document and track their progress on the YSS blog and Arts Corps website so that the over 600 people who cheered them on this winter can remain connected to their success.

At Youth Speaks Seattle we know honesty and power of truth is transformative.
We create community where youth voices will not be silenced, in a world where we so often are. We support each other in becoming the people we need to be. By utilizing social media intern leaders we feel that we can galvanize the awesomeness of BNV and transfer it back to our devoted community in Seattle.

Check out some of the incredible poets at the 2013 Grand Slam:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cO30xcF49U