The initiative highlights spoken word as a way to engage youth voices in Africa and Europe around issues of human rights and social justice.
Conceptualised before the Covid-19 pandemic and launched right at the height of the 2nd Covid-19 wave, the “Right To Speak” project exemplifies how the power of partnerships and shared visions can create unbounded opportunities for artists. “Right To Speak” leverages the power of digital to create spaces that enable young poets across oceans to speak, learn and grow together. Additionally, it supports and builds capacity for local organizations for sustained impact. Poetry is a vehicle to drive conversations around human rights between young people from Europe and South Africa, using various hybrid events and co-productions.
The partnership between the Centre for Creative Arts, Hear My Voice NGO, French Institute of South Africa, Wallonie Bruxelles International, Representation of Flanders, and Goethe-Institut has, thus far, yielded an anthology, the ground-breaking Poetry Lekgotla, a 6-part virtual workshop series to equip poets for the international stage and a Multimedia Poetry Project Grant. It has also created myriad openings for connection at a performance and management level that have strengthened the poetry-making ecosystem in South Africa.
We will honour this deeply fruitful partnership with a celebratory event that will include performances by some of our trailblazing featured poets. They are Philip Meersman (Brussels), Paul Gausch (Catalan), Xabiso Vili (South Africa), Siphokazi Jonas (South Africa), Lydol (Cameroon) and Nachla Libre (Sweden). Whilst this event may be the culmination of the year-long project, the Centre for Creative Arts hopes it will lead to many more informal, formal and new envisioned partnership initiatives between individuals, organisations, institutions and funders.
We encourage our invited guests to use this event to pontificate on all things poetry, party and partner, to build upon the fantastic foundation laid by this year-long intervention.
Please join us on 12 October 2022, 7 PM at the Howard College Theatre in Durban.
Project website:
Right To Speak
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