1. Live Strand: Performance Poetry is a series of events happening over three calendar years celebrating the spoken word.  The project aims to develop performance poetry in the countries involved, through international collaboration, practical workshops on writing and performance skills and support for developing local infrastructure for future developments for performance poetry.

Taking place in Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam, the project kicked off with a consultancy visit by Geraldine Collinge from Apples and Snakes to Malaysia and Vietnam in March 2006 and some warm-up workshops and performances by poet Francesca Beard.

In September 2007 Francesca Beard returned to Vietnam and the Philippines to work with poets and help them to develop workshop plans. In the Philippines, spoken word had proved to be a bit hit with young audiences, so much so that there is now a creative writing course at University of Manila devoted to performance poetry and several monthly open mic nights. This visit was about building on already existing audiences and skills sharing with the emerging professional performance poets.

'At the performances at the British Council, the audience were receptive and very ready to laugh and join in - we did some audience participation, along very structured lines and I would say that the audience really 'got' this immediately and fully enjoyed their own roles as participants.'  Francesca Beard

Singapore and Malaysia were hosts to performance poet and DJ Charlie Dark. Charlie ran a series of workshops in December and performed at the Singapore Writers Festival alongside poets from Singapore, Taipei and Kuala Lumpur. He also held sessions in Malaysia with teacher trainees on the teaching of performance poetry.

Poet and teacher Lucy English visited Taiwan and Thailand in November and December 2007. She facilitated a series of creative writing workshops and attended a Children’s Authors Event co-organized by Thailand Knowledge Park (T K Park) and British Council Thailand.  This event was designed to encourage young Thai children (3-10yrs) to enjoy reading more, in Thai and English.

'(In Thailand) One of the teachers told me that her school was ‘in a jungle’ and she confided in me that her pupils saw no need to learn English as they never hear it spoken and they don’t listen to television or have access to the internet. She was looking for ideas to inspire them.' Lucy English

Strand objectives:

•To develop the writing and performance skills of 100 emerging poets in six East Asian countries through workshops and ongoing online mentoring.
•To showcase UK creativity in spoken word and poetry education activity
•To support sustainable development of the spoken word scene in East Asia
•To reach new audiences through challenging assumptions about what literature is
•To share expertise between writers across countries in the region
•To create an international network of performance poets

Please contact Sinead Russell at sinead.russell@britishcouncil.org for further information.

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