|
‘Wicked Words’
|
Inspired by the arrival of the critically acclaimed, record-breaking UK tour of Wicked (12 Mar-26 Apr), Wales Millennium Centre teams up with Cardiff Against Bullying, Barnardos and Western Power Distribution (WPD) to offer a series of poetry writing workshops to help young people who have experienced bullying first hand, combined with a special opportunity to experience the thrill of live performance.
The poems written in the workshops are to be published in a collection entitled ‘Wicked Words’, which will be distributed to schools in Wales to help raise awareness of bullying. The young writers have also been invited by the producers of Wicked to attend the show’s opening night performance.
Wicked tells the incredible untold story of an unlikely but profound friendship between two girls who first meet as sorcery students: the blonde and very popular Glinda and a misunderstood green girl named Elphaba. Through its For Good programme, the award-winning musical champions a range of causes born out of its themes: this includes an official partnership with Ben Cohen’s anti-bullying Stand Up Foundation, and the Wicked Young Writers’ Award, established in order to link the important messages of the long-running musical with a competition that would inspire young people to use their writing to look at life a little differently.
Cardiff-based rap artist, Mikey Holden, will be leading the workshops, helping participants to find a voice with which to express their thoughts and feelings about bullying through poetry. Participants - including home education pupils, pupils from Radyr comprehensive and Welsh medium primary school Ysgol Coed y Gof - have also been invited to read their poems on the opening night of Wicked (12 Mar) and submit their poems into the hit show’s annual Wicked Young Writers’ Award competition.
Mikey Holden, who has described his work as his ‘way to deal with depression,’ and who is committed to creating work that others can relate to and find comfort in, said: ‘It means a lot to be involved in a project like this because I feel it's what's needed, it's what I wish was available to me when I was going through similar circumstances.’
Phil Davies, WPD’s Network Services Manager for Wales, explained: “We are delighted to sponsor the poetry workshops and ‘Wicked Words’ project. Bullying can take many forms, physical, verbal, cyber and indirect such as gossiping or spreading rumors.
“We hope ‘Wicked Words’ will help to give young people the confidence, courage and strength to stand up for and/or befriend others who maybe being bullied.
“Safety is a matter we take very seriously, it’s important to us and anything that can help to promote personal safety and well-being can only be a good thing.”
Creative Learning Manager at Wales Millennium Centre, Sarah Roberts, said: “Wicked Words is all about working with people of various ages to raise awareness on the effects of bullying. The creative responses from those who’ve taken part - whether a victim of bullying themselves or responding more generally to the issue of bullying - have been inspiring and moving. It’s great that we can capture and share these words in a book following the poetry writing workshops.”
|
Wales Millennium Centre
web site: |
e-mail: |
Tuesday, March 11, 2014 |
|
|
|
|
Older news
stories have been carefully archived.
2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 | 1999
