Helping People To Speak Up

Details of an initiative I'm part of to help people confidently perform their writing.

I should be telling you about my feverish preparations for my Wexford show, because it's in a mere seven days. But I'll come back to it next week.

The reality is, I need to think about my life in a post-People Wipe Me world, and a lovely new initiative has popped up which will help me deal with the withdrawal symptoms.

The Speak Up Initiative

The initiative is called Speak Up and it aims to give people the confidence to perform their writing. Deborah Somers, a writer and spoken word artist also based in Waterford, has come up with the idea and asked me to become involved.

Speak Up gives beginning writers a safe space to perform their writing and develop their confidence and skills.

They'll learn how to perform their writing at workshops and then they'll have a chance to perform their writing at the Speak Up open mic events.

I'm giving the first Speak Up workshop on Saturday 4 February at the Coastguard Cultural Centre in Tramore. This women-only workshop will take people from zero to spoken word hero.

You'll write a piece, polish it up and then perform it, all in one day. The poster will give you more info about the workshop.

Photo Description: Here's the poster for our Speak Up workshop, on a background of red curtains. Details of the workshop are written on it and if you have difficulty reading them you can send me an email for clarification.

We then plan to run an open mic event shortly after that workshop where people can practice their skills. We'll run workshops and open mics throughout the year, and people are welcome to come along to the open mics without going to the workshops.

What Speak Up Will Bring

We're hoping that Speak Up will add loads of new voices to the spoken word scene, people who would never have dreamed of performing their work before.

I love the idea that these people will experience the joy and excitement of performing my writing, a joy I've experienced in performing People Wipe Me.

Which brings me neatly back to the People Wipe Me shows. You can buy tickets for the aforementioned Wexford show here and you can also book for the Thurles show, which is a mere three weeks away.