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From the Page

to Performance

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Working with people of all ages and abilities, Page to Performance is an educational arts organisation and collective of creative poetry, rap, DJ and dance practitioners. The movement embraces writing and performance workshops, live performances, poetry slam demonstrations and recording workshops for schools, youth clubs and community groups. Cybazine talks to Lead Poet Hollie McNish to find out a little more...

Photography: Fern Bond

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What is the Page to Performance project aiming to do? Page to Performance aims to bring words to life and to raise the confidence and achievements of young people through the arts.

Why do you think poetry should be performed as well as written? Historically that was how it was intended. Much poetry was written before the general public was able to read and was often recited and passed on orally through generations; nursery rhymes being a prime example. I think that was how poetry, and stories for that matter, were intended: as something to share and to take part in communally.

That said, I don’t think all modern poetry is to be read aloud. Some is written specifically for the page, with the layout and look of the words being part of the art. But I think the majority is about speech, how it is spoken and heard and I think it’s a shame we don’t honour that part of writing and poetry. 

You have worked with a range of artists from dance and music. How does this help your project? It helps with the aim of bringing the words to life and makes it more appealing to a much wider range of people. I’d love to include a wider range of music artists too in the future, but I do think rap is a good first cross between words and music, probably the closest of all musical genres.

How has Shape East helped the aim of Page to Performance? They hired us to carry out workshops and host the event as part of a Heritage Lottery funded project they were working on. They are an architect centre who teach young people how to build better places so I think it just goes to show how many ways people can use poetry to teach about so many different subjects! Basically, they’ve hired and paid us so we can work!

Plans for the near future? We have a new project with musicians in the mix which I have to keep a little hush, but I’m very excited about it. Apart from that we’re busy running workshops with poetry and rap in schools and theatres all over the place and getting a little rest before the busy summer festival season starts up again.