Massachusetts Literary Education and Performance Collective, Boston, MA
This summer, I have been given the opportunity to work with the Massachusetts Literary Education and Performance Collective (MassLEAP), a non-profit organization with a mission for social justice through artistic expression and craft. MassLEAP is a collection of mainly Boston based writers, educators, teaching artists, poets, and organizers who work to center youth voice. Created in 2011, MassLEAP is dedicated to creating and supporting spaces and platforms for youth, specifically through spoken word and performance poetry. Since 2012, MassLEAP has run a statewide youth poetry festival, “Louder Than a Bomb,” which was inherited from the Chicago tradition. They lead workshops for educators and local artists, create spaces for youth to perform and organize, and have yearlong programs specifically for youth, including the Massachusetts Youth Spoken Word Leaders Program, in which young people not only learn more about the craft, but learn how to lead workshops and host open mics. Much of my work this summer has involved assisting MassLEAP in completely rebranding their organization, revitalizing their programs, and reconstructing their youth poetry festival.
My experience with MassLEAP has been grounding, allowing me to feel a sense of belonging within their organization. During the first few weeks of my internship, MassLEAP was completely under re-construction. This was the first year that they had not run their annual statewide poetry festival, and, as Alex Charalambides, my supervisor and MassLEAP’s managing director, would eventually explain to me, they wanted to completely revise both the festival and the organization itself. As a result, my responsibilities included anything and everything. I attended grant meetings, researched grant opportunities, and co-wrote grant applications. I quickly learned that most of the work we were doing was being done in hopes that the city would decide to fund MassLEAP amongst thousands of other organizations whose work is just as valuable. This resonated with me, as I realized non-profit organizations whose work is largely community based are consistently underfunded and lack the resources for major projects. While the work was scattered and a bit frustrating, it was a great learning opportunity to see how non-profit organizations function in an increasingly gentrifying city, and how they balance their mission of social justice and youth voice with also meeting grant requirements in order to continue receiving funding.
As the summer progressed, my responsibilities began to expand. I was able to attend the last Youth Spoken Word Leaders Open Mic, and even had the opportunity to perform. Being in these spaces was one of my favorite parts of working with MassLEAP. It was incredible to see the ways poetry brought people together, as well as to see the many ways spoken word can be performed. I learned that poetry has so many different forms, has so many different tones, so many different voices. These moments inspired me to take risks with my writing that I otherwise wouldn’t, to pay attention to the different ways you can play around with a poem. They were the best parts of my internship, allowing me to grow personally and reflect on my own writing.
Most days, my work revolved around maintaining the organization’s social media presence as well as assisting on an ongoing alumni outreach project, which involved contacting Louder Than a Bomb alumni through various social media platforms. I spent countless hours sending surveys and going through the database for people to contact. On other days, I had the opportunity of attending conferences, teaching and leading workshops in middle schools, and performing poems alongside other Louder Than a Bomb alumni. The most memorable experience was attending a professional development conference at Canton High School. Not only was I able to attend a workshop alongside educators, but I was able to perform for the first time in a space that was neither an open mic nor a competition. That was one of the first experiences I’ve had performing where I felt my poems took on an entirely different meaning—where they spoke directly to larger conversations on culture and ethnicity. During this conference, I was able to speak with educators who were truly invested in their students, and who were looking to young people to have an open conversation on how to teach better, on how to hold themselves accountable. I recognized the value of teaching artists, the value of the work that MassLEAP does, and the potential it has to completely revitalize education, as well as the ways that educators and students understand themselves and one another.
Over the course of the summer, as I began to assist MassLEAP in revitalizing their statewide youth poetry festival, which involved creating fliers for community forums and marketing all of their events on social media, I started to feel at home. The community that MassLEAP supports, which, in turn, supports them, is full of artists, students, aspiring musicians, rappers, poets, writers, and teaching artists who have found a sense of belonging in spoken word. They’ve found a way to celebrate themselves, their cultures, their native languages, their neighborhoods, their home countries, their clothes, their fashion, through spoken word, and have found a home in MassLEAP. For the past ten weeks, I have been able to find a home in MassLEAP as well, and I am so grateful to have been able to work alongside all of the artists, educators, poets, and organizers who are involved with this organization. Working with MassLEAP has taught me so much about both myself and my community, and has instilled in me so much pride for the many places that I come from. I am thankful to say that I saw the very beginnings of a Massachusetts based youth poetry festival, and that I was able to be a part of it in even the smallest ways. I plan to continue this tradition at Williams, as well as further consider the ways in which spoken word, literature, and performance can be used to create spaces and platforms. My work with MassLEAP, in many ways, felt like coming home, and has inspired me to pursue this work further, and I am so grateful to the organization, the ’68 Center for Career Exploration, and the Kraft Family for providing me with this opportunity.