Word On The Street is our outreach literature programme based in Hull, run in partnership with Freedom Festival and supported by funding from the Arts Council.
In 2016 we ran an audience development project for Freedom Festival in Hull for spoken word, ahead of them designating a full spoken word stage for the first time at Freedom Festival itself, held from 1-4 September 2016.
We ran three large-scale spoken word events in venues across the city – Kardomah Bar, The New Adelphi and Fruit Space – from June to August. We held free workshops ahead of each event for any local poets to attend, who were then all invited to perform at the evening events and at the festival itself. Each event was in collaboration with a pre-existing live literature night in the city to help form new partnerships.
These partners included Wrecking Ball Press, A Car Load Of Poets, Women of Words, Away with Words and Pub Corner Poets. We also brought nationally-renowned poets to Hull, notably Kate Fox, Zena Edwards and Helen Mort.
In 2017, we ran a similar literature outreach programme, this time working in collaboration with both Freedom Festival and Hull 2017 City of Culture as part of their Back To Ours Strand.
We ran events in venues such as The William Gemmell Club, North Point Shopping Centre and The Freedom Centre with artists such as Vanessa Kissule, Thick Richard, Gav Roberts, Russ Litten, Dean Wilson, Matt Nicholson, Vicky Foster, Julie Corbert and Rob Eunson.
We ran the Speak Out Tent for the second year running featuring nationally known headliners such as Zena Edwards, Hollie McNish, Scott Tyrrell, Gevi Carver and many more.