The Next Generation Speaks for Itself

Model and Strategy

Youth Speaks is a leading presenter of storytelling, poetry, spoken word performance, and civic and cultural campaigns that amplify the narrative power of young people. At Youth Speaks, youth develop their unique voices; experience personal, artistic, and professional growth; find inclusion and belonging; and use their voices to influence public discourse, shift cultural narratives, and change public policy around the issues that are most urgent to them.

In the Bay Area, where Youth Speaks was founded and is headquartered, the organization offers in-classroom and after-school writing and performance workshops, offers apprenticeship and professional development support, and hosts public spoken-word events including Under 21 Open Mics, and Teen Poetry Slams. Nationally, it is best known for its annual youth poetry slam, Brave New Voices, which convenes 500+ young poets and leading artists in a different U.S. city each year for four days of arts education, performance, and civic engagement. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Youth Speaks launched digital slams and a digital Brave New Voices, creating a liberated virtual space for young people around the world to participate.

“We help young people discover their voices in a way that’s authentic so that they can apply them in powerful ways and bring youth culture and literacies into whatever spaces they’re in.” — Michelle “Mush” Lee, Executive Director

Over the past 15 years, the young poets of Youth Speaks have partnered with foundations, public health organizations like the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, media outlets like the Center for Investigative Reporting, and advocacy organizations to address social and health issues including affordable housing, climate justice, police brutality, the school to prison pipeline, and most recently, COVID vaccine hesitancy and the impact of the pandemic on communities of color.

From its first poetry slam in 1997, Youth Speaks has been a trailblazer and leader of a global youth voice movement. Even as the individual’s self-expression and personal transformation remain central to its mission, Youth Speaks enters its second quarter-century with two key strategic goals: to innovate its 25-year old program model with strategies that support young artists to engage powerfully and effectively in civic life; and to grow staff and strengthen internal systems to support the demands of its new vision.

Impact

The Bigger Picture – Youth Speaks’ collaboration with UCSF’s Center for Vulnerable Populations to tackle health disparities in communities of color and working class communities – expanded its focus to include Type 2 Diabetes in 2020. Since then, they’re reached 10,000+ California students and 1 million views of their 25 powerful short films on the Type 2 Diabetes epidemic. Three county health departments have adopted the program, which has been recognized by the World Health Organization and the Journal for Health Communications.

Invested $3 million in a dynamic body of 16 youth arts organizations across the country, to build new leaders in the field of youth-driven narrative.

Co-launched inaugural National Youth Poet Laureate program with Urban Word NYC and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

After a three-year pandemic hiatus, reinstituted Life is Living, a community-powered and community-run festival in West Oakland's Lil Bobby Hutton Park that attracted 40+ local organizations and artists and 3,000+ attendees in 2022.

Wallace Foundation named Youth Speaks as one of eight exemplary arts education groups in the U.S. and the Ford Foundation recognized Brave New Voices as representing Arts in America for the 21st Century

Youth Speaks