Projects
Sky Arts Awards
Sky Arts has announced that the inaugural Sky Arts Awards will be taking place on 17th September at The Roundhouse. Apples and Snakes were asked to sit on the judging panel for the poetry category. Our Artistic Director, Lisa Mead was on a panel of poets including Lemn Sissay, Asif Khan, Nikita Gill, Laura Hackett,…
UnderOne Festival
Apples and Snakes recently supported UnderOne Festival. Our task was to inspire creativity and enhance people’s well-being during the event.
Word’s A Stage 2024
Learn about this year’s cohort for Word’s a Stage 2024. Produced by Apples and Snakes, in partnership with Arvon.
Red Room Poetry
Poetry can be a powerful medium for truth telling, personal expression, and social journeys – and a potent tool to eliminate bias and flip what we think we know on its head. In this workshop for young poets (14-18), join Young Poet Laureate for Coventry Aamani Kanda (UK) and Australian Poetry Slam Co-Champion KJ Haywood…
Artists Survey 2024
Apples and Snakes is committed to presenting year-round accessible public programming. We regularly engage with our artists and audiences to help shape Apple and Snakes’ future programming
Synergy Slam Poets
Synergy Slam is an online and in-person poetry, performance and film competition.
Work From Home
Work From Home helps us to continue to support our Alumni after previous Apples and Snakes’ projects have come to an end.
On Our Own Terms
Spoken word poet Leah Thorn and photographer Anita McKenzie celebrate International Women’s Day with ‘On Our Own Terms’. An in-person workshop of poetry-writing and portrait photography for women in their 60s and 70s,
On The Side
Six early career poets spent six days creating poetry in response to street art at the On the Side exhibition in Waterloo.
All Borders Blur
Drawing from Apple and Snake’s extensive spoken word archive All Borders Blur investigates the contemporary traditions of UK spoken word.
England Calling
Inspired by the stories of the Windrush Generation poet Kat Francois creates four films celebrating their life and work.
Future Voices
project overview To celebrate Apples and Snakes’ 40th anniversary, we launched Future Voices – a project that seeks to nurture and grow emerging talent from across England. We invited leading spoken word artists and filmmakers to run an intensive masterclass programme for the 40 emerging poets online. The aim of the programme war for participants…
WORDCUP2023
WORDCUP 2023: Our national showcase of young poets WORDCUP 2023 brought together teams of young people from across the country with the aim of creating a community of young poets and a platform for their voices to be heard. Following poetry and performance workshops delivered in six regional hubs by leading UK poets, the young…
Diversifying Children’s Literature
Joseph Coelho X Apples and Snakes x Otter Barry books We believe representation matters and that’s why we are working with Joseph Coelho, Waterstones Children’s Laureate, and Otter-Barry Books on a project which aims to help diversify children’s literature by developing voices traditionally underrepresented in children’s literature. Funded by Arts Council England, the project includes…
Content Cottage with Keats-Shelley Memorial Trust
In 2022, three organisations came together to explore traditional poetry in the context of modern life, set in the English countryside. Content Cottage is a digital literature project on Romantic Poetry, from the UK’s leading spoken word organisation, Apples and Snakes, in partnership with the Keats- Shelley Memorial Association and First Story. The outcome of…
Kindness Competition 2023
Kindness Poetry Competition 2023 Winners – congratulations Congratulations to Pravan Kubavat, Kyan Norris and Mattie Stone! Read their poems below. We had hundreds of entries from across the country and it was a great pleasure to read them all. Thank you to everyone that entered and everyone that made this competition possible. Pravan Kubavat My…
Telling Tales
Telling Tales is a free six-week creative programme for 7-11 year olds. Participants get to work with an experienced writer to create stories and poems! At the end of the six weeks the young people present a sharing for family and friends and are certified with a Discover Arts Award. They are provided with a…
Jerwood Arts | Apples and Snakes Poetry in Performance Programme
Jerwood Arts | Apples and Snakes Poetry in Performance programme is a unique opportunity for five/six spoken word poets from across the country to explore the performative potential of their practice. Running twice from 2020 – 2022, each iteration of the programme will culminate in two national showcases and a commission for one of the…
Behind The Words
“Poetry is like water, it takes on the vessel it’s in” Joelle Taylor (BBC Radio 4: Front Row – 11 Jan 22) Apples and Snakes celebrate turning 40 in 2022, and with any significant anniversary comes a time of reflection. We have thought long and hard about how we came together, what we’ve achieved and…
Cece’s Speakeasy: Call and Response
Apples and Snakes invited emerging artists from across England to produce acts of creative resistance against climate and environmental injustice in response to Cece’s Speakeasy. The resulting films were released in the lead up to Cop26, the UN’s climate conference heading to Glasgow from 31 October to 12 November 2021. We invite truth-seekers, chocolate lovers…
Poetry Off the Page
“Poetry Off the Page” is a five-year project directed by Dr. Julia Lajta-Novak from the University of Vienna and supported by an ERC Consolidator Grant and the START-Prize of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). Open Submission Following the two-day academic conference, ‘All Borders Blur: Mapping Intersections and Genre-Crossings in UK Spoken-Word Poetries since 1965’ at…
Plot 17
A hip-hop garden block party for audiences aged 7+ Four pieces of wood Eight nails And a hammer Some compost A hand full of seeds And some water A playlist and some speakers all you need to get you started then by the time that you finished you’ll know How To Make A Garden Join…
Spine Festival Lite 2024
Spine 2024 Our flagship SPINE Festival is an annual pan-London spoken word and arts festival for children and families and was delivered in libraries across 16 boroughs during Spring. 2024 was a ‘lite’ edition which ran from 21 March – 21 April and explored the theme of MAGIC & IMAGINATION. SPINE Festival Lite featured the launch of our SPIN! anthology…
The Gatherings
Apples and Snakes, in partnership with Create to Transform Dialogue Spaces, are hosting a series of empowering, no-nonsense conversations as part of our commitment to evolve the poetry in performance and spoken word scene. Our series of fortnightly online Gatherings will shine a spotlight on some of the most pressing issues in the UK poetry…
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