EVENTS

On Saturday the 14th of March, ZAPP will once again host ZAPPFest, our annual regional youth poetry event, welcoming learners and their teachers from schools across Gauteng. The event will take place at the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre and the Inside/Out Centre for the Arts in Forest Town, Johannesburg. Participants will spend the day engaging in creative writing workshops and guided tours of both centres, exploring themes of empathy, memory, social responsibility, and the power of language. Drawing inspiration from these spaces and the histories they preserve, learners will craft original poems responding to the world around them. The day will culminate in a live poetry showcase, where learners and educators will perform their work before an audience and a panel of guest judges. From these performances, a number of outstanding young poets will be selected and recognised for their creativity, voice, and engagement with the themes of the day. ZAPPFest aims to foster a spirit of creative expression, critical reflection, and dialogue among young writers, offering a space where poetry becomes a tool for understanding both history and the present moment.

On Saturday the 15th of March 2025, ZAPP held it’s first ever regional event, ZAPP Fest, in which we invited roughly 40 learners, aged thirteen to seventeen, and their teachers, from schools across Gauteng to join us at the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre and Inside/Out Centre for the Arts in lovely forest Town, Johannesburg, for a heady day of inspiration and mad poetic creativity. The event was crowned with a two hour block of performances by learners and educators, alike, inspired by their surroundings and the messages of empathy, social and environmental responsibility they embodied. The performances were judged by an esteemed panel of practicing poets and the twelve best poets from among the learners went on to collaborate remotely with American learners in ZAPP’s first-ever international workshop, in collaboration with the Poetry NonScenes initiative and the American organisation, Youth Speaks!

Poetry Nonscenes April 2024 was a milestone month for ZAPP, as it held its first and second ever multi-school/multi participant events, at the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre and the University of Pretoria, respectively. The events were hosted in collaboration with Tom Penfold from the University of London whose current project “Poetry Nonscenes” aims to promote up and coming South African poets and celebrate the vital contribution poetry can make to education. Apart from school learners who came from a range of different backgrounds, the Johannesburg workshop also included participants from universities, as well as professional poets. We were extremely fortunate to have Mandi Vundla, the undefeated Word and Sound slam champion, as our lead facilitator. The day began with a tour of the Centre’s permanent exhibition. Using poetry, we then engaged the participants in a discussion that touched on the range of complex issues that the exhibit raises. This was followed by a poetry writing workshop where participants had the opportunity to craft their poetry by interacting with the visual and language related aspects of the exhibition. The day concluded with a dynamic showcase where the participants had the opportunity to share their poetry with the general public. ZAPP’s […]