Last Tuesday the Cheltenham Educational Partnership's Young Poets project for this year reached its climax with the 'Slam' event, which this year was again hosted by CLC at the Parabola Arts Centre. And although this was the first time that Balcarras had taken part in this challenge, it proved to be a really enjoyable - and exciting - evening. 

The CEP is a joint venture between the state and independent schools in Cheltenham, and other organisations such as the Council and University, and was established with the specific aim of offering opportunities to our students that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to access, and in that respect the 'Slam' event (a quick-fire, very dynamic poetry competition) was a great showcase for what the CEP can offer. The students have been involved in a number of workshops since September, hosted by a number of schools and involving a couple of local poets (both previous 'Slam' winners themselves), which have all been geared towards the students developing their finished pieces.

Although only in its second year, the poetry event is already extremely popular with ten schools participating this time around, although that does mean that each school has to whittle the numbers down to a maximum of five poets and this year we had a couple of Year 7 students, Tilly Danaher and Isaac Hellier, and a couple of Year 9's, Amy Pallister and Ed Wheeler, representing Balcarras and being brave enough to perform in front of the audience in what is an amazing - but also potentially quite intimidating - auditorium!

It is left up to the participating schools to decide which age of students to send and many, noticeably the independent schools, opted to send Sixth Formers. However, the English department instead opted to promote the event to years 7 to 9, and it was great to see how this really benefited, and influenced, the whole project this year in terms of the dynamics, both during the workshops and at the 'Slam' itself. And most exciting of all, despite the expectations not being that great this year (we had very much seen this year as all about gaining experience!), that didn't stop Ed Wheeler from walking away with the overall third prize for his amazing poem all about his obsession with ice cream - which, as he pointed out during the performance, was also shared by William Shakespeare!

Unsurprisingly, we hope to be back next year.

Mr Johnson

CEP link teacher