Get ready for Youth Week
The Up Lift Tour will be taking off in the Waikato for National Youth Week 2014 with national champion of spoken word poetry, Te Kahu Rolleston, one the speakers for the event.
A national spoken word champion will bring his poetry to a week celebrating New Zealand youth.
National Youth week starts on Saturday 17 May. As part of the week, Te Ahurei A Rangatahi presents its Up Lift Tour, 19-23 May.
Photo Credit: Harmz De Thierry
Supplied by: Paora Sweeney
Up Lift Tour is all about promoting positive health messages, sharing knowledge of healthy lifestyles and encouraging freedom of expression to rangatahi (youth) through an empowering and inspiring live showcase of spoken word poetry.
Te Kahu Rolleston, a Waikato University student, is New Zealand’s national champion of spoken word poetry and will be one of the speakers on the tour.
“I’m expecting it to be a mean week and will up lift the rangatahi.”
“I will be there on the Sunday and then the rest of the following week. It’s going to be choice. We are doing community events and school events,” said Rolleston.
Rolleston is finishing off his honours in Media and Communication.
“Through my work and other avenues I’m actually creating different spoken word poems that can be used through-out schools or through other things. [It] makes it easier for the students to be able to learn that knowledge,” said Rolleston.
Rolleston enjoys writing about environmental issues, cultural issues and political issues.
“I write about anything, but those are the three main things,” said Rolleston.
Paora Sweeney will be hosting three of the events being held this week during National Youth Week. The first is The Just Because event which will be held at the Meteor from 3pm Sunday 18 May, and which kickstarts the programme for National Youth Week.
“Next week there are so many events happening that it’s going to be cool to see all the young people enjoying themselves,” Sweeney said.
“My thoughts right now are that I am looking forward to the change that we can make over that one week with our young people with all our events happening.
“I really want to see these kids, have their eyes open up to different things and to celebrate our young people, celebrate their talents and their skills.
“I’m just honoured to have been asked to be a part of it.”
The Up Lift Tour will be held in 10 locations – five community venues and five schools through-out the Waikato. It includes one MC/DJ, three Poets and three educators and a live poetry showcase and workshops.
