Brave New Voices (original) (raw)

Brave New Voices was created by Youth Speaks Inc in 1998 (a non-profit organization from San Francisco promoting youth intellectual and artistic self-development) after the inaugural Youth Speaks Teen slam poetry in San Francisco – the first poetry slam dedicated to youth in the world. Since that time, Brave New Voices has grown to represent youth ages 13–19 from all across the United States and several cities and countries from around the world. BNV is the largest ongoing spoken word event in the world. Cities compose teams of their top 4-6 youth poets to bring to the festival. When the festival began only four teams participated, and the competition has since grown to more than 50 teams.