About Us Poetry and Coding Competition
The Poetry Society would like you to join them on an exciting journey through poetry, science and technology, spanning 13.8 billion years!
The Poetry Society, Stemettes and 59 Productions have launched a new poetry and coding competition for young people aged 4-18 and based in the UK. The deadline for entries is 23:59 GMT on Sunday 19 December 2021. Find out more and enter online at aboutus.earth.
The competition is part of a project called About Us, one of ten commissions for UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK. About Us is an epic new show for everyone who has ever looked up at the night sky and wondered about our connection to the vast universe. The show will tour the UK in spring 2022.
They want young people’s voices to be at the heart of the show. The winners of the competition will have the chance to see their work featured in the live show, which will be seen by tens of thousands of people, as well as win other amazing prizes, including goodies and talent development opportunities. The theme of the competition is ‘connectivity and the universe’, and they are inviting young people to reflect on the infinite ways in which we are connected to the universe, the natural world, and one another from the Big Bang to the present day.
There are two strands to the competition: young people can enter a poem, or an animation using the Scratch coding platform, or they can enter both. Poems should be no more than 20 lines long, and Scratch animations should not exceed 90 seconds. Entrants can create poems or animations about space and cosmology, cellular life, ecosystems, networks within the human body, linguistic connectivity, technology, the climate, or any other way in which life across the universe is connected. There are free poetry and coding resources for all key stages to help inspire them at aboutus.earth.
Developed in collaboration with poets and scientists across the four nations of the UK, About Us is delivered by design studio and production company 59 Productions who created the breath-taking video design for the London 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony; Stemettes, an organisation that brings young women and non-binary young people into careers in science, technology, engineering and maths; and The Poetry Society, one of the UK’s most dynamic arts organisation championing poetry for all ages.
If you have any questions about the competition, please get in touch at AboutUs@poetrysociety.org.uk.
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