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I'm Baba Israel, artistic director of Contact.
We're gonna kick this off and give a poetic response,
a bit of creative energy into the space at this time of the day.
We've sent two young artists to all the sessions
to capture information, transform it into poetry.
We're gonna start with the written and move to the improvised oral tradition.
Please welcome our first poet, Martin Stannage, aka Visceral.
- Make some noise. - (cheering and applause)
I'm not gonna use a Valentine's Day metaphor...
(laughter)
(applause)
Tell you that arts have a place in my heart
What a metaphor and we'll be together for ever more
That's cliché
But I transmit truth like pulling a pin from a transparency grenade
So if experimental isn't the opposite of accessible
And excellence isn't the opposite of participation
Then that's why young people who sweat over debt and limited funds
Have no limit to their imagination
Young artists have become their own curators
Thoughts stored electronically as raw data
Zeros and ones forming two-digit salutes
To the corporate lies concealed in suits
Most of us have no pensions, we're trying to get paid dough
But like Mike Mayhew said, artists aren't Play-Doh
Rich in culture but trying to eat hearty
Just don't invite me to the vicar's tea party
- (applause) - Give it up for Martin one time.
And our next poetic response from Saquib Chowdhury, aka LyriCalligraphy.
Inception of the idea from the word of the lyricist
To the moves busting out of the dancers killing it
Delve deep into the music and the forces fulfilling it
To allow the butterfly to emerge from the chrysalis
The villain is lurking to marginalise allocation
Preserve what's done to death and threaten imagination
Art is here for change to fight the fire with water
But most of these artists are just lambs to the slaughter
Caught up in funding cuts and bad decisions that help block it
Usually resulting in someone else making a profit
But we walk through the doors, artistic entrepreneurs
Who would rather address the populace than talk to the boards
We need to find that limbo, the expanse where the middle ground is
By pushing the funders to put their money where their mouth is
So to all those that can relate, I hope you hear me out
Because timelessness is what art is really about
Give it up for Saquib.
Now, quickly, in the few minutes that we have, where are our mic runners?
We'd like to now respond immediately in the tradition of freestyle.
This is about a call to action.
What are the words we want to take away with us today?
If you've got one word we need in terms of a call to action,
please raise a hand and give us one word.
We're looking for some words, please. There's a hand here.
Give us one word.
- (man) Humanity. - Humanity. Keep going.
- (woman) With. - Say it again.
- Humanity. Next word, please. - (woman) With. W-i-t-h.
With. With. OK. Humanity, with.
- Three more words. Yes? - (woman) Data.
- Data. - (man) Pressure.
- Pressure, data, with, humanity. - (man) Trust.
- (woman) Hope. - Trust, hope.
Action, freedom. Here we go. We'll work with it.
(beatboxing)
# I travelled in the place moving up like an escalator
# Do I have open source to my data?
# It's like that, when I art I really do thirsty
# I'm in the place getting it down like Kirsty
# When I got the mic I come clean like soap
# This freestyle will come off, or that's what I hope
# Yo, you know me, I'm a vegetarian
# I care about humanity so I'm a humanitarian
# Fly, reverse gravity
# That's why I got human humanity
# It comes straight out my head to my toes
# That's why the freestyle flow I be letting it go
# It's moving in the place, wind like a gust
# In order to have communication we got to build trust
# Trust between artists and communities
# And the funders in the place and the local authorities
# I hear you so I take my exhalation
# It's also about, yo, the inspiration
# State of the Arts so I'll state my intention
# Big up Jonzi D cos we're breakin' convention
# Yo, I spit this, I'm making a start
# Yo, I spit art crazy and dark
# But if I make a statement about the State of the Arts
# I get my rhyme state of the art
# Now when I say "call to" then you say "action"
- # Call to - Action!
- # Call to - Action!
# When we say "call to" then you say "action"
- # Call to - Action!
- # Call to - Action!
(beatboxing)
(cheering and applause)
- Thank you very much. - I hope we've injected some energy.
Thank you.
Captions by internetsubtitling.com