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Bay Area Creative programs, projects and staff adhere to an understanding of equity where systemic racism, cultural bias, colonialism and predatory capitalism have impacted BIPOC and low income communities by limiting and providing barriers to access of individual and cultural support in the form of: education, occupational advancement, mental health and political representation. We believe that systemic racism is motivated by cultural erasure where those who do not identify and align with white supremacy are taught to deny their culture and adopt the dominant culture.

Bay Area Creative commits to responding to these issues by providing a platform and tools for BIPOC and low income communities to announce individual and cultural strengths, to be heard within in public dialog, to celebrate their strengths and to affirm the challenges of living in colonial culture. 85% of those we serve hail from BIPOC and low income communities, 100% of our partnerships are with organizations that share this mission. Our board of directors is composed of 50% BIPOC individuals hailing from underserved communities. All but two of our staff hail from these same communities and two of our past students from these communities currently sit on our board of directors. We believe that in order to respond to systemic racism, the effects of colonialism and white supremacy we need a staff who hails from communities affected by these issues. All of our programs and projects serving these communities are offered at no cost to participants. Our outreach and development of new projects and programs are focused on serving this population.

Hey Creative Fam


We are launching our second Screen Slam Poetry Film Competition

This creative “stage” combines poetry and video skills.

How to enter:

Record, edit (optional), and post yourself saying an original poem on YouTube. Send in the link at BayAreaCreative.org or by email to sparcpoetry@gmail.com subject: Screen Slam

Prizes are awarded for entrees voted “best” filmed video, "best" written poem, and "most impacting" content.

If you have no experience editing videos, we still encourage you to submit a simple video of you saying your poem. This is still a poetry slam. YOUR WORDS ARE POWERFUL.

Ages: 4th - 12th grade (prizes awarded in different age groups)

Submissions Open Now - Jan 8th at 11:59pm

Submission view party and awards will be announced Thursday Dec 17th 6pm-7pm

Guidelines: Videos should be filmed in landscape orientation, and will be performed/shown to all ages audiences.

Length: Anywhere from 45 seconds to 3 min. No copyright protected music can be used (but if you find copyright free music that is fine!

Here are two of last spring’s winners!





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Mike Taylor

Director of SPARC Poetry

408 931 1042

What about this society would you like to change? What about our collective past is not paid enough attention to?  What parts of our country's foundation do you think more people should be aware of? If you are interested in answering these questions while working with a local professional spoken word poet and a group of students of all ages - then The Foundations Project is for you!  Spanning from Aug to Dec we will be leading weekly remote writing workshops where participants look into parts of our shared past that need more attention and write poems about what our society would look like if we were all more aware of these important stories. We then will connect participants to activist projects in the Bay Area that are working towards causes written about in poems in order to get the writing out into the world and connect each other to important work for causes we believe in. The project begins with the Foundations Slam, and culminates with the Battle of the Ages poetry slam held in December.


Foundations Project Workshops

Workshop Times: Thursday 4:15pm - 5:30pm


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