For 30 years, Youth Speaks has nurtured platforms – from classrooms to national stages – where youth boldly “take up space” through writing workshops, open mics, school residencies, and narrative change campaigns. Our programs promote joy, healing, and belonging by uplifting stories that confront exclusion and celebrate cultural identity and expression. Each year, we support up to 10,000 youth in building narrative power, civic courage, and creative agency. Youth Speaks does more than “turn up the volume” on youth voices; we prepare and reposition the importance of those voices in public platforms, policy conversations, and community-based movement work.

Founded in 1996, Youth Speaks is a national leader in spoken word performance, arts education, and Creative Youth Development. Trailblazers of local and national youth poetry slams and festivals, Youth Speaks offers a comprehensive slate of arts education, public presentation, and youth-led cultural organizing programs that provide young people with meaningful opportunities to be heard—not only by peers, but within public discourse, civic spaces, and movement work.

Youth Speaks programs are designed as an interconnected pathway that supports young people from first expression to public leadership. Through arts education, youth-led performance spaces, and narrative change initiatives, participants build artistic skill, confidence, and the capacity to influence culture and systems.

Programs span in-school and out-of-school settings and include writing workshops, open mics, residencies, festivals, and youth-led campaigns. Together, these offerings meet young people where they are while providing a clear runway toward cultural organizing, workforce development, and civic engagement.

Youth Speaks delivers programming through two core pathways: (1) Creative Youth Development and Arts Education (CYDAIE) and (2) Narrative Change and Field Building.