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Brave New Words Celebrates First Birthday!

Brave New Words once again returned to The Stove, on Friday 30th September, for a special night celebrating the first anniversary of this monthly platform for new writing, spoken and sung. The night consisted of an extraordinary mix of performance by local poets and songwriters, featuring film, music and a specially commissioned performance from local artists Michael Sullivan and Lee McQueen.

BNW Birthday

To celebrate their first birthday, Brave New Words teamed up with blueprint100 to create a special zine for the night. Blueprint100 held various workshops throughout the month of September, in which previous participants of the open mic night submitted their original poetry and artwork to be part of the zine. The zine is currently available in The Stove Café for a small donation, with all proceeds going towards The Sindigo Foundation.

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Brave New Words zine.

Martin O’Neill, who runs Brave New Words, commented, “The past year has been incredible, we’ve seen people grow more confident with each month, heard some of the most inspiring poetry and played host to dynamic people, workshops and ideas. We were really pleased with the amount of people that came along to be a part of Brave New Words, and we would like to thank all the participants for contributing, as well as anyone who picked up a zine and donated money.”

The open mic night is part of our mission to bring vibrancy to evenings in the Town Centre. Through various performances, the event aims to challenge stigmas and stereotypes, whilst offering support to those willing to make a positive and impactful change in their home town and beyond. Over the past year, Brave New Words has held workshops with community groups, the general public and schools, in which they aim to celebrate diversity, and understand creative writing. They have also had the opportunity to host some of Scotland’s biggest names in the spoken word scene, voyaged to festivals, created multi-disciplinary installations and uncovered some incredible talent right here in the heart of Dumfries.

BNW Birthday
Jamie Court performing at Brave New Words

Brave New Words will return to The Stove on the 28th of this month for a special Halloween Spectacular open mic night.

To take part and for more information on events, please email [email protected].

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