English PEN is delighted to announce a very special collaboration between our Brave New Voices project and the BBC Proms.

On Sunday 29 July 2018, a group of participants in our Brave New Voices outreach project, all pupils at the Capital City Academy in Willesden, will perform a special piece of poetry as part of the Ten Pieces Prom.

The poem was written by young participants from refugee backgrounds, in collaboration with writer and Brave New Voices co-ordinator Rosemary Harris and translator Alice Guthrie, in partnership with Salusbury World.

The Ten Pieces Prom will be performed at 1pm (Prom 19) and 5pm (Prom 20) on 29 July 2018. If you are in London that weekend, why not attend one of the performance and show your support for these brave new voices? The performances will also be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3.

English PEN’s outreach programme is a crucial pillar of our work to promote literary diversity and give meaning to the opening lines of the PEN Charter that ‘Literature knows no frontiers’. Brave New Voices introduces established poets to young people with a migrant or refugee background living in the UK. Participants are encouraged to create new work that reflects their aspirations and experiences.

We are thrilled to have been invited by the BBC to showcase the work of our Brave New Voices project, and to collaborate with Capital City Academy, and Salusbury Worldin creating this new, culturally significant work. We are also extremely grateful to the John Lyon’s Charity and the Limbourne Trust for funding the Brave New Voices project.