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Showing posts from April, 2011

Youth Opportunities - Sunday April 24th, 2011

Sunday April 24, 2011 [UPDATE: It may be useful to browse these old listings as many programs are annual, but for more current contests and competitions, head to the Youth Opportunities page .] Every weekend I post about current youth opportunities that are open to submissions from Ontario residents, which includes many contests and competitions open to youth across Canada and the US. Please note I'm not attesting to the legitimacy or quality of anything listed here - read the fine print carefully and make your own judgement call, especially if a submission fee or creative rights are involved! My apologies for the delay with the youth opportunities round-up this weekend, but as it turns out it wasn't even worth the wait - I don't have anything new to add! That said, there are a lot of end-of-April deadlines listed below, so the list of previously mentioned youth opportunities might be worth a quick review... Previously Highlighted Youth Opportunities APRIL D

Script Frenzy Update

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Sunday April 17, 2011 Three weeks ago I wrote about my plans to finally participate in Script Frenzy . The challenge is to write 100 script pages in the month of April, and I was choosing to tackle it by: Finishing an in-progress stage play for kids Completing a full first draft of the new play for teens I've been researching for the past few months, and Writing another short play to make up whatever difference was left between those two projects and the 100 page goal So, it's several days past the half-way mark. If I were following the divide-the-work-up-evenly method (3.33 pages per day), by April 17th I should have around 57 pages done. I'm at page four. Now, this isn't actually as bad as it sounds. Those four pages have completed the first draft of the play for kids, and they certainly weren't all I wrote. Rather than diving headlong into new pages (as is the Script Frenzy way) I spent a lot of this month revising and refining - four pages is all I

A Night at Poetry in Voice

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Saturday April 16, 2011 This morning I found myself half-reading, half-reciting the poem " The Darkling Thrush " by Thomas Hardy to our cat Gizmo. It wasn't for his benefit (although sometimes I think Gadget could do with a little more culture), rather it was because I simply don't have enough poetry memorized. That wasn't a big problem for me - wasn't even something I vaguely considered a problem - until a dozen high school students came along and ruined everything. My happy little non-poetry-memorizing world was shattered this past Tuesday night when Steve and I took in the Poetry in Voice 2011 Recitation Finals. This was the first year for the event, which offered students from several Ontario high schools the chance to compete for thousands of dollars in prizes by memorizing and reciting poems from a select collection. This wasn't about writing poetry, it was about students exploring existing literature and connecting with it on a whole new level

A Night at Poetry in Voice: Appendix 1 - The Poems

Saturday April 16, 2011 Can you add an appendix to a blog post? Ah well, I don't care - if you can't, I'm starting a thing. Personally, I was almost as curious about what poems the students selected as I was about how they'd interpret them. And I know that if Google had been around when I was teenager and I was participating in Poetry in Voice 2012, I'd be out searching for last year's program. So, for anyone who's interested (or who's just looking for some poetry recommendations), here are the poems that were recited during the previously blogged about Poetry in Voice 2011 Recitation Finals , in order of presentation: Round One "I Am" by John Clare (recited by Amelia Druskis) "La vie" by Achille Chavée (Suzanne Alsayed) "Sonnet" by Philippe Desportes (Mélodie Cyr) "I Think I Should Have Loved You Presently" by Edna St. Vincent Millay (Lily MacLeod) "Spleen" by Charles Baudelaire (Spencer Slan

Youth Opportunities - Saturday April 16th, 2011

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Saturday April 16, 2011 [UPDATE: It may be useful to browse these old listings as many programs are annual, but for more current contests and competitions, head to the Youth Opportunities page .] Every Saturday I post about current youth opportunities that are open to submissions from Ontario residents, which includes many contests and competitions open to youth across Canada and the US. Please note I'm not attesting to the legitimacy or quality of anything listed here - read the fine print carefully and make your own judgement call, especially if a submission fee or creative rights are involved! The youth opportunity I'm most excited about this week is the Get to Know contest; since I love nature and the arts and sharing opportunities for kids & teens, as far as I'm concerned this contest has it all! Robert Bateman Get to Know Contest • Open to Canadians 19 and under • Deadline May 23rd, 2011 The annual Robert Bateman Get to Know Contest invites youn

Youth Opportunities - Special Student Vote Edition

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Saturday April 9, 2011 [UPDATE: If you're looking for more current contests and competitions, head to the Youth Opportunities page .] Okay, so there's no list of youth competitions and contests this week. This week I want to focus on one initiative I've been reading about which strikes me as one of those simple ideas that could change everything: What is Student Vote? "Student Vote is a non-profit, non-partisan organization that works with educators and education stakeholders to deliver experiential learning opportunities to help young Canadians understand and practice the responsibilities of their citizenship." - From StudentVote.ca Which translates to thousands of Canadian elementary, middle and secondary school students who are considered too young to vote still getting to cast a ballot in a mock election being held right in their school. Brilliant. Why Student Vote May Just be the Best Thing Ever Participating in a Student Vote campaign c

Youth Opportunities - Saturday April 2nd, 2011

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Saturday April 2, 2011 [UPDATE: It may be useful to browse these old listings as many programs are annual, but for more current contests and competitions, head to the Youth Opportunities page .] Every Saturday I post about current youth opportunities that are open to submissions from Ontario residents, which naturally includes a lot of contests and competitions open to youth across Canada and the US. Please note I'm not attesting to the legitimacy or quality of anything listed here - read the fine print carefully and make your own judgement call, especially if a submission fee or creative rights are involved! Bridgestone Safety Scholars Video Contest • Open to U.S. and Canadian full-time students with a driver's license, aged 16-21 (excluding Quebec) • Deadline May 13, 2011 Now open to Canadians, the annual Bridgestone Safety Scholars Video Contest is looking for short videos (25 or 55 seconds in length) that deal with some aspect of automobile safety. Judges will sel