Name: Spoken Word Workshop: In Your Voice by JAAWORD
Start: 2025-12-12T19:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-12-12T22:00:00-05:00
Location: The Origin Arts & Community Centre

Spoken Word Workshop: In Your Voice by JAAWORD

REGISTRATION HERE: https://forms.gle/ciFRmFWgQQ5Ukw1Q9
Join Urban Legends Poetry Collective for another edition of Truth to Power, a writing and performance workshop series on wellness through the lens of community, solidarity, advocacy, and activism.
This month’s workshop will be led by JAAWORD: In Your Voice
In Your Voice is a workshop designed to awaken authenticity and strengthen poetic presence. Rooted in the themes of wellness, community, and advocacy, this workshop welcomes writers and performers of all levels. Participants are encouraged to bring unfinished or previous works to develop, while also engaging with fresh writing prompts that stir creativity and deepen connection to voice.

😷 FACE MASKS REQUIRED
📅 Fri, Dec. 12
📍 Origin Arts & Community Centre
⏰ 7:00 - 10:00PM
💵 Tickets at the door, PWYD (suggested donation: $12)
Accessibility: Step-free access. Accessible and inclusive washrooms. Alcohol-free space. Face masks required and available as needed. Pay-What-You-Decide tickets.
Truth to Power explores how creative expression and spoken word poetry can be channeled as a means of enacting change, fostering dialogue, and disrupting systems of power and oppression. Each workshop creates a brave space where writers and performers can examine the intersections between wellness and collective liberation.
Whether you’re an activist seeking to integrate wellness into your advocacy work, a writer or artist interested in the political dimensions of personal narrative, or someone just beginning to explore how your personal experiences connect to broader systems and social realities, Truth to Power invites you to discover how your voice can be an instrument of both personal healing and social transformation.
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Jamaal Amir Akbari or JAAWORD is an award winning poet, songwriter, recording, screen and performance artist, arts educator and creative entrepreneur. He is Ottawa’s 2017-2019 Poet Laureate Emeritus, and his career in arts education earned him 2016's Ontario Arts Educator Award.
He has brought his work to audiences nationally and abroad, and served as Carleton University’s Artist in Residence for the 2019-2020 school year. He also founded the Origin Arts & Community Centre in 2015, a performance arts hub on the edge of Ottawa’s Hintonburg neighbourhood that provides an event space for performing artists to share their passion.
His topics range from emotional maturity to black heritage, from parenting to the human condition. He resides in rural Marathon Village, ON, with his wife and 8 children, using the national capital region as his launch pad to teach, mentor and advocate for the arts.
Social Media:
FB: Jamaal Amir Akbari
IG: @jamaalamirakbari
IG: @justjamaalthepoet