SLAMinutes does 2020 and 2021 in One
VAULT Festival – Crescent
30th January 2022
Once upon a time SLAMinutes would bring in the new year with a bumper edition. Billed as ‘What a year! I mean, really, what happened? Why? How? And what didn’t happen, that should have?’ Now, they are rolling 2 years into 1 and that bill doesn’t quite seem to cut it. Plus – do we really want to talk about it?
So this time – SLAM are looking for 30 Performers: playwrights, spoken word artists, comedians, drag artists, singer-songwriters, performance artists each to submit a ONE MINUTE piece on their good news, stories of the freedom and heroes found in 2020 and 2021.
To be performed in the Crescent at Vault Festival, 30th January. This is an unpaid opportunity, proceeds will be donated to Mind.
Deadline: 5pm, Monday 20th December 2021
SLAMinutes does Kisschase (but it won’t do that): Valentine’s Special
6th February: VAULT Festival
SLAM are looking for 30 Performers: playwrights, spoken word artists, comedians, drag artists, singer-songwriters, performance artists (you name it) to submit a ONE MINUTE piece on their greatest romances, heartbreaks, hook-ups, anger, App fails, App successes. Whatever love means or does not mean to them.
Ah February – the time of year when our hearts can be engorged with helium as can restaurant prices. The world around us is festooned with scarlet and baby pink. Fake, foil coated love in all its forms – but what’s wrong with that?
What’s love got to do with it anyway? What even is it: butterflies and blue skies or pure pain? Endorphins or monophobia? It’s BIG business. Some people want to actually own it.
It’s BIG money. How many apps are there now? It’s fickle and shallow (sometimes) in gran’s day she’d court and marry in the time it takes us to ‘research’(/stalk) an online potential before we meet. And that’s after an inbox is lampooned by all-manner of misogynistic and out-right weird requests. Some people say that Tinder, Grindr, Finder, Make-me-a-mate – is just for hook-ups anyway. And what? Seems like a lot of admin to me.
Sex is the biggest industry of all. Some of it’s exploitation, some of it’s social or domestic isolation: desperate situations, some of it is vanity. But not all.
So what is love, anyway? It is genderless – it is no one else’s business – it is strong – it is sex – it is mutual – it is vital – it is different – it is many – it is the one. What’s it to you?
To be performed in the Crescent at Vault Festival, 6th February. This is an unpaid opportunity, proceeds will be donated to Mind.
Deadline: 7th January 2022
SLAMinutes does Mental Health (Pandemic Edition)
And this time we’re NOT staying home
27th February VAULT Festival
It’s been scary. Everything built from our simplest of routines to the cornerstones of our stability was thrown into a mass wobble. Isolation and loneliness are intertwined, and major change has shaken up all of our heads. As we peer through the cracks of what happens next – the thought of stepping a toe back out into the world can feel as uncertain. We will come out the other side, though, changed and stronger. The fact is, we are all in this together, but without physically being together it’s hard to find the comfort in that. So – let’s be heard, let’s be understood – shouting from the rooftops about how this feels individually to find connection in how it feels collectively.
SLAMinutes does Mental Health (Pandemic Edition) is a mission to show that no one is alone – the best way we know how: as creatively as possible and in one minute.
They are looking for ONE MINUTE submissions from every discipline – playwrights, spoken word artists, comedians, singer-songwriters, drag artists, performance artists, poets: you name it.
To be performed in the Crescent at Vault Festival, 27th February. This is an unpaid opportunity, proceeds will be donated to Mind.
Deadline: 24th January 2022, 5pm.
SLAMinutes Goes Mental
VAULT Festival
13th March
We’re bored out of our minds of mental health being spoken of as statistics instead of people, or not being talked about at all. Is it understood? No wait … are we understood?
Understood by our Mum; our mates; the next therapist; next therapist; next therapist; are we understood by our boyfriends, girlfriends, Dad’s second cousin’s cat? Are we understood by the bloody NHS – because we damn well need to be – do we even understand our own, ourselves?
What’s making it worse? Society? Cuts? Pressures? The things we go through? The real question is …
What, in the name of all that is holy, can we do about it?
We can talk about it! We can share our experience of it and in that we can bloody well show that none of us are on our own in it.
Mental health belongs to everyone, every human being, everywhere. And it sure as hell doesn’t discriminate. But we, the writers, the performers, the creatives, have the loudest voice, we have the stages and we can talk about it, as loudly as we possibly can. We can reach the us that spent days under a duvet, the us that couldn’t make the thoughts stop and the us that just couldn’t face it. Because we’re loud; we’re entertaining and there’s definitely enough of us.
SLAM are looking for 30 writers, artists and performers to submit one minute each on Mental Health. A chance to blast away the stigma of it, to share and share in our experiences of it. From the inside or the outside and to prove we’re not alone.
To be performed in the Crescent at Vault Festival, 13th March. This is an unpaid opportunity, proceeds will be donated to Mind.
Deadline: Monday 14th February 2022, 5pm
Source: BBC Writersroom