Will Small

School Performances & Workshops

School Performances & Workshops (grades 7-12, 50 minute sessions)

Will’s school performances integrate dynamic live poetry and storytelling, with engaging creative writing exercises that help every student in the room to overcome their inner critic and write their own original poetry. Will is a highly adaptable presenter and works with teachers/schools to tailor presentations to each group and context. His sessions include:

NEW! “Before I am Replaced”: Poetry in the Age of AI (grades 7-12, 50-90 minute session)
What happens when AI can write poems, create art and do much of what we thought made us uniquely hu-man? This workshop explores creativity, authenticity and what it means to pursue human wisdom in an artifi-cial era. Drawing on poems from Will’s new book ‘The Fossil of Us’, this session weaves together the per-sonal, philosophical and satirical into a timely and validating exploration of what it means to think, write and speak. Thought-provoking, affirming and deeply relevant, students explore:
• What can machines do that we can do? What can’t they?
• Performance: sharing work and finding your voice
• Writing exercises exploring slowness, embodiment, imperfection as features not bugs
• The irreplaceable value of lived experience, emotion, and human perspective

Workshop sessions: After a performance Will can run a workshop with a group of students who want to take a deeper dive into the process of writing, editing and performing spoken word poetry. This will include a range of writing exercises and prompts, tips on every stage of developing a piece from ideas through to edit-ing and performance, as well as space for students to ask questions and receive feedback on their work.

School Residency: During a Residency Will can work across the school with multiple year levels and group sizes (including professional learning sessions for staff). A Residency can also include the facilitation of a larger outcome, such as an in-school poetry slam or the development of a student poetry anthology.

This is How We Survive

A powerful show that interweaves live poetry and storytelling with short cinematic films and an immersive audio journey, This is How We Survive demonstrates to students the possibilities of poetic storytelling, along with a message around wellbeing and resilience.