Sacramento Area Youth Speaks (SAYS) will hold a series of Open Mic nights starting Thursday, Oct. 26 and going through to the spring. Faculty, staff and students are welcome. The event is free.

Sign-ups can happen from 5:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. (for those wishing to participate) with Open Mic going from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. for participants and spectators alike on Thursday, Oct. 26, Tuesday, Feb. 20 and Tuesday April 24. The events are sponsored by the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, UC Davis, and SAYS.

Founded in 2009 at UC Davis by Vajra Watson, Director of Research and Policy for Equity at UC Davis, SAYS strives to change the world through education and empowerment. Building on a foundation of critical literacy and spoken-word performance poetry, SAYS breaks the chains of underachievement by elevating the voices of young people and creating spaces for students to become authors of their own lives and agents of change.

SAYS services support the improvement of schools through teacher professional development, classroom instruction, and after-school programming. SAYS utilizes evidence-based pedagogies and an award-winning curriculum to prepare people to serve as cultural keepers, artistic dreamers, and scholar activists who work within and beyond the walls of schools to enact and embody a transformative educational praxis.

Video of SAYS performance: