For the past two years, I have been involved with Lift Evr’y Voice and Unlock Your Voice here at Juniata. These two events are courses taught every other year at Juniata through the English department. Our class (which is typically, no more than ten students) works together for the majority of the fall semester, planning a coffeehouse-style event celebrating specific groups of people. For Lift Evr’y Voice, we choose to celebrate African American literature. For Unlock Your Voice, we honor women everywhere by performing music and poetry written by anyone who identifies as a woman.
We picked a theme, created images and ideas, sent out emails, bought supplies, recruited volunteers, and ultimately transformed the Ellis Ballroom into a dimly-lit, beautifully decorated coffee shop with lots of sweet treats. It takes a lot of work behind the scenes to pull together an event like this, but it is always amazing to see the final product a few minutes before we start our show.
This year, we had the most volunteers ever, and had about 20 performances throughout the night, ranging from slam poems to ukulele covers, and everything in between. We had both men and women participating, and some women actually read material they wrote themselves! We had a huge turnout, and it was so lovely to see so many wonderful people (faculty and students) come together to promote something that is so important in our society (and especially to me).
Every year the English Department switches the course every other year (i.e. this year we did Unlock Your Voice, so next year will be Lift Evr’y Voice) but I believe it’s a wonderful opportunity for people to come and speak up about certain issues, by delivering beautiful poems and songs and sharing the beauty of literature with the campus community. I wish I could work on an event like this every semester because it’s very inspiring for me, so I’m excited to sign up to work on Lift Evr’y Voice next year!