The Kuala Lumpur Youth Literary Arts Festival (KLYLAF) was borne out of the frustration felt by educators - Elaine Foster and Emelia Shariff - over the pandemic.
Taking place later this month from June 24 to 26, 2022, the literary festival seeks to be accessible to writers of all levels, backgrounds, and ages - with its theme being “No Invitations Necessary”.
In an interview with Malaysiakini, Foster, who founded MY Poetry School, cited the online nature of her work amid Covid-19 restrictions and her collaboration on the Malaysian National Youth Poetry Slam with Emelia last year as the early beginnings of how the festival came about.
This prompted the duo to discuss what could be done to promote arts education in the country - which the trio feel is sorely lacking in the country.
Connecting with others
Narrowing down their focus to the performing arts, they enlisted the help of spoken-word poet Sheena Baharudin in establishing the festival.
“The realisation that throughout the pandemic, kids, students, and teenagers are deprived of opportunities to connect with other people and that massively impacts their ability to express themselves.
“As soft-skills educators, we realise that this impacts how well students communicate with other people because everything is limited which creates a lot of barriers for them.
“So, we wanted the festival to become a platform, which was planned (to be) online at that point, to provide these opportunities for our students to show their talent, make some mistakes or try something new,” said Emelia.
Although initially planned for the online realm, the KLYLAF is set to be a hybrid festival with online workshops, panel discussions, and mentorship sessions, as well as physical events held across the capital city.
This includes an opening show at the Petaling Jaya Performing Arts Centre (PJPAC), a poetry slam at KuAsh Theatre, Pusat Kreatif Kanak-Kanak Tuanku Bainun in Taman Tun Dr Ismail, and an open-mic event at performance venue Merdekarya.
In terms of outreach, the trio sought to engage with more public schools to bridge the gap between the national curriculum and the dearth of performing arts education in Malaysia.
“We definitely want to see more public schools being involved in the festival. So, collectively, what we’ve done is, we have sent out letters to the schools officially to invite them to come and send their kids to the workshop, come and listen to the conversations or perform.
“We have also sent out a newsletter to a database of teachers that we have. A lot of them are interested but they still need school approval, (as well as approval) from parents and things like that,” said Emelia.
Given their background as educators, it is also no wonder that each event is designed to have an impact on various target groups.
While there have been literary festivals elsewhere in the nation, said Emelia, KLYLAF is different in terms of its desired developmental impact on festival-goers.
“That means that developmental education is at the forefront of everything that was designed.
“Every single thing that we design and put together as part of the festival has a very clear impact that we're looking for.
“Are we looking at capacity building for writing? Are we looking at providing opportunities and platforms for young, up-and-coming writers on the stage to perform and things like that?
“We wanted to step away a little bit from (enlisting) the same people over and over again,” said Emelia, adding that it was rare for children to be on festival line-ups.
The hybrid festival seeks to emphasise the need to shift from established names in the literary scene to the future generation of writers and performance artists.
“We’re taking the opportunity to put them (the youths) in the limelight.
“Clearly, we have to start acknowledging their existence because they are the current and future generation of the literary performing arts scene,” added Emelia, who is also chief executive officer for the Malaysian Institute for Debate and Public Speaking (MIDP). - Mkini
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