Louder Than a Bomb Great Plains Festival

Louder Than a Bomb is a teen poetry festival founded in 2001 by Young Chicago Authors. As they put it, the event aims, “to bring teens together across racial, gang, and socio-economic lines, LTAB is a friendly competition that emphasizes self-expression and community via poetry, oral story-telling, and hip-hop spoken word.” It focuses on cooperation, with teams of students working together to write, revise, and rehearse their performances. Now more than 600 teens from over 60 Chicago schools participate, and the event was recently the subject of an award-winning documentary from Siskel/Jacobs productions.