Donald Jenkins is a fantastic spoken word artist, he’s performed at lots festivals, theatres and won poetry slams in the northeast and spoken in colleges, schools and given workshops for students and youth centres.

Donald is the founder of Born lippy which is a regular night in Newcastle 2 nights each month With a collective of spoken word trail blazers in all of its manifestations! A true eclectic range of poetry/comedy/slam battle/ rap acapella and storytelling. His first event sold out within 20 mins of opening back in 2018!

Donald’s always worked in youth centres and he’s been a teacher and a DJ and he also splits his time freelancing and working with a theatre, so it’s fair to say he’s great with communities and bringing out the best in people.

Donald was raised by his dad and his gay mum and her partner growing up in the 80’s as a lad with working class friends in the north east! So his take on life and experiences are of course really interesting but so sad to think still an issue with many others  now 35 plus  years on.

But many still wouldn’t have shined a light on an issue and brought it out and used it with art which I believe is where the real power is!

Donald’s takeaways-

1.Keep following  your curiosity

2.It’s ok to have things on a back burner, I believe it will keep popping back up like a floating cork until you act on it.

3.Do try something you love - whatever that may be and it can help you in a dark time.

4.When you find the thing, remember you will just keep getting better at it the more you keep working at it.

5.As we are seeing currently with black life matters and of course the end of pride month, Art truly has the power to open up these important discussions

6.If you are struggling to find an event to perform in why not try and create one of your own!

7.Connection and community’s are so important.

8.Keep editing and mastering your pieces to be published, they take time and it's a competitively different process and art form to it bring performed.

You can find a Donald -

Www.instagram.com/Donald.jenkins.94

https://m.facebook.com/spokenwordpoetwriter/

https://www.facebook.com/bornlippyne/

Stay locked down -Donald Jenkins over a hiphop track from Https://www.facebook.com/AnabolicBeatz/