Youth Engagement Projects
Ronnie Cheng performing in the 2025 Telling It Bent Showcase at IGNITE!
TELLING IT BENT 2027 - QUEER YOUTH SHOWCASE
MAY 2027
THE CULTCH HISTORIC THEATRE
Facilitated by Anjalica Solomon
Part of the IGNITE! Youth-Driven Arts Festival at the Cultch
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION:
Telling it Bent is an interdisciplinary writing workshop for queer, trans, Two Spirit and questioning BC youth ages 14 to 25. Throughout the program, participants will explore poetry, playwriting, and interdisciplinary creation through a queer, decolonial, future building lens. Participants will build connections with other young queer creatives, liberate their sense of imagination and play, and gain a deeper understanding of themselves, their artistic practice, and the possibilities of the stories they can tell. Telling It Bent 2026 focuses on creating one person or small cast pieces, and participants will perform each other’s work.
FACILITATOR: Anjalica Solomon
Anjalica Solomon is your favourite local genderfluid-bird-watching-heart-eyed-astro-queer. They blend their Desi roots and Pacific NorthWest up-bringing in art forms such as singing, songwriting, loop pending, poetry, and the spoken word.
They are known and beloved as an organiser and multi-disciplinary performer based in what is colonially known as Vancouver, BC on the stolen and unsurrendered territories of the Coast Salish, Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Musqueam Nations.
Anjalica is currently exploring new genres such as screenwriting, non-fic and playwriting as an MFA student in The School of Creative Writing at UBC.
Their poetic work often seeks to proclaim the possibilities of love and resilience. Anjalica is a poet of startling emotional intellect and candour whose work testifies to a deep faith in beauty, the power of nature, and ultimately, the human capacity to salvage integrity, radiance and joy from moments of struggle. In this way, Anjalica Solomon's poems and performances offer robust visions of hope, tenacity, and love.
Their debut poetry collection "Apocalypse Joy" is out NOW with Write Bloody North Publishing!
Program Supporter
“Whatever it is, the way you tell your story can make all the difference.”
- Youth Participant, 2020
![L-R_ Tawahum, Kate, Sarvin, Panthea, Tricia, Chantal [Rehearsing SARV_s Piece].jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/60ec689e1f6f565c6734eee9/56d7d4f4-64fa-4938-b7bd-938d66e82f01/L-R_+Tawahum%2C+Kate%2C+Sarvin%2C+Panthea%2C+Tricia%2C+Chantal+%5BRehearsing+SARV_s+Piece%5D.jpg)
