Join us for a live poetry showcase featuring ten standout youth poets from this year’s Rooted and Radical Youth Poetry Festival, presented by Young Chicago Authors. This special event is part of the Design Museum of Chicago’s ongoing exhibition Great Ideas of Humanity: One of a Series, which invites audiences to reconsider what a “great idea” looks and sounds like today.

In this unique program, poets will perform original work that speaks to the complexity, power, and beauty of lived experience. We’ll be listening closely—not just as an audience, but as collaborators. Following the event, each poet’s writing will be interpreted by a visual artist and transformed into a new poster, contributing to the next iteration of Great Ideas of Humanity.

About Young Chicago Authors:
Young Chicago Authors delivers high quality programs that curate artistic development, social emotional learning, and academic success through poetry, performance, and poetics. One of their programs is the Rooted and Radical Youth Poetry Festival which is the largest youth poetry festival in the world held here in Chicago.The festival brings together schools and community organizations to showcase the poetry and voices of young people from all over the city. Think of the festival as slam poetry without judgement. It is a curated and evolved space that honors young people and the stories they carry. It decenters competition and judgement to empower youth to listen intently to one another and create a community of sharing stories in a non-competitive environment. The 10 poets here today were participants in the 2025 festival and have advanced in the 6-week festival which features over 200 youth poets from Chicago, Chicagoland, and Northwest Indiana.