From WBEZ: Louder Than A Bomb provides friendly competition that emphasizes self-expression and community through poetry, oral story-telling, and hip-hop spoken word. The festival is an Olympic-style poetry competition, featuring 70 teams and 650 students in 2011. And for the first time in its whole eleven-year history, Louder Than A Bomb will host separate events for its team and individual poet finals. The top twelve individual poets from the high school division compete to see who will become LTAB’s all-star team. The pressure is on, but as always with LTAB, the points are not the point.

Bradford, who’s known for abstract work that explores race, class and gender, is collaborating with Chicago community members as part of a year-long audience participation residency designed to inspire collaboration and community engagement.

Check out the first release of YOUmedia Records featuring Original Music from students across the city.

YOUmedia Records is having its first Digital Release Party! Join us at 6pm to hear new music from our debut compilation featuring all original music from Chicago's hottest teens

We are proud to present Youmedia's very first issue of its official online teen literary magazine, YouLit Magazine. Within this issue you will find poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, graphic design, and photography by Chicago teens. Enjoy! *YouLit Magazine accepts creative work by teens from anywhere in the country. For info on how to submit please visit www.youlitmag.tumblr.com