Francisco Alcala

I am the Co-Founder and Executive Director of HOME Storytellers, a nonprofit I started in 2018 with my daughter. We find people in marginalized communities, often where no one expects them, who are creating solutions to today’s problems, and we tell their stories to build emotional connection and mutual benefit with audiences around the world.

My interest in neuroarts comes from Dzaleka Refugee Camp in Malawi. There, a group of young poets created African Youth Artistic Poetry (AYAP), a completely grassroots practice of writing, performing and listening to each other. In four years, around 300 children and youth have taken part, meeting several times a week with borrowed chalk and negotiated classrooms. The poets say it gives them self-esteem, self-awareness and a sense of belonging. We tell their story in our film “We Name Ourselves”.

Together with the poets, we are now transferring their practice into the Poetry for Survival Kit, a digital learning experience for young people facing hardship, with the vision of one million meaningful creative journeys. We are preparing to validate how it transfers to other places with refugee youth in Kakuma, Kenya.

From this community, I hope to learn how to understand and measure what poetry does for mental well-being, so we can strengthen the Kit with evidence and not only with stories. I can contribute a lived example of an arts practice created by young people themselves in extreme hardship, and the experience of turning it into something that can travel.