If you've been following the P4 Blog, you will have seen our big announcement about securing Dartmouth College's Rauner Library as our Repository Partner!  We've had several people ask, "So now that you have a partner in place, where does the P4 work go from here?"

Excellent question!!!!

Our arrangement with Dartmouth College significantly changes our work as a non-profit.  A huge part of what we were doing before this agreement went into place was working toward that goal: identifying an institution that could be our repository partner.  With this challenge complete, P4's work to collect and preserve the history of the poetry slam movement can go forward even more aggressively. 

The Board has identified these as our four top priorities for the next 6-12 monhts:

1. Focus on Outreach.  We will keep up our social media presence,including blog posts, mail blasts, and other publicity.  The poetry slam community needs to know we exist, and what we're about! We will aim for a weekly blog post, and a monthly e-mail to our mailing lists. If you're interested in helping us publicize the efforts of P4, and keep our community informed of major developments in the Poetry Slam scene, drop Mongo a line!
2. Build the Collection.  Even though we have collected thousands of objects, the history of the poetry slam is vast.  We know there are still thousands of objects and recordings out there that document the history of this movement.  In the next year, we will be focused on outreach to slammasters and others in the community that may have access to this material.  We are building a major database of all slams, both past and present, that will aid us in this outreach.  As part of this effort, we will also be inviting designated contacts at each current slam to review and update their listings in our system, as we work to tie our objects and performances to the slams with which they were associated.  If you are a slammaster or organizer at a poetry event, or have been in the past, you will likely hear from us in 2018.
3. Protect Our Materials. As we continue to collect physical and digital items, we will catalog and arrange those materials, and then periodically transfer them to Dartmouth College for integration into the collection, and long term storage and preservation..
4. Seek Grant Funding. The future of this work is in the digitization of the materials we are collecting, and that will be a financially demanding process.  Finding the right grants to aid in that digitization is among our top priorities.

Of course, the P4 work goes  far beyond these four items, but we have determined that with our limited resources, these will be our top priorities for the next six to twelve months.

Do you see a task in this list that especially interests you?  Would you like to offer your help, or just learn more about our work?  Feel free to drop Mongo a line any time to open a conversation.  We always love hearing from folks!