Mission Statement

The Verbal Arts Centre is an educational charity founded in 1992. In 2000 the Centre moved its premises to the beautifully refurbished First Derry School, a listed building which occupies a prime location on the city’s walls.

The Centre’s underpinning purpose is the promotion of the language arts, celebration of commonality and diversity, development of knowledge, understanding and excellence in creation, performance and critical practice across the verbal arts forms, together with research, publication and provision of information.

What we do

The Verbal Arts Centre develops and delivers a portfolio of verbal arts services for a range of client groups and stakeholders. These services are structured across three main areas:

1. Education
2. Youth and Community Development
3. Artform / Reading Development

The Centre’s work is delivered throughout the North West region including Derry, Strabane, Limavady, Castlederg, Fermanagh and Donegal. The specific nature of the services delivered involves:
· literacy building programmes with primary, post primary and special needs schools (Key stages 1-4)
· provision of structured Community Relations encounter opportunities using the literary heritage of the region as source material
· Development of teachers’ resource materials
· Youth and Community Citizenship and Personal
development programmes that engage with young people particularly those from areas of high socio/economic deprivation, with statements of special educational needs also vulnerable young people at risk in the areas of bullying, drugs misuse, etc.
· Developing paper based and IT based youth/community resources
· Developing the Verbal Arts artform (reading, writing, speaking and listening) throughout the region and providing opportunities for engagement by the public both as audience and participant.