Facilitator-in-Chief: Spoken Word Artist Charity Blackwell Finds the Thread in GSX Themes
Words have power. They can inspire, influence, and compel. They enable speakers to grab an audience’s attention, draw connections, and forge community. This year at GSX, general session attendees can experience this for themselves through spoken word artist Charity Blackwell, the 2024 GSX facilitator who will open new channels of innovation and spark conversation by bringing ASIS International’s new strategic vision to life on stage.
Blackwell is an award-winning spoken word artist, poet, and educator who uses her personal experiences to connect with diverse audiences. She’s previously performed for The Kennedy Center, national sports leagues, TEDxTysons, and even the 2023 Security LeadHER conference. But what is a spoken word artist, and why is one on the stage at GSX?
“A spoken word artist is a person that creates poetry, essentially, and brings their poetry to life through performance,” Blackwell says.
She references Amanda Gorman’s poetry recitation at the 2020 U.S. Presidential Inauguration, which paired spoken word with gesture, emphasis, and emotion to “make poetry come to life, to bring it off the paper and into the room.”
ASIS’s strategic plan for 2024 and beyond is to act as a facilitator across industries and geographies to foster new partnerships, connections, and thought processes to better protect where people live, work, and play. Similarly, Blackwell intends to use her poetry to facilitate further conversations and unconventional connections throughout the week of GSX and beyond.
“Poetry is everywhere,” she says. “I think poetry is in any space, any place that you are in, and that can be a business space, an art space, or whatever. But I do think what I’ve found very beneficial and interesting about spoken word—particularly in a business space—is being able to make connections and talk about things in a way that translates and hits the soul in a more powerful, meaningful way.”
The elements of performance and poetry—“the artistry in the poetry, the words that are chosen, the way that it’s kind of like music to the ear with the flow, the rhythm”—help to make those messages stick and resonate beyond the general session, Blackwell adds.
Blackwell is selecting poetry to perform at GSX that will thread a theme together across the week of educational and inspirational programming, drawing people together.
“I hope that this is a conversation starter—something that gives folks an opportunity to connect just through the poetry,” she says. “I’m also hoping that people leave feeling inspired, excited, and motivated about the next chapter for the security world.”
For security professionals who are constantly managing the daily challenge of protecting people behind-the-scenes, poetry can provide a release and space to decompress from the day-to-day effort of being on guard.
“Hopefully poetry will be a great way for people to not only draw connections but also think about their ability to reflect and think about some of the ways my personal experiences, lived experiences, resonate with them,” Blackwell adds.
Those personal connections help Blackwell’s messages hit home for listeners, many of whom will speak with her after performances and share how a poem resonated with their own experience of grief, finding their place in the world, or coming to grips with cultural expectations.
“They’re able to connect with that person on the stage—not just a poem, but they’re looking at me as an actual being, and we have something in common,” she says. “What I love to use poetry to do is educate, and people may now walk away thinking ‘Wow! I never thought of this perspective before. This actually opened my eyes to a different idea.’ And so, I do think that the personal touch and writing good poetry is what makes that stick.”
Blackwell will present a new, original poem as part of her facilitator introduction to the Tuesday, 24 September, general session with Dr. Rana el Kaliouby on a human-centered approach to artificial intelligence (AI). Blackwell plans to tap into widespread anxieties and uncertainties about the technology-centric future in her performance, as well as the unique, irreplaceable, and inspirational qualities humans bring to the table.
“I do think that’s one thing we can all connect on—we are still human, and we still have our own special sauce, whatever that may be,” she says. “Whether AI can write poems or not, they’re not Charity Blackwell, right? And so, I think that’s the message that I’m aiming to bring through that poem.”
Learn more about the power of storytelling in security with these articles from the Security Management archive:
- How Security Leaders Can Use Their Own Stories
- For an Impactful Elevator Pitch, Aim to Connect Emotionally
- Do Your Job: What Zombies Can Teach Us About Crisis Response
- Designing Safety Training that Sticks
Claire Meyer is editor-in-chief of Security Management, which publishes the GSX Daily. Connect with her on LinkedIn or email her directly at [email protected].
