Nicole Barrios, Henoc Lingomba and Volkan O’Grady were chosen by a panel of judges from Investec, Toynbee Hall and Proms at St Jude’s as winners of this year’s spoken word competition. They read out their winning entries in front of a Proms audience of 500 at the Kanneh-Mason Trio concert on 28 June.

The spoken word pieces were inspired by the music and themes of Mozart’s opera, The Marriage of Figaro, and included topics such as class, money and death. They followed workshops run by opera director Nicholas Chalmers and soprano Sky Ingram, alongside award-winning poet Anthony Anaxagorou. The workshops formed part of Toynbee Hall’s Speak It! project, funded by Investec, which is also Principal Sponsor of Proms.

Grace Vlachopoulos from Investec said, “The students demonstrated terrific social awareness and self-confidence, and fully deserve this recognition.