All of Winman Junior High School, more than 400 students, boarded 10 buses Thursday to see the TseTse Initiative’s Bullying Prevention Concert at the Providence Performing Arts Center (PPAC).

As part of the Bank of America Arts Showcase, the show was free for middle school students and faculty.

Cynthia Goldsmith, the director of special projects and assistant to the president for PPAC, said, “This is an opportunity for middle school students, a truly underserved group, to experience theatre and to be exposed to the arts throughout the school year.”

This concert, which sold out, hosting 2,200 students and teachers, is designed to help students understand, cope and become more aware of the issues surrounding bullying.

The TseTse Initiative, a creative nonprofit, has been around for more than 20 years, using art as a method through which to boost esteem of young adults and awareness of communities to various causes.

For this performance musicians and dancers came together to create skits that re-imagined the poems of 10 middle school students.

The 10 poems were chosen from hundreds of submissions from students all over the state.

Therese “Tse Tse” Lavallee, executive director and founder of the Tse Tse Initiative, said that the submissions varied in emotions; sad, hopeful and confused, but every single one was “inspiring.”

Two of the poems chosen for the performance came from students at Winman.

Kristine Gervais, the Chorus director at Winman, assigned all of her students to write a poem for the contest.

She said, “Most of our students understand that bullying affects so many people and they are passionate about stopping that.”

Jaime Aceto, 8th grade, and Sophie Amore, 7th grade, both had their poem put to music and dance. The band Blackstrap Molasses performed Amore’s poem, “Let’s Stop Bullying,” while hip-hop performer Michael Diaz danced.

Sophie said, “It bothered me seeing some of my friends get bullied and I thought we should do something about it. It was nerve-wracking knowing everybody I know was going to see it, but it’s an important message that we could stop bullying if we wanted to.”

Aceto’s poem, “Do You See Them?” closed out the concert with a spoken word rendition by a hip-hop artists B-Mor7, with two hip-hop dancers.

“With my poem, I wanted people to get that you don’t know what people are going through or if they are being bullied. You should be nice to everybody,” Aceto said.

Although other schools were represented in the performance, Winman was the only school that brought the entire student body to the show.

Lavallee said, “We are very excited at how seriously Winman and the performing arts center have taken this. Budgets are tight and yet, they took it upon themselves to make this trip and performance a priority. It is more than just songs and dancing; these kids are learning and facing difficult concepts.”

The show itself may have been free, but to transport more than 400 students to Providence, it took nearly $1,500; but for what was considered an important topic, the performance was made a priority.

Officer Nelson Carreiro, school resource officer for Winman, believed that the concert was an important event for the students and with the help of Gervais, reached out to the community to see if they could raise the money.

Carreiro said, “Bullying is a growing concern across the country. It affects so many of the youths within even our own community and if there is anything we can do to combat this issue, it should be done.”

Gervais explained how middle school is a big time of change for students, coming from the “safety pod” of elementary school into the big middle school. Students are changing physically, mentally and emotionally and that can be a scary time for them.

“At Winman, we have always stood behind creating a culture of safety. We need students to know we understand the problem, that they can reach out for help, but most importantly it won’t be tolerated,” she said.

Several community groups stepped forward to help the school meet transportation costs.

The groups included the Winman PTO, Patricia St. Amant and the Warwick Youth Programs Advisory and Prevention Task Force, Ranone Law Offices, Jackie Procopio and the Potowomut Association as well as Julie Thorton and the Buttonwoods Neighborhood Crime Watch.

“We know that bullying goes beyond school; it travels into neighborhoods and behind computer screens,” Carreiro said. “When good people can come together to support good school initiatives, you know we can make a difference.”

Carreiro thought the play was a good step in creating a “climate of safety and understanding,” thanks all the companies who helped get the student body to Providence for the show.

The show itself featured dancers and musicians from various disciplines, from hip-hop to rock music, jazz to contemporary dance.

Lavallee said the hope is that by having so many genres represented, at least one song will resonate with a student, one that they can remember and sing along to later.

Along the same lines, the hope is that by putting the poems to music and making a concert out of them, students will be able to better connect and engage with the material they are witnessing in comparison to just receiving a lecture.

“This is another forum through which kids can talk to each other about these important issues,” Lavallee said. “Your son or daughter, on the bus to school, is not going to talk about the conversation they had with their parents, but they will talk about the concert they saw.”

Carreiro said, “Kids can relate to music, they can relate to the dancers or singer and they will take the message more seriously than if it was just a teacher in a room.”

Those asked said the concert was very moving and the students enjoyed it.

Goldsmith said the performance was a way for students to express themselves and work through the various concerns of bullying.

She said, “This performance sends a very strong message not just about bullying, but how to handle that. It takes a very negative experience and turns it into a positive one.”

Carreiro said the best part of the performance is that it lets kids know they don’t have to “battle bullying alone,” but rather they can reach out for help.