During the post-industrial decline of the South Bronx, Hip Hop’s pioneers used the Elements (MCing, DJing, beatboxing, breakdancing, and graffiti art) to counteract gang violence and drug use and build positive life-affirming community.
The Hip-Hop Re:Education Project similarly uses an interdisciplinary approach to teaching and learning that gets back to those roots. Utilizing the elements themselves as pedagogy, youth are encouraged to commit to a craft, invest in the creative process and “remix” their own narratives and the narratives of others to develop solutions for their own problems and the problems facing the world today.
The Hip Hop Re:Education Project partners with schools, universities, non-profits and community centers throughout the United States and abroad. CultureHub, a digital media studio that specializes in long-distance collaborative learning and art project development, has been integral to the Hip Hop Re:Education Project’s programs, including supporting partnerships with organizations in Manchester, U.K., New Orleans, LA and Berlin, DE.
One such partnership is their collaboration with Gangway e.V., Berlin’s largest street-work organization. Together The Hip Hop Re:Education Project and Gangway e.V. have developed the Bronx-Berlin Connnection, a year-round cross-cultural exchange program that uses the mediums of spoken word and music—particularly, rap and hip hop—to explore and express the unique experiences of urban youth around the world, the critical challenges they face and the solutions necessary to enact change in their communities. Using the same beats, common lyrical themes and different languages on two separate continents this program works to not only produce multi-lingual, cross-cultural poems, songs and albums, but more importantly it seeks to engage today’s youth in a continual process of cultural exchange. Thus far this partnership has developed 2 full-length records, facilitated 4 international cultural exchange trips, telepresence cyber cyphers and released dozens of music videos and mini-documentaries.
The Hip Hop Re:Education Project is supported in part by the Coca-Cola Foundation.
For more information about The Hip Hop Re:Education Project or the Bronx-Berlin Connection, please email Fabian “Farbeon” Saucedo at: farbeon@reeducate.org.
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