A Conference to Celebrate & Elevate the Power of Hip Hop (in) Education
Held at the Harvard Graduate School of Education
SATURDAY WORKSHOPS
Learn about the workshops offered in breakout sessions throughout the day.
BREAKOUT #1
11:30AM - 12:45PM EST
Michaelanelo Hayes
THE HIP HOP SENSEI: INFUSING ANIME AND HIP HOP CULTURE FOR BLACK STUDENTS IN THE PANDEMIC AND BEYOND
Sharing research and materials for the crowd to take home that show how to use Hip Hop and Hip Hop influenced anime to teach their students and communities breakthrough strategies to supersede modern problems in the COVID-19 pandemic/futuristic work environment. Points of the conversation include lyricism as it relates to K-12 subjects, specific artists and animes with an overarching thematic brilliance that helps students learn, and a live module of how it works.
Nyree Clayton-Taylor & The Real Young Prodigys
PANDEMIC, PROTEST & POLICY CHANGE: HIP HOP PERFORMANCE FOR SOCIAL CHANGE AND ACTIVISM
“Young Prodigys at it again, CROOOOOWN!” Come experience how the Real Young Prodigys are creating Hip Hop to spearhead change and actually change policy. Their current project helped to pass the Crown Ordinance in Louisville, KY. Empowering African American students to use their funds of knowledge to make tangible changes -- that's what they're all about!
Dr. Jenelle Robinson
HBCUS, STEM, AND HIP HOP
HBCUs are cultural clearinghouses for display and distribution of Hip Hop. In regards to pedagogy, it is common for the collegiate community to advance the movement of Hip Hop through areas of social sciences and extracurricular activities. However, STEM disciplines that infuse Hip Hop into pedagogy also see significant benefits in classroom engagement, memory retention, critical thinking, and community upliftment. This session will highlight best practices in using facets of Hip Hop as culturally relevant pedagogy in various STEM disciplines. Emphasis will be placed on building health and wellness in collegiate communities of color in the South.
Unlearn The World
CROWNS OF THE CULTURE - A CASE STUDY IN HIP HOP CREATIVITY
MC and Producer UnLearn The World facilitates this immersive lecture and workshop on the creative process behind beat making and songwriting based on his personal story and relationship with Hip Hop, his creative process along with the themes and topics addressed in his critically acclaimed album CROWNS.
Alice Tsui
HIP HOP IS COMMUNITY AT NEW BRIDGES ELEMENTARY
Hip hop is community, the activating of melanated voices, and the empowering of Black youth. Through hip hop, our youth can share their truths, stories, and joy with each other and our world. The elementary music classroom can be a space where hip hop occurs through creation — creation of lyrics, beats, melodies, and community. Learn about how hip hop looks like, sounds like, and feels like at New Bridges Elementary, an arts-integrated public school in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, NY.
BREAKOUT #2
2:30 - 3:45PM EST
Jonah Scott
RHYTHMIC MIND'S FREESTYLE THERAPY CYPHER™: EXPLORING THE THERAPEUTIC IMPACT OF FREESTYLE RHYME
This interactive workshop will unpack and explore the dynamic therapeutic benefits of freestyle rapping and cyphering, with a specific focus on how these activities can be used with intention to mitigate the negative impacts of trauma. Utilizing aspects of Rhythmic Mind’s Freestyle Therapy Cypher (FTC) workshop, participants will have a chance to learn about these benefits from a clinical perspective, and will experience them first-hand by participating in some of our custom designed Freestyle Therapy Exercises.
Dr. Jian Jones
WE GON’ BE ALRIGHT: EMPOWERING STUDENTS THROUGH HIP-HOP IDENTITY
Hip-Hop culture has been used to encourage student awareness, improve self-esteem, and promote student learning within higher education. However, minimal research presents the benefits of an educator’s Hip-Hop identity as an instructional practice to empower students. This interactive presentation will address how an educator utilizes Hip-Hop identity as innovative and culturally relevant methods of delivering various concepts within an applied scientific discipline, such as occupational therapy.
Beats, Rhymes & Life Boston
BEATS RHYMES AND LIFE
Attendees will learn all about Beats Rhymes and Life, including its origins, how it operates in Boston, the mobile studio, and the future of the program. Attendees will then have an opportunity for active engagement as the presenters will facilitate a volunteer participatory activity called Flow Cab. Flow Cab is an introduction into writing bars, rapping, and cyphering.
Brian Mooney
HIP-HOP DESIGN RESEARCH: FLIPPING SAMPLES TO REMIX THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION
This presentation is a hybrid performance and presentation, including original spoken word and live beatmaking integrated with the sharing of new research from Mooney's dissertation on Hip-Hop Pedagogy at Teachers College, Columbia University. Attendees will learn about designing a research project with Hip-Hop aesthetics and sensibilities, including sampling, remix, layering, and flow and Mooney will present and demonstrate his framework, Hip-Hop Poetic Inquiry (HHPI), through sharing parts of an original Hip-Hop and spoken word album that I created for his dissertation.
Dani Criss
ANCESTRAL TOOLS: RECLAIMING THE ART OF SOCIAL DANCING FOR PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE GENERATIONS
Ancestral Tools: Reclaiming the Art of Social Dancing for Past, Present, and Future Generations is a movement research workshop that allows for all involved to explore Hip-Hop Social Dances as a cultural artifact that should be uplifted, utilized, and preserved. We will collaboratively discuss the origin, elements, and evolution of Hip-Hop Social Dances and it’s impact on the culture and the communities they derive from; acknowledging the importance of the transmission in keeping the culture alive. Research will be an oral, reflective, and embodied practice. Participants will experience versatile ways to include this practice into their communities and educational engagements.
BREAKOUT #3
4:00 - 5:15PM EST
James Miles & Vinson Johnson
GOTTA STAY FRESH
This workshop and performance will highlight how to use the mnemonic power of hip hop culture to boost student achievement and wellness in K-12 settings. Join Fresh Professor James Miles, emcees Wordsworth and John Robinson, and producer J. Rawls for an exploration of youth development through culturally responsive hands- on activities that positively impact students’ sense of belonging and promote inclusivity in a classroom. In this workshop, the quartet will lead participants through an exploration of culturally responsive strategies, using creativity to foster positive mindsets across disciplines, age groups and venues, and the role creative youth development plays in achieving greater justice and equity in education. This workshop will be followed by a live performance.
b styles
PRESERVING PEACE
This workshop is an open conversation about one of the founding principles of Hip Hop Culture - "PEACE" - and what is happening with it. Given how many artists we've lost to violence and the fact that Hip Hop began as a move to quell it, where do things stand? Is art imitating life or the other way around? Come lend your voice to a cypher conversation on how we can elevate PEAACE in the culture...for now and the future.
Hip Hop Youth & Activism Conference Youth Leaders
HIP HOP HEALS: REDEFINING HIP HOP THROUGH LOVE, EMPATHY, AND SELF-ACTUALIZATION
Hip Hop as a community, culture, and art form offers a space for individual and collective healing. This interactive presentation centers the fifth element of Hip Hop, knowledge of self, and its role in developing communities of advocacy. This presentation includes individual self-reflection, group discussion, and writing exercises and will end with a creative cypher reflecting on our knowledge and love of self and community.
Rob Nice
RAP SEMINAR: BRIDGING LYRICISM & STATISTICAL ANALYSIS
In this workshop, Rap Seminar founder Rob Nice will give the audience a sneak peek of our #RapStat data visualizations and provide participants an opportunity to identify techniques employed by top tier lyricists like Blackthought and eLZhi. He will also share what he has found to be the most popular lyrical and literary techniques that Hip Hop artists use in their verses.
Minh-Tiến Nguyễn
GOOD MORNING VIETNAM AND GOOD NIGHT SAIGON
An introduction to Vietnamese rap from a performance that was inspired by Nguyễn Du's The Tale of Kieu and a video essay on the juxtapositions of Americanization and internal colonialism in Vietnamese rap's visuals and lyrics.