Hip-Hop Education: What’s love got to do with it?

By Damali Eastmond-Scott – History Teacher at Manchester Enterprise Academy, Wythenshawe

Hip-hop as an umbrella for multiple subgenres has always been my number one. Sharing with reggae, a multi-faceted genre that I grew up to; a sound that brings back memories of sunny days in South London, sitting in my mother’s red Ford Orion bopping my head to the popular urban radio station, Choice FM. Hip-hop allowed me to explore social issues that other commercial genres wouldn’t dabble in. However, there was always one theme that caused listeners to question hip-hop and its intentions; forcing people to validate its sentiment and subconscious messages. This stretches as far as turning listeners away from it. The contentious problem is the topic of love and relationships.

Hip-Hop Education: Rap as a Tutoring Resource

By Will Baldwin-Pask – The Tutor Trust

As anyone who works in mainstream education will tell you, children and young people are offered increasingly little in the way of original, exciting and experimental ways of learning. Pupils are so swamped with exams and teachers are so pressed to get certain results that classrooms rarely see new, subversive methods put to use. Testing has supplanted teaching in schools’ priority lists.

Hip-Hop Study Guide: Up and Running

By Hattie

Almost a year after the workings of a Hip-Hop resource first began, we are pleased to announce that the Hip-Hop Study Guide is complete. We have high hopes that the study guide will be an essential tool for those studying Hip-Hop as part of their university work, but also a resource for those interested in new perspectives on race, gender, music and culture more widely. As anticipated, the study guide has multiple sections, including summaries of books in the library, links to further scholarly reading online, and examples of Hip-Hop Education lesson plans written by students at the University of Manchester. It also features a glossary of Hip-Hop terms, for those researchers puzzling over what ‘OG’ actually stands for, or the meaning of the widely used term ‘baller’.

An insight into the new guide!

 

Hip-Hop in the Library

Hattie Charnley-Shaw has been working with us on the Hip Hop Collection project. Here she explains a bit about the project, about Hip Hop Studies and Hip Hop Education, and reflects on her work to date.

There’s no denying that Hip Hop is one of the most popular music genres in the world. Nor is there any denying that it has become a worldwide phenomenon in the realms of culture, fashion, and the visual arts too. Its existence in the world of education however, is far less widespread or acknowledged.