Using The Resource
Why Hip Hop?
The form and shape of Hip Hop in Aotearoa New Zealand is not merely the product of the ‘Ghettos' of poor America but is, rather, part of a global movement that has seen marginalised groups on every continent use the elements and messages of Hip Hop to make sense of their own communities and where they fit into dominant culture.
Hip Hop has now emerged as a unique fusion of local music, language and cultural values arranged on a tableau of Hip Hop music and culture.
It signifies movement away from maintaining 'traditional cultures', towards cultures reinterpreting and reorganising in order to make sense of an increasingly globalised world.
Quite simply, it is time to understand the mindscapes, landscapes and culturescapes of young people today as very different from any other period of human history. The modern western world is a contested and very tangible reality at the fingertips and fretting of young people. To simply dismiss young people's cultural orientation and global connectedness is to deny our collective past and young people’s development as active, conscious global citizens. Hip Hop is the language, the culture and soundtrack to the young people of the world.
Empowerment
Young people's interest in Hip Hop is increasingly being recognised by youth workers and educators concerned about facilitating meaningful experiences for rangatahi/youth.
The current trend towards providing programmes that integrate elements of Hip Hop culture focus on two main aspects of rangatahi/youth development:
- Providing skill-based programmes that teach technical skills associated with the elements.
- Providing events, gigs that loosely promote youth development. For example, holding a youth event that involves performers.
But there is one area that has been largely overlooked.
Hip Hop Culture as a vehicle for empowering and educating
The Next Research highlights the limited awareness or understanding of the potential or application of Hip Hop as an educational tool. The majority of information on the subject reduces the use of Hip Hop in programmes to young people's participation in the elements, and overlooks the potential that it has for providing meaning to young people's lives.
Hip Hop is reduced to a 'fad, a whim, a passing phase'.
In reality, however, Hip Hop is a vibrant global culture that shares some of the same characteristics as other cultures, such as indigenous cultures. In fact, it has proven itself as being highly adaptive, changing across time; it speaks the language of the oppressed and marginalised; and can be highly organised and effective at challenging injustice and educating its members to take action and transform their lives. This is what forms the basis of the Next Resource.
Potential
Very few people outside the Hip Hop community know the value that the more underground, grassroots, activist elements of the culture play in the development of young people. In fact, the Next Research shows that there is little known within the Aotearoa Hip Hop scene about the potential that Hip Hop has for supporting youth development.
It is hoped that the Next Resource will educate and inspire youth workers/educators and the Hip Hop community to look at the potential that Hip Hop culture can play in the development of rangatahi/young people, and to form the basis of engaging them in learning about the world that they live in.
Interest-based Learning
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We do need to acknowledge that youth culture is part of our lives and is very important to our society, our citizens, and especially our children, regardless of the debate or which spectrum one subscribes to. In a society increasingly fragmented by debate, misunderstandings, and lack of consensus, perhaps youth culture remains one of the few arenas that provides a forum for common understandings, dialogue, and communication. If this is so, we need to better integrate youth culture in the education process - to enhance youth advocacy if for nothing else. It is precisely in the diverse spaces and spheres of youth culture that most of the education that matters today is taking place on a global scale.2
The Next is based on the belief that sound educational experiences can be derived from young people's interests. The way in which these interests are incorporated depends on the approach adopted by individual youth workers and educators.
Adopting an interest-based approach requires more than simply using young people's interests to engage them in pre-determined outcomes. The key is to understand the underlying aspects of Hip Hop culture that offer the most potential for a learning experience to occur.
The 'Hip Hop culture' most visible to rangatahi/young people in Aotearoa NZ is a commercial commodity.
Everything from advertisements for soft drinks to safe sex campaigns use elements of Hip Hop to get the message across to rangatahi/young people.
The Next resource unpacks Hip Hop culture in a way that demonstrates an interconnectedness between young people's lives locally and globally, and which can counteract the now corporate-driven 'rap culture' from the potential that Hip Hop has as a learning experience.
The youth worker/educator can maximise the potential for using Hip Hop culture as a vehicle for learning, through understanding the themes covered in the Next resource, and then using them to structure meaningful learning in programmes.
Take a look at the Web Links section for readings on interest-based learning.
Hip Hop as Education
The Next Resource has been designed to provide a sound understanding of Hip Hop culture, both locally and globally. The material could easily provide core subject matter or supplement other material as required.
If we view Hip Hop culture as a broad subject, then it is possible to see that there is an endless wealth of experiences and information to be drawn on.
The Next Resource provides a lot of information. The challenge is to apply it to your work with young people.
Here are a few suggestions as to how to do this:
- Literacy or numeracy skills: replace the subject matter with Hip Hop. If the main aim is to teach a specific skill, why not use a source of information that has relevancy to young people?
- The fundamentals of B-boying, Graff Art, Turntablism or Emceeing: incorporate deeper exploration of the origins of the form, or global variations.
- Issues affecting young people: explore how Hip Hop artists have experienced similar issues and ways they strived to overcome them.
Unfamiliar with Hip Hop?
The Next Resource has been developed so that even those with little awareness of Hip Hop can integrate aspects of Hip Hop culture into their work with rangatahi/young people.
The Resource is designed to encourage youth workers/educators to gain an understanding of how Hip Hop culture has been used to empower and bring about change locally and globally. Through doing this, there is an opportunity to expose young people to the world and especially the social movements which have arisen from the actions of young people. The activity section of the Resource has been designed to give you ideas about how to achieve this.
If the young people you are working with would like to develop skills in one of the elements of Hip Hop, then it's suggested that you work with a member of the Hip Hop community. The best role for the youth worker/educator here is to offer support, and to use the experience and information to engage young people in wider learning about the world around them.
For further reading on the theories of youth work that inform this resource take a look at the bibliography and links page as well as the following site, Hop Scotch versus Hip Hop - Questions of Youth Culture, and Identity in a Postmodern World by Dr Karen Malone.
Familiar with Hip Hop?
The Next resource has been designed to support the work currently being done by Hip Hop practitioners in Aotearoa New Zealand. The intention is to provide additional perspectives and information that can be integrated into existing programmes. The Resource strengthens and supports the use of Hip Hop, while also opening up opportunities for exploring how the elements are being used globally to empower marginalised rangatahi/young people.
There are a number of activities that have already been developed in the USA, and which can be borrowed from the Global Education Centre Library. To find out more visit the Activity Support section of this resource.
If you are interested in developing an activity, but unsure where to start, please feel free to contact us, as we may be able to assist you.
Activities
The Activities Section has been structured to assist in developing Hip Hop components for youth work or education projects. The Next Resource moves away from providing 'off the shelf activities' that are often not applicable to many settings. Instead, a few sample activities have been provided. We encourage the sharing of existing activities that have been developed, or are being developed in the community.
The Next project does advocate that those looking to use aspects of Hip Hop in their programmes, take the time to read the resource, and tailor activities to suit the learning outcomes of each programme.
If you have developed activities that you think would benefit other youth workers/educators, the Next project would like to include them in the Participation Section.
1 Smart, 1993: 149 in Bennett: 79.
2 Giroux, H. and Simon, R. 'Youth culture: Schooling and everyday life', Granby, MA: Bergin and Garvey Publishers. 1994.
