This is how we do it?

Born out of the power of hip hop culture to explore our eclectic souls,

remixing society’s pains in stories and chants of freedom

we trust in imagination, community and pedagogy

pillars to a nurturing society where all are free.

 

Hip hop culture: imagining the unimaginable

 

Hip hop is the beat of change that constantly changes its beat. It is the universal language that speaks to youth, especially those living in challenging life conditions. A culture grown out of the ashes of the burning Bronx by the resilience and imagination of the youth and the inspiration of their ancestors from the Last Poets to the griots. By going back to the roots of hip hop and refreshing its herstory/history, we can comprehend its relevance in the present and tap into its power for the future. As f.emcee’s, musicians, activists, social workers, citizens and human beings we need to overstand hip hop culture in order to truly connect to each other in the multicultural and multigenerational world we live in. Hip hop has been redefined. Activism has been confined. Now is the time to raise our voices, words, notes and creative force to envision a society we deserve and love to live in.

 

“Hip Hop means spreading messages without looking of which origin you are, which race, which faith, with no separations of people, just having a good time.”

“Hip hop means relationships, art, family.”

“Hip hop means connection.”

Workshop participants

collaboration with Youth house TNT & PAJ

  

Communal mosaic transformations

 

To make social change happen we need to be connected to our communities, learn from and collaborate with grassroots movements, study their trial and errors, setbacks and victories. Learn from movements of our streets, in our countries, on our globe.

 

We are deeply connected to a new black arts movement, who is prefiguring a new society by learning from indigenous peoples, honoring mother earth, thinking seven generations passed and seven generations ahead, celebrating maroon matriarchal ways and exemplifying that art is equivalent to politics.

www.anewblackartsmovement.com

 

We are grateful for enriching partnerships locally, such as with Le Space, laboratory and try-out room for the cultural center of tomorrow (Brussels, BE), with Labo vzw, laboratory for emancipation and social change (Ghent, BE), with De Stroate, hip hop academy and creative, social and educational center (Kortrijk, BE).  Together with our international partner Urban Art Beat, New York City based organization for creative expression that is rooted in the community for over a decade, we create a world-wide web of artists that respond to the call of creating a world where many worlds fit.

 

“You can't help it.

An artist's duty, as far as I'm concerned,

is to reflect the times.”

Nina Simone

 

critical revolutionary hip hop pedagogy

 

A lot of learning is disconnected and sees our youth as vessels to pour information into. Critical revolutionary hip hop pedagogy places the youth in the center, emphasizes the importance of mentorship and involves different ways and styles of learning (visual, auditory/musical, kinesthetic, etc.). It meets the youth where they are, starting from their experiences, goals and talents. It creates youth leaders who become facilitators of their own learning process, develop their peers, are critical and independent thinkers who are accountable and have an impact in their communities and society as a whole.

critical revolutionary hip hop pedagogy is created by spiritchild, freedom singer and hip hop pedagogue based on his 20+ years of experience of working with youth worldwide.

 

“The workshops went spontaneously, smoothly and thanks the enthusiastic way of being of the team, our young people learned more about hip hop and what attracts them to it, out of their own curiousity. The youth were stimulated by the steps they would take together and curious about their end result. The ability to work together on such a project, with an external 'partner' who knows the language of our young people, understands their world and, above all, endorses and exemplifies the power of musical expression, has led to a very nice end result. The young people are proud of their achievements and this project achieved in our opinion all its objectives: to deal with emotions in a creative way, to work together in a goal-oriented manner, to express yourself through music and thus to build up the necessary self-confidence to deal with other difficult tasks and challenging situations in life.”

Ann Smets, Pedagogical Director

Youth detention facility De Kempen Campus De Hutten