GOALS OF THE PROGRAM: UHIPHOP GLOBAL

UHipHop has developed an arts education initiative that will engage youth development of multi-media resources for the purposes of community service learning and public arts education through hip-hop. “UHip-Hop Global” will train youth in the application of various multi-media resources that will increase the dissemination of curricular strategies for using hip-hop in and beyond the classroom, and for cultural community development worldwide. Youth will be taught the use of video editing and film-making, computer technology, desktop publishing, electronic music production, and informational promotion through the internet, in order to make hip-hop educational strategies available to the public. Experts in these media oriented fields will be contracted to teach youth working at the Southwest Youth Collaborative skills that the students will use to develop hip-hop based community activities, and which will ultimately enable these youth to teach others as they develop as future educators.
OBJECTIVES FOR YOUTH EDUCATION IN THE ARTS AND MULTI-MEDIA RESOURCES
“UHipHop Global” will connect youth with other community organizations who are exploring hip-hop education, and will further the development of youth generated and multi-media oriented UHipHop educational projects. Through cultural exchanges on a local, regional, national, and international scale, youth will develop public arts projects and documentation of the hip-hop arts that can be used by youth, youth advocates, and educators worldwide. Students will collaborate with sister organizations in the city of Chicago, in the three-state delta surrounding Illinois, in another city in the United States, and in another country; to create hip-hop community projects, evaluate their successes and challenges, and to educate others an how to repeat or adapt these processes for their own communities. Students will then create a video documentary that presents a visual explanation of the work accomplished, newsletters that keep the public informed of ongoing projects, motivational music projects that address social justice issues, classroom-based literacy and social studies curricula, and apprentice manuals for future hip-hop education initiatives. UHipHop students will also do public outreach by creating public service announcements about issues that impact young people and families. Culminating of their work for each year, students will use these projects to conduct educational workshops and interactive presentations at educational conferences sponsored by various collaborating universities.
PROCESS
• Students will learn to apply the hip-hop arts and multi-media resources for interdisciplinary education and community beautification projects.
• Students will first be introduced to the hip-hop arts and the use of multi-media technologies. Youth will study the role of hip-hop as community service, and evaluate past UHipHop projects. Educators will be contracted to teach the youth the use of these technologies, and how to adapt them for presenting hip-hop arts education. This guided practice will engage and expand the students’ creative skills, and will increase their expertise in hip-hop and multi-media tools.
• Youth will then engage in independent practice of these skills, as they begin video and music production, publishing, and other forms of documentation of their hip-hop community work. There will be continual critical dialogue with educators that allows students to evaluate their ongoing development.
• The assessment of youth development will be based upon the youths’ abilities to produce curricular materials, and their abilities at teaching others. At the conclusion of each stage of the process, there will be reflection and evaluation for improving outcomes, to establish better practices for hip-hop community work and documentation of its accomplishments.
OUTCOMES
Every year will be split into three-month units. Each three months will be dedicated to a specific project that the youth will be working on. The scale of each project will increase as the year continues, from local to international collaborations with other organizations. The first two months will focus on the development of community activities and multi-media skills, and the last month will be used for the (manifestation) of culminating events. Following each unit, students will evaluate and reflect on the work done with their instructors and other youth advocates. Students will create a monthly newsletter called “The Stronghold” that includes arts activities and work the youth have created, and keeps the public apprised of hip-hop education projects going on throughout the world. At the end of the year the students will have a public exhibition of a video documentary that presents the four projects from the previous twelve months, and will conduct educational workshops that teach others how to do hip-hop education, and will document the projects’ developments from conceptualization to final product. This exhibition will also celebrate the launching of the UHipHop website and any additional work that has been done on the site, and will be the public release of that year’s apprenticeship manual. In organizing these hip-hop projects and by taking instructional and leadership roles, youth will be intimately involved in pedagogical processes that will enable them to be future educators and community leaders.