Money Power Respect: building self-awareness through a critical look at hip hop music and culture

Global Education Derby has for the last four years been exploring the potential of using hip hop in youth work to improve the mental wellbeing of troubled young people. The young people we work with have a history of adverse childhood experience. The stories they relate often feature emotional or physical neglect, alcohol or other substance misuse by parental figures, a parent in prison, witnessing of domestic violence and so on.
Their response has been ineffective, and ultimately self-destructive, coping strategies often involving substance abuse, self-harm, or attraction to gang culture etc leading to poor educational attainment and frequent contact with the criminal justice system.
The use of hip hop lyrics has been the key to providing a non-stigmatising way for young people to acknowledge confusing and negative emotions.
Hip-hop is rich with mental health references related to addiction, psychosis, conduct disorder, bipolar disorder, as well as multiple environmental risk factors (such as gang culture, poverty, destructive parental influences etc) that have not been properly explored for their potential benefit in developing self-knowledge.
The reflection and creativity that runs through all project activities helps young people think things through and find ways to deal with feelings in a less destructive way. Lyric writing focuses a young person on where they want to be and how they want to feel a few years down the line and helps build communication skills and sense of agency that they can shape their own life.

The new project intends to develop the approach further through sharing expertise with partner agencies across Europe with relevant experience from using compatible methodologies such as art therapy, positive psychology etc. The aim is to distil best practice and produce a practitioner resource, based on using the widespread interest in hip hop, to reach young people who currently are unable to acknowledge emotional problems that are damaging their relationships and their chances of a happy and fulfilled life.

The main elements of the project will be:
An initial week-long training session for youth work practitioners (to be held in the UK) that will introduce participants to the theoretical and practical underpinning of the project. It will outline the Connect Challenge Change methodology, the ideas of “hip hop psyche”, Philosophy for Children, and critical media literacy.
Participants will leave with an action plan for work to be carried out with their youth groups in their own countries. Each country will produce a digital case study of their activities for inclusion on the project website.
Practitioners will meet up again after completing their in-country activities to review materials produced and select best practice for inclusion in the final web resource.
Global Education Derby will have responsibility for the design, editing and publishing of the final resource which will include case studies, youth voice, practitioner guidance, introductory materials, session plans, and comprehensive links to other resources.