Hip Hop Arts Club at Culture Blast

Backing up after the exhibition in Dublin, my very first Hip Hop Arts Club is kicking off as part of this weekend's Culture Blast at Wimbledon Library.

Organised by Ash Akhtar from the Arts Development (and amazing actor/film-maker in his own right), it's going to be a super fun event that gets high on the mashup of art and words and music.






Inspired by Busta Rhyme's verse on Scenario by Tribe Called Quest (and that crazy video) Hip Hop Arts Club is something that has been brewing for a while, first kicking off at the Collingwood Housing Estate, chatting with the young people as part of their input into the Everybody's Favourite Song CD.

Everyone has a favourite Hip Hop lyric* - something that sticks - a click of poetry or beats or the particular flow that can paint an image that resonates. yes, even with all those mixed metaphors.

And for young people, hip hop is a genre that speaks very clearly to their actual experience (rather than an abstract one). These lyrics, these styles, a certain beat, the way a set of 16 will just capture a time and a place - they're meaningful.

And that meaning isn't always easy to articulate and sometimes it's just a feeling, and that's why it grabs.

The Hip Hop Arts Club uses that as a basis for making art - images from lyrical imagery, picking up on the cycle between poetic rhymes of rap and the feelings and states of art. It's an opportunity to give words to pictures and vice versa.

Ash has organise Culture Blast along similar lines - connecting music and words, books and technology, public places of knowledge and enjoying tunes together.

WrongTom, Sam Underwood, Graham Lawrie and a couple of others are all making work that overlays sound, art and words. And we're taking over the old Wimbledon Library! How cool is that!

I'll be commandeering their Internet Space, surrounded by an old frieze done by the Wimbledon Arts School years ago, so I feel pretty privileged.

It'll be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.


Anyway, I know that some of you are into hip hop or art, so if you're in London and can get to Wimbledon, come on down.


*OK, not everyone, but most people my age and younger do.