 | | Taking part in SPARK! |
Philip Charles has been running special rap-writing workshops for SPARK, an arts education project run by the West Yorkshire Playhouse. Pupils at Buttershaw High School, Grove House, St John's Church of England and Woodside Primary Schools have been taking part in Asian Dance, Caribbean Art, storytelling, Carnival, mask and puppet making activities as well as rap writing.
 | | Philip Charles |
The SPARK project is about finding new ways of learning in schools whose pupils traditionally have had little access to the arts. Philip talks about his role in the project: "We use rap and hip hop to engage and educate. You've got young people who are disillusioned or who are disengaging from the education process. Often they latch on to negative aspects of hip hop culture of which there are many. We use the rap workshops to teach them literacy, numeracy, citizenship and behaviour. [It's] getting them to think about themselves a bit more and the way they speak. It's just trying to re-engage them but also teaching them that rap isn't just about guns and bling and that sort of thing. It essentially boils down to using the English language in a creative way to express your thoughts and feelings." When Philip and Marcus Lee, his partner in their joint company PiPeLine Productions, go into schools they start off by doing their own rap performance. Philip explains: "Obviously if you try and engage the young people, especially in something like rap, they need to know you can do it yourself so we give them a 'wow' to begin with and that hooks them in, and also breaks the ice because we've performed. In the performance we do we tell them to pay attention to what we are saying lyrically because there are no negative aspects in there. We are talking sense and using vocabulary in an interesting way. We are setting up ourselves as models within hip hop which are not negative. | "They don't realise they are using the techniques that Shakespeare used." | | Philip Charles |
"Next we take what might be described as a negative role model - Tupac. As an example we play 'Dear Mama', a song he wrote that not many people know about. He loves his Mum, appreciates everything she's done for him. We use that to show the young people that this guy - who uses swearing a lot in his songs, and talks about killing this person and doing things to somebody's wife, and that kind of thing - also wrote a song which brings a tear to your eye. It shows you can be macho, you can be brave but still have emotions and show them. It also shows that raps can be about more than materialistic things and hurting people. They can be about love and feelings and if Tupac can do it, then you can! "That's the culture side, the stereotypes, and then we are also breaking down the English language into syllables, rhymes, synonyms, metaphors, rhyming couplets and so on. They don't realise they are using the techniques Shakespeare used, that Wordsworth used - all those famous poets. If you sat them down and said, 'Today we're going to study Shakespeare', they'd say, 'I'm not doing that' but they are learning the same things."
 | | Rap doesn't have to be negative... |
But do Bradford schoolchildren have anything to rap about? Philip believes everybody has something personal to say: "I ask them key questions: What do you love? What do you hate? What do you enjoy doing? What do you dislike doing? What's your favourite thing in the whole world and who do you love the most? The answers to all those questions are personal and, if that doesn't bring out anything, I also ask: "Is there anything that stands out in your past, or anything that you are thinking about for the future that you might like to talk about. Everything is very personal and that's a very important thing in rap - that it's about your life because that's the thing you know best about." The second phase of the SPARK project in Bradford comes to an end with the special event at Buttershaw High School on Thursday March 15th, 2007. Philip says: "It's very sad when you come to the end because you get very attached to the young people you are working with and there is that sadness, but then there are the new people you start working with, their experiences and the lives they bring to the table." And, in the future, Philip and his partner Marcus hope to go on introducing young people in Bradford to rap in a very positive way: "We're hoping to set up an alternative centre which uses rap music to improve literacy, numeracy and to hopefully deliver GCSE Citizenship and the new National Art Award." |
