Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to today's episode of Red Eye. I'm Jane Williams.
Speaker: Coming up in this episode, Lorentzism speaks with Anna Lipman about Legal Artivism, a mentorship project that uses hip -hop to empower BIPOC youth in the Greater Toronto area.
Speaker: In a recent project based in Scarborough, Ontario, Black youths are teaching their communities about their rights, justice, and the law, and they're doing it using hip -hop. The organization RISE offered a legal artivism program where participants learned about the law, then developed musical and artistic performances that shared their knowledges using forms that were accessible and engaging to their peers.
Speaker: Sociologist and PhD candidate Anna Lipman from York University spent time researching the program and its outcomes for the Black youth involved. Anna Lipman joins me now from Toronto. Hello Anna. Hi there, thanks for having me. Oh yeah, I'm very excited to be talking about this. Now, RISE stands for Reaching Intelligent Souls Everywhere. Who is RISE edutainment and what do they do?
Speaker: Yeah, Rise Entertainment is a really fabulous arts -based nonprofit out of Scarborough and working around the Greater Toronto area. It's been around for, I want to say, a little over 15 years and the goal of the The organization is is really to empower black and racialized youth to express themselves and find community through art, music, and performance.
Speaker: so you know it does exactly what it says, right? It takes that entertainment and it adds in some education and and really tries to use that format to reach young people kind of all over the GTA that are, you know, just struggling with growing up in this society, right? So what was the main idea behind the the program that they offered in what they're calling legal artivism?
Speaker: Yeah, so one of the things that the RISE staff really noticed is that a lot of the people that have come to their programs, whether it be because of what neighborhood they live in or the color of their skin or their class, tend to have a lot of interactions with the legal system whether that be the criminal system you know the family law system or even immigration and employment but most folks actually didn't really know too much about the law itself what their rights were what the law says about how they have to be treated and so the staff really thought
Speaker: This would be a really great opportunity to take some youth leaders, teach them about the law, but then also we have them create this art that is so catchy, so accessible that you know everyone in the community, whether or not they have a law degree, can really learn about the law and really learn about what their legal rights are in Canada.
Speaker: The idea just sounds so genius. How did Rise engage with these emerging black artists through this nine month residency? Let's break it down a bit. What did they learn in the first part of the program? Yeah, so the program was split into three phases.
Speaker: The first phase of the program was the kind of legal information part. So the artists got workshops on all different kinds of law from entertainment law, criminal law, employment law.
Speaker: And then based on what they were personally interested in, they got connected to a legal mentor, someone who worked or had a lot of experience within the legal sphere to kind of help them narrow down what aspect of the law they wanted to really research, understand, and share out to their peers.
Speaker: Now in the next phase, they had an artistic mentor. So what kinds of training and mentoring did they provide? So in the second phase, that was really the creation phase. So the artist got paired with an artistic mentor, someone who had a background in you know the same kind of art that the artists themselves were interested in. So ah we had a few rappers, we had a visual artist, and we had some singers and poets. And so each of them really worked with their mentor to you know't create a piece of art or a song that not only was like
Speaker: catchy, interesting, amazing, but also really touched on these aspects of the law, right? And so for a lot of the artists that meant doing more revisions and edits to their their song, their piece, then you know most of them have really ever done before and that kind of iterative process of you know, taking this piece, going back to the mentor, ah having them say like, oh, this is really good. I think you can add a little bit more here. Let's see if you can kind of break this down a little bit more. And, you know, hearing the songs along the way and on the final track, it's really amazing to see the growth and the kind of journey that the songs took through this mentorship process.
Speaker: So then how did they wrap it up? How did the the young artists take their work to fruition in the final phase of the program? Yeah, so the final phase was the showcase phase, probably the most exciting and fun phase. So it started out with a showcase at Center for Employment and Excellence for Black entrepreneurs. And they did a full performance of all their music and poetry for our visual artists. They had a little gallery going in the hallway.
Speaker: Then after that they did a couple more performances at community spaces so some sort of open to the public community showcases of their their music their arts and one of the most exciting things that the artist did was A few of them actually went to a couple different high schools around Scarborough with their legal mentors and were able to perform their pieces, talk to the students about what influenced their pieces, what you know brought them to this work. And then them and their mentors were actually able to do a ah really engaged Q and &A with the students, not only about music, but also about the legal system and their legal rights.
Speaker: Wow, so cool. Yeah, it was awesome. Now you undertook research and some evaluation of the program. what What were you trying to find out, Anna? So my research interest is really trying to understand how young people use hip -hop culture as a way to sort of understand themselves, who who they are,
Speaker: what their kind of identity means within our social world and how that understanding really influences them to engage in ah you know social and political movements.
Speaker: And so this program was such an amazing, really slice of of this greater idea that, you know, hip -hop can really help us, and and I felt this in my youth as well, you know, understand who we are, how we sort of fit into the world and what we can do to make the world a little bit better in in the short time we have here, right?
Speaker: And so through this program and through kind of hanging out with the artists and getting to interview them after, I really got a fabulous idea of the power of hip -hop to to help people build their understanding of their identity and how that fits into our our greater social world.
Speaker: Let's listen to one of the pieces. I'm just going to play a ah little clip from the top of Finesse by the artist King of Hearts, so let's listen to that right now.
Speaker: my choice to trade off came for the deadline lost my rights and game moham i had no but to conform and take the shot that don't say There we go. I love it. It's so catchy. It is. Tell us more about the the song and how the artist experienced creating it and and then sharing it out.
Speaker: yeah so i love this song finesse you know not only is it such a catchy rap song that i think could you know so easily be played on the radio but it also is such a reflection of king of hearts life and and really what he wants for himself out of the music so the song is about employment law and unfair termination from a job so king of hearts is actually talking about his his own life and his own experiences in this becoming a father and at the same time struggling with trying to find employment keep his employment and you know one of the reasons that he really wanted to make the song is
Speaker: not only to challenge this stereotype of black men as sort of deadbeat fathers, ah but also to reclaim this idea that it's a personal loss.
Speaker: it's a reflection of one's personal self when things like job loss happen because for him it was very much a systemic issue that he wasn't able to do anything about, right? And so one of the things that really inspired him to make the song was knowing that there's so many other young people dealing with employment, precarity, dealing with unfair termination that really don't know their legal rights within employment. And so in the song, not only does he kind of talk about his own experiences, but he talks about legal recourse that people have when they're terminated, how to apply for EI, all these really helpful things that
Speaker: People should really know but but haven't really been taught at any point in their life, right? It sounds like so empowering on so many levels. Absolutely. And and that's really what we found from the program, right? What were some of the other themes explored by the artists who were involved?
Speaker: I think employment law was a major theme. There were a few other songs about that, just kind of talking about what it's like for Black youth to enter into a job ah where sometimes they might be the only Black person there, you know, really dealing with discrimination, while also understanding that you need a paycheck to survive, especially in places like, you know, Toronto, where rent is extreme, right?
Speaker: But we also had lots of folks talking about criminal law, really talking about how these interactions with the law don't define who you are, right? and And they're not a personal defect, but again, they're they're this result from systemic discrimination from our inability as young people to really grasp what our rights are and how to implement them in these really scary situations where there's very much a power imbalance, right? And so I think pretty much all of the artists when they talked about
Speaker: why they decided to join the program, why they decided to make that song. Very much, it was about their community, their peers, and really ah helping them understand that, you know, they have so much potential in power and they just need to feel good about using it, right?
Speaker: What, Anna, are your takeaways about the transformational aspects of this type of artistic engagement, both for the artists and the audiences? And are there things that we can learn from this as a broader approach to art and activism?
Speaker: Yeah, I think one of the really amazing themes that came out of this research is seeing the impact of positive community, positive Black community, supportive community on these young people. You know, entering in to rise and entering into this program, for a lot of folks it felt like an amazing, really supportive place where through their music, through their art, they were able to just really be themselves, but but also be challenged by their peers to aspire to greater things, right? And it was that community that they were part of
Speaker: that really inspired them to want to be leaders in their own home communities and and to really be role models for the people that that listen to their music and that maybe are looking at them and thinking, wow, this person went through this, maybe I'm not so alone, you know? And really just the impact of positive community, positive individual identity construction is really what is motivating these young people to to give back and to to create more equitable and just worlds. And so, you know, for me, I think I was just so amazed at the power of positive community and the impacts that they can have, not only on on the folks that are directly in them, but even on the people that are are hearing this music, are are witnessing this community, you know?
Speaker: So great to talk to you about this today. it's ah It's really inspiring and moving to hear about the project. Awesome. Thank you so much for having me. I've been speaking with sociologist and PhD candidate Anna Lipman from York University. You can find the album on Tidal or Spotify or go to the website at riseedutainment .com to see an artist booklet for Legal Artivism, A Journey of Art and Activism.
Speaker: Anna Lipman's article on the project was published on the conversation .ca and is called Through Hip Hop, Black Youth Are Teaching Their Communities About Their Rights, Justice, and the Law.
Speaker: The Red Eye Collective is based in Vancouver. You can check us out at coopradio dot .org slash redeye.
