Hart House Hip Hop Education in partnership with Career Exploration & Education at U of T brings you two days of Hip Hop inspired story-telling, conversation, networking and knowledge exchange.
Overview
Humanz of Hip Hop is specially curated to bring to light the relationship between Hip Hop and the world we live in. This is your opportunity to hear the personal and professional stories of Hip Hop artists, practitioners, scholars and more as they highlight how Hip Hop has been a powerful tool in their personal lives, careers, and communities.
What you can expect at Humanz of Hip Hop:
- Break down stereotypes and misconceptions around Hip Hop and the identities of Hip Hop
- Challenge assumptions about what Hip Hop is really about
- Highlight Hip Hop as a medium for social change and activism
- Shed light on careers and professional work in the Hip Hop arena
- Show truth that Hip Hop and identity are complex, intersectional and transcendent
- We are pleased to present this year's event virtually, but be sure to view the video from our 2019 event to get a real feel for what to expect.
Day 1: Voices of Revolution—Hip Hop has always been the space to speak truth to power, express yourself and stand up for social injustices. On this day we engage in a series of moderated discussions with special guest speakers and moderators from the Hip Hop Community to learn what shapes their unique identity and relationship to hip hop and how it translates in the work they do. The sessions included in this day are open to all communities, all over the world.
Day 2: Career Stories—In partnership with Career Exploration & Education, we are Calling all U of T Students and recent Grads. On this day we learn how to sync your passion for Hip Hop to your future career in an afternoon of conversations and 1 on 1 networking with industry professionals. This day's sessions are specially designed for members of the U of T Community: students, faculty, staff and alumni.
Note: Be sure to register for each day separately and feel free to join for all sessions or simply the ones which interest you most.
Please note once you register for Day 1 you can choose which sessions to go to – Drop in to one session or all three!!!
U of T hip-hop conference highlights virtual storytelling, activism.
Canada's National Observer, Read the article.
Humanz of Hip Hop was a wonderful opportunity to learn about career building, not only in the hip-hop world, but in general. The questions and answers were applicable to any field of study and were able to penetrate any sort of divide between the world of hip hop and other ‘normal’ jobs, such as running a business, working at the bank, or retail.
The Varsity, Read the article
Schedule
Welcome and Keynote
Keynote address and spoken word performance by Randell Adjei titled The Seeds of Opportunity in Adversity
"Adversity does not discriminate. It does not care about your class, race, titles nor ethical practices. At some point we have and we will continue to experience hardship. It's not how hard you get knocked down but how you stand back up and what you learn. In every adversity we face, there are seeds of opportunity to help us build character, gain wisdom and evolve. This keynote will help us unearth the seeds of opportunity in our adversities."
Session One: Hip Hop First — Locating Identity Within Complex Intersectional (Her)stories
- Moderator: Dr. Audrey Hudson
- Special Guest: Eekwol, Hip Hop Artist
- Human Book Title: Hip Hop First - Locating Identity Within Complex Intersectional (Her)stories
- Soundtrack of my story:Tomboy by Princess Nokia
Session Two: Chasing Samples, Chasing Histories
- Moderator: DJ Craig Brooklyn
- Special Guest: DJ Lynnée Denise, Black Music Scholar
- Human Book Title: Chasing Samples, Chasing Histories
- Soundtrack of my story: Rock Steady by Aretha Franklin
Session Three: A work in progress ...
- Moderator: Dr. Francesca D'Amico-Cuthbert
- Special Guest: Ty Harper, Producer (Radio/TV), CBC — This is Not a Drake Podcast
- Human Book Title: A work in progress ...
- Soundtrack of my story: Learn 2 Earn by Mathematik
Special Guests
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Randell Adjei
Transformational Speaker, Spoken Word Practitioner and Arts Educator
Randell Adjei is an entrepreneur, speaker and spoken word practitioner who uses his gifts to Empower the message of Alchemy. He was recently appointed Ontario’s first Poet Laureate.
Randell is the founder of one of Toronto's largest youth led initiatives; Reaching Intelligent Souls Everywhere (R.I.S.E Edutainment). In 2018, R.I.S.E received the Toronto Arts Foundation’s, Mayor’s Youth Arts Award.
Randell is the author of I am Not my struggles, a powerful Anthology released in 2018. Randell was also named CBC’s Metro Morning’s Torontonian of the Year in 2015 and NOW Magazine's Local Hero in May 2017. In 2020, Randell opened up for President Barack Obama at the Economic Club of Canada.
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Eekwol aka Lindsay Knight
Hip Hop Artist
Lindsay “Eekwol” Knight is an Nehiyaw award-winning hip hop performing artist and activist living in Saskatoon, originally from Muskoday First Nation in Treaty Six Territory. She has dedicated years to the culture and craft of hip hop to create something unique and astounding to give back to the community.
Eekwol uses her music and words to spread messages of resistance, revolution and keeping the language, land and culture alive for the next generations. Through her original sound she displays her activist roots by living and creating as a supporter of both Hip Hop and Indigenous culture and rights.
She is currently a PhD student at the University of Saskatchewan. Along with music and academic work, Lindsay frequently works with young people across the country as a mentor and helper. She achieves this through performances, workshops, speaking events, conferences and programs. In 2019 she worked with fellow lyricist, T-Rhyme on a project titled For Women By Women, which was funded by the Canada Council for the Arts.
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ModeratorDr. Audrey Hudson
Chief, Education & Programming at Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) and teaches Black Canadian Studies at U of T
Audrey Hudson is an artist, educator, researcher and futurist. Audrey is on the leadership team at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), where she is the Richard & Elizabeth Currie Chief, Education & Programming and teaches Black Canadian Studies at University of Toronto.
She holds a PhD from University of Toronto/Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (UT/OISE). Most recently, Dr. Hudson co-edited a ground breaking text entitled, In This Together: Blackness, Indigeneity and Hip-Hop, with a chapter, entitled, All eyes on Hip Hop: Afrofuturism and Indigenous Futurities.
Other chapters and articles include: Where We @?: Blackness, Indigeneity and Hip-Hop’s Expression of Creative Resistance (co-authored) (2015); Here We Are On Turtle Island: Navigating Places, Spaces and Terrain (2016); Integrating Black Lives into education: Black Lives Matter Freedom School (2019); and Learning From A Young Indigenous Artist: What Can Hip-Hop Teach Us? (2020) and forthcoming co-edited text in Winter 2020 is, Cosmic Underground Northside: An Incantation of Black Canadian Speculative Discourse and Innerstandings.
Credit line: Photography, Craig Boyko @cbdotcom
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DJ Lynnée Denise
Professor, Black Music Scholar
Lynnée Denise was shaped as a DJ by her parent’s record collection. She’s an artist, scholar, and writer whose work reflects on underground cultural movements, the 1980s, migration studies, theories of escape, and electronic music of the African Diaspora.
Lynnée Denise coined the phrase ‘DJ Scholarship’ to re-position the role of the DJ from a party purveyor to an archivist, cultural custodian and information specialist of music with critical value. Through interactive workshops, lectures and presentations at universities, conferences and performance venues, Lynnée Denise harnesses music as a medium for vital public dialogue on how to transform the way that music of the Black Atlantic is understood in its social context and beyond entertainment. Lynnée Denise’s work on DJ Scholarship has been featured at prestigious institutions such as the Broad Museum, the Tate Modern, Savvy Contemporary Gallery Berlin, Goldsmiths University of London, Iziko South African Museum, Stanford, Yale, NYU, and Princeton University. Her writing has been featured in the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Black Scholar Journal, The Journal of Popular Music Studies, and as part of anthologies including Women Who Rock, and Outside the XY: Queer Black and Brown Masculinity.
Through global residencies supporting her research and production work, she has focused on Black expatriates in Europe, such as James Baldwin, and on South African music in the post apartheid context. She produced the first and only Michael Jackson conference (After the Last Dance) with The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The School of Prince with the Los Angeles Public Library, and Aretha Franklin’s Amazing Grace: From Detroit to Watts, the first conference dedicated solely to the musical life of The Queen of Soul with the UCLA African-American Studies Department.
DJ Lynnée Denise is a product of the Historically Black Fisk University with a MA from the historically radical San Francisco State University Ethnic Studies department. In 2019, she was granted an MFA degree in Creative Nonfiction Writing from the University of California Riverside. With support from the Jerome Foundation Travel Grant, The Astrae Lesbian Foundation for Justice, Idea Capital, Residency BiljmAIR (Netherlands) and The Rauschenberg Artists as Activists Grant, she has been able to resource her performative research on a local, national and global level. Beyond the dance floor, her work provides "Entertainment with a Thesis." She’s was a lecturer at California State University’s Pan African Studies Department and the Chicano Studies Department for four academic years 2015-2019. Lynnée Denise will join the UCLA Department of African American Studies as a lecturer in the fall of 2019 and she’s been invited to serve as a Visiting Artist at Stanford University’s Institute of Diversity in the Arts. Her current book project, Why Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton Matters will be published in 2020 by The University of Texas Press.
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ModeratorDJ Craig Brooklyn
DJ Artist
DJ Craig Brooklyn is propelled by an enduring love of the music he plays. He is a consistent pupil of sound, and truly, an artist whose days are consumed by the possibilities of the auditory landscape. DJ Craig Brooklyn succeeds in creating memorable energetic and consistently distinct experiences for his listeners because he trusts the transformative power of music, in all of its varied forms. He humbly refuses to confine himself to the beauty of one sound, one genre, or a limited set of influences. He has traveled the globe with this sensitive and receptive ear, searching for new ways to blend sounds and tell stories.
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Ty Harper
Radio and TV Producer
Ty Harper is a radio producer and documentarian who has been covering Toronto's hip-hop and R&B scenes for well over a decade: first as co-host/creator of 'O.T.A. Live!' on FLOW 93.5 FM, and later as co-founder of cityonmyback.com. He is currently a producer on 'q with Tom Power' on CBC Radio, and recently hosted and produced CBC's 'This Is Not a Drake Podcast.
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ModeratorDr. Francesca D’Amico-Cuthbert
Program Associate
Francesca D’Amico-Cuthbert is an award-winning historian of American and Canadian Hip Hop culture, the creative industries, and the music marketplace. She holds a Ph.D. in History from York University in Toronto, Canada (2019) and has served as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Toronto (2020-2022) and the University of Calgary (2022-2023). Her doctoral research traced how American emcees in the era of mass incarceration constructed complex ethnographies of urban spaces, transformed dispositions of power, and unmasked the modes and mechanisms of a persistent and haunting coloniality in the afterlives of American slavery. Her recent postdoctoral research explores Canadian Hip Hop’s relationship to national mythmaking, commerce, anti-Black market segmentation and the availability of state revenue streams and marketplace exposure. Her research has been published in: #HipHopEd: The Compilation on Hip Hop Education, The Journal of Canadian Historical Association, Canadian Journal of History, Musicworks, and The Dance Current.
As an Hip Hop educator Francesca has taught several courses on the histories of popular culture, including “Hip Hop and the City” – a course that explores Hip Hop’s evolution from a translocal urban art form to a global commodity. In addition to being a multi-disciplinary creative with training in vocal and instrumental music, dance, and the dramatic arts, Francesca also serves as the Chief Research Officer at the New York City based Hip Hop Hop Education Center where she works collaboratively to establish Hip Hop Education standards and the professionalization of the field.
Career Stories
- Nadine Brown — Sneaker Industry Expert
- Michael Prosserman (Piecez) — Author, Founder, Bboy
- Del Cowie — Music Journalist, Writer, Editor, Producer
Career Stories
Special Guests
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Nadine Brown
Sneaker Industry Expert
Nadine Brown is a sneaker industry professional. Nadine has been in the field for 4 years, creating a variety of events in and outside of the city of Toronto focusing on showcasing local talent and building relationships. Nadine started her 20-year career in the fashion industry, as a Wardrobe Stylist working for a variety of clients, companies and agencies. She is currently a wardrobe stylist for the Film and Television industry for I.A.T.S.E 873 in the Costume department.
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Michael ‘Piecez’ Prosserman
Author, B-Boy and University Instructor
Michael ‘Piecez’ Prosserman is a bestselling author, B-Boy (“breakdancer”), university instructor, and certified coach who specializes in scaling start-ups, team culture, fundraising, and succession. In Michael’s new book Building Unity: Leading a Non-Profit From Spark to Succession, he shares practical tools and stories to launching, leading and leaving a sustainable organization.
He scaled a grassroots organization from the ground up as the Founder of Unity Charity, an organization using Hip-Hop to improve youth mental health. Over 15 years Michael helped grow Unity from a volunteer group to employing 80 staff, raising $7 million, and having an impact on 250,000 youth.
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Del Cowie
Music journalist and editor
Del Cowie is a Toronto-based music journalist and editor who has worked as a writer producer and researcher for the Peabody and International Emmy Award-winning Netflix documentary series Hip Hop Evolution. He has also worked as a producer for CBC Music and was hip-hop editor at national music magazine Exclaim! for over a decade. Additionally, he has contributed writing on hip-hop music and culture to NOW, NOISEY and XXL among other publications.
Cowie has served as a judge for the Junos, the SOCAN Songwriting Prize and the Prism Prize and has been a member of the Polaris Music Prize jury since its 2006 inception. Since 2015 he has produced and presented Before the 6ix, an ongoing panel discussion focusing on Toronto hip-hop history in association with the Toronto Public Library.
Hart House Hip Hop Education supports our values of representation, collaboration and social justice to explore and provide platforms for key principles of hip hop and its importance in our everyday culture on all three campuses. Recognizing hip hop as a powerful global influencer, Hart House seeks to create unique opportunities for students and community to engage hip hop education and artistic expression.
Partner
