Putting their bodies on the line for a cause they believe in, Break Free Hip Hop School organizers are committed to raising money and awareness for youth in the Houston community that don’t have access to the arts. It’s been nearly a week since the #CreateYourEscape2016 GoFundMe campaign started. Break Free organizers have committed themselves to dancing 24/7 until they reach their goal of funding 2016 Scholarships for youth to access their Hip Hop Culture workshops.
I was able to catch up with Jeremy Peña of Break Free and also a member of Havikoro Crew who recently returned from Honduras where he was a cultural diplomat through Next Level and the US Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Jeremy explained that this campaign is just as much about raising the funds needed for their community work, as it is to raise awareness of the positive impact Hip Hop can have on youth in an educational way. He shared, “Hip Hop education is an initiative to revolutionize Hip Hop. We have curriculum and initiatives where we go into the schools and teach the Hip Hop arts but we’re also teaching math, patterns, reading and significant life skills. We want to raise awareness of Hip Hop education and the necessity for it.”
While crowd funding has been used in the Breaking community through Kickstarter, IndieGoGo and GoFundMe for some time to fund such things as small projects and personal calls for support for the purchase of equipment or costs of health related injuries for well-respected dancers in the scene, this is the largest call for community funding and support the Breaking community has seen yet. 2016 scholarships equates to roughly $1 million dollars in funding and Break Free Hip Hop School organizers say they won’t stop dancing until they’ve reached their goal.
Currently, the campaign has reached just over 1% or about $14,000 of its goal. While there are sure to be skeptics, this campaign is a sincere and honest call to action for support in accomplishing something that could be a game-changer in how Hip Hop Culture is perceived and platformed. This is especially notable as Break Free Hip Hop School is pushing a Hip Hop cultural narrative that not only includes multiple elements of Hip Hop but also puts Hip Hop Dance (Breaking specifically) at the center of the discourse. While a lot of good work has been written about Hip Hop and education, most of that work focuses on Emceeing and Spoken Word rather than the other elements of Hip Hop. However, the notion of connecting to youth through their cultural ways of being and seeing the world, their knowledge bases is a powerful one. Hip Hop is most often historically discussed as being started by youth, for youth: a youth sub-culture born out of hardships and harsh realities in New York in the 1970s by Black and Afro-Latino youth. It is discussed as a platform for youth to say, “I’m here and I matter.” It’s important to note that Hip Hop lovers and practitioners today are found worldwide and are both old and young. Hip Hop has served as a cross-generational and trans-national bridge to build healthy pathways for communication, mentorship and collaboration between generations and diverse peoples. While Hip Hop continues to be a platform and cultural practice for young people to express themselves, find their voice, and speak their truth; many people see Hip Hop only as a commodity or a musical genre. In many cases, Hip Hop, as defined through this narrow spectrum, has been criminalized both on local levels and through mass media.
Break Free Hip Hop School is working to counteract this narrative and bring awareness to the positive impact and transformation Hip Hop Culture can bring to communities. Adrian “Flo” Flores, also a member of Break Free, said, “That’s what we’re trying to spread around Houston right now, trying to get everyone to come down and see what we’re doing. Get them involved.” When asked why the organization is focusing this campaign around 2016 scholarships, Peña noted, “We picked 2016 scholarships because the time is now. We have to go out there and get this for ourselves. We can’t just wait around to have it handed to us. We have to make our own noise. Hip Hop has a lot of negative connotations and misconceptions to it and a lot of people don’t know what Hip Hop truly is. They don’t know that there’s a thriving Breaking scene around the world and it touches lives. The public needs to be educated.”
Hip Hop as a cultural way of being is something lived and learned. For those people in the culture, this is known and acknowledged but Break Free is looking to spread this message to the general public. In order to succeed, they need support from within the Breaking scene as well as beyond. Peña shared, “In order to reach our goal, we need everyone’s help. We can’t do it all on our own. We want the support and movement to be organic. We want it to build. Really big goals, they might seem impossible to some people and be taken as a joke at first. But if you put your mind to it and you really believe in what you’re doing it can be achieved.” He also told me, “I truly believe and expect that by the end of this, artists of all ages and genres will be coming out and getting down with us. And not just dancers, we want to see graffiti artists, emcees and other artists joining in. As the campaign grows and gains more momentum we hope it will become a Hip Hop gathering to raise awareness.”
The good people at Break Free Hip Hop School are looking for support in many aspects and are open to ideas as the community organically starts flexing their support for this cause. That said, here’s a few suggestions to plug in and push this forward:
1. Donate at www.gofundme.com/ibreakfree or by clicking here. Any amount is helpful and appreciated. Even small donations made by a critical mass of individuals can have a huge impact.
2. If you can’t donate, SHARE the campaign, send some personal messages and spread the word.
3. Start a solidarity cypher in your area to help raise awareness and spread the word or skype into the 24/7 cypher in Houston and put down a round or two via the Internet.
4. Change your Facebook profile picture for a week to the Break Free #CreateYourEscape2016 logo & include the campaign website url (www.gofundme.com/ibreakfree) in the description.
5. Donate a piece of art or something that can be sold to raise money. I’m donating one of my handcrafted jewelry pieces from my online site Calli Calli to spread the word and raise funds. The money from the sale of the piece will be donated to Break Free Hip Hop School’s #CreateYourEscape2016 GoFundMe Campaign.
– El La Katrina
