RAI Sessions — Rafiki Art Initiatives

What role does Hip Hop play in the lives of Black, Brown, and Indigenous youth in Norway?

CYPHER NORD aims to explore Hip-Hop culture through the perspectives and lived experiences of Black, Brown, and Indigenous youth in Norway, in the form of a participatory film-making project.

Youth 13-20 in three Norwegian cities will be guided through several workshops to collectively develop a short film about Hip-Hop in Norway. This addresses both the increase of migration in Norway that has led to a larger demographic of diaspora youth as well as the multidisciplinary, political foundations of Hip-Hop.

Hip-Hop cyphers are informal gatherings of rappers, beatboxers, dancers, and musicians coming together to jam and create an improvisational music experience. We are calling this film project a cypher to indicate the gathering of a network of youth, filmmakers, musicians, researchers, and community organizers to create a film experience about Hip-Hop culture in Norway. Youth will lead the project and facilitate the workshops, with support from RAI organizers Ro Averin and Amina Ally.

With generous support from Bufdir and Erasmus+ grant funding, CYPHER NORD will take participants ages 13-20 in Oslo, Bergen, and Tromsø through the filmmaking process to develop their own short film about Hip-Hop which they will exhibit as part of the project. They will be a part of an eventual larger film project that captures the process and collages the shorts to make visible a potent and expressive image of what Hip-Hop means to youth in Norway. Additionally, we hope to connect with Hip-Hop artists that the youth will be able to engage with and learn from.

We plan to run three sets of six workshops over the course of one year in Oslo, Bergen, and Tromsø, which will also be made accessible to youth from rural areas. The six workshops will include:

1. Inspiration Activities

2. Mapping

3. Researching and Filming

4. Scripting

5. Editing Sessions

6. Creating a Narrative

Our next step is to find motivated candidates for our Project Manager and Filmmaker roles who share experiential knowledge of BIPOC life in Norway, a passion for film, for Hip-Hop, and a deep interest in creating platforms for the creative expression of racially marginalized youth.