1st Annual It’s All About M.E.E. Festival – A Celebration of Media, Expression and Education
Sponsored by SoonR, African Ancestry, St. Martin Press, The Ave Magazine, and The Institute for Urban Education at New School University

The It’s All About M.E.E. (Media, Expression, and Education) Festival is a 3-day multi-media celebration taking place from February 23–25, 2007. It’s All About M.E.E combines the best of our Freshest Youth Program, the Urban Word NYC Poetry Slam Final, and the Hip-Hop Education Summit [H2Ed].

Over 15 community arts and media organizations will participate in the celebration, representing cities like San Jose, Oakland, L.A., Chicago and DC, as well as countries like Mongolia, Brazil & Canada. Workshop Facilitators include Full Circle, The Grassroots Artists MovEment (G.A.ME), Beatbox Entertainment, What’s the 411 Initiative, Words Beats and Life, and Hip-Hop Congress. Special celebrity guests include Roxanne Shante, Doug E. Fresh, and Pharoahe Monch, as well as notable Educators and community leaders such as Jeff Duncan-Andrade, Tamara Dawit, Professor Dave Stoval, Mark Gonzales, Ora Wise, Lavie Raven, and Professor Andrew Ryan will engage in dialogue and workshops. In addition to three days of programming, the Hip-Hop Association will celebrate the official release of the Hip-Hop Education Guidebook: Volume 1, a comprehensive tool for those interested in Hip-Hop Education.
“Finally, a book that deftly (and def-ly) chronicles the history, development and practice of Hip-Hop-In-Education, and more importantly- Hip-Hop AS education. If education is not one of the first ten elements of Hip-Hop, then nobody in Hip-Hop is keepin’ it real except teachers.”

–Danny HochWriter, Actor, Founder of the Hip-Hop Theater Festival

“Teachers have no other choice but to learn how to use Hip Hop in the classroom. It’s the language of the children. They have to respect the culture of Hip-Hop.”

–Talib Kweli, Hip-Hop artist
“The H2Ed Guidebook places Hip Hop as not only today’s most important media-artistic influence, but also in its rightful place as the most relevant social, political and cultural phenomena of our time. It is critical and analytical, instructional and intellectual, and thus provides our school community a variety of ways to think about and act upon our lives. It has become a foundational resource in our classrooms.”

–James O’Brien, Ph.D & Principal | Brooklyn Community Arts & Media High School (BCAM)

Sponsors of the 1st Annual It’s All About M.E.E. Festival include SoonR, African Ancestry, St. Martin Press, The Ave Magazine, and The Institute for Urban Education at New School University. For more information and registration visit www.h2ed.net/itsallaboutmee.

Contact:

212.500.5970
press@hiphopassociation.org

About the Hip-Hop Association:

The Hip-Hop Association (H2A) is a non-profit, 501(c)(3) community building organization with national headquarters in Harlem. Our mission is to utilize Hip-Hop culture as a tool to facilitate critical technology, education, and leadership development; while preserving Hip-Hop culture for future generations. For more information visit www.hiphopassociation.org.

About Urban Word NYC:

Urban Word NYC ignited the youth spoken word and poetry scene in New York City when it was established in partnership with Teachers & Writers Collaborative in 1999. Since then, Urban Word NYC has provided thousands of New York City teenagers with free, safe, ongoing, and uncensored writing and performance opportunities. Urban Word believes teenagers can and must speak for themselves and the key to building self-confidence, honing critical thinking skills, and developing imaginative and honest writing is to honor what they say and feel. For more information, please visit www.urbanwordnyc.org.

About BCAM:

Brooklyn Community Arts & Media High School provides students a small, personalized learning environment with school, family, and the surrounding Brooklyn and citywide community in a collaborative educational partnership. We offer an exciting and challenging college preparatory academic curriculum and a professional focus in leading communications, arts, and media fields, in a culture wherein students are encouraged to develop individual responsibility, social awareness, self-expression, collective action, and discipline. Through this three-dimensional notion of high school, BCAM students gain the academic, professional, and social skills to enter a range of college and professional opportunities, and most importantly, succeed in this high stakes 21st Century.