Inspiring change: how hip hop is helping young people in Bendigo

Now in Bendigo, the subculture is being used as a way to reach out to some of the most disadvantaged and vulnerable young people in the city and beyond.

Each Wednesday afternoon, in a building at Eaglehawk Railway Station, you can find teenagers and young adults learning how to dance, working on their music, practising their aerosol art skills, or simply relaxing.

The place is known as Hip-Hop Drop, a youth drop-in space created and run by not-for-profit organisation HipHopportunities for Youth.

HipHopportunities was established 10 years ago by youth worker and hip hop enthusiast Mike Flood, who founded the initiative when he moved to Bendigo and wondered what was available for young people outside sport.

Working at HipHopportunities to deliver its projects are two young people passionate about hip hop: Tiger Jorgensen and Jai Atkinson.

Tiger teaches hip hop dance at the drop-in space and through the school-based Breakin’ the Mould, which aims to give disengaged students a positive link within their school and an incentive to stay.

Meanwhile Jai works with young people in the recording studio, helping them create their own music and learn more about sound production.

Being young themselves and sometimes having experienced similar issues instantly gives Jai and Tiger a stronger connection with some of the young people who show up.

Jai has been involved with HipHopportunities for years, himself having been referred to the initiative when he was in high school.

“The teachers knew I was into music and hip hop was like my main focus,” he said.

“They were trying to find a way to re-engage me with school, get me more involved and sort of have a better attitude.”

This is part of what Mike hopes the model will achieve: he wants young people to easily relate to their peer mentors, and, hopefully, become leaders for other young people themselves.

“(We want to) build leaders… by young people who aren’t given those opportunities necessarily,” he said.

“We see the ability in those young people, and they’re not given the opportunities to kind of harness that.”

Some of the young people who walk through the doors of the youth space are experiencing difficulties in their life, which are often significant; the organisation works with young people on youth justice orders and clients of such welfare organisations as Anglicare, as well as students having trouble at school.

For these young people, the culture of hip hop is something they can relate to and this helps encourage them to open up, paving the way for them to begin to re-engage with education or work and the wider community.

As Jai explains, hip hop started out as a way for people to express their experiences of oppression.

“I think a lot of kids nowadays feel that they fit into that category and they hear certain songs or see art pieces or dances that speak about that, they can connect to it quicker, and find it as a way for them to voice their feelings on how they’ve been pushed down in life in other aspects and what not,” he said.

Tiger adds that despite there increasingly being more encouragement for people to open up and talk about their feelings, it is still hard for young people to express themselves, especially when they feel they are not being listened to because of their age.

But hip hop helped overcome that, she said.

“It’s so versatile in how you can express your feelings through hip hop, and I think that’s what young people need,” Tiger said.

Mike said for some young people, especially boys, encouraging them to see a counsellor was a “hard sell”, but they could let it all out in the recording booth.

Hip hop was also accessible, Mike said, describing it as the “DIY culture”.

“You can do it all yourself, and that’s always been hip hop, and that’s probably the appeal for young people who don’t necessarily have massive amounts of resources,” he said.

Tiger, Jai and Mike have seen changes in young people as a result of their involvement with the organisation, an openness that wasn’t there when they first arrived.

Tiger said she had started to see young people simply be themselves and believe in their own ability.

“You see a transition from when they started to come: they were quiet, they were very reserved, or they were the opposite, they put on this really tough front… But then they sort of let you in a bit, and they show you their vulnerability,” she said.

Tiger said the advantages of hip hop dance were not limited to physical health, but also bolstered mental health and self-confidence.

Jai said school attendances had gone up and troubling incidents had dropped among a certain group of young people he worked with.

They were happier, he said, and open to more self-reflection, recognising some of the situations and people they had been involved in were not the best for them.

The benefits of their work are also being recognised outside the organisation.

Other services had been supportive of their initiatives, Mike said, and they worked with case workers from such organisations as the Department of Justice and welfare agencies.

He said the project also served as a “soft entry” for young people to access help from other services, as those behind HipHopportunities could refer them on where necessary.

HipHopportunities was an entirely volunteer-driven operation until it received funding from the state government, which will support its activities for three years.

In the future, Mike hopes Eaglehawk Railway Station will become a permanent home for the organisation, providing an opportunity to invest more in capital works and equipment for the young people.

Jai and Tiger would also like to one day be able to travel with a group of young people to competitions and events, and give them the chance to experience hip hop culture in other places they might not otherwise have the opportunity to visit.

For Mike, using hip hop as a way of engaging with and helping young people has proven successful because it taps into their interests.

It requires no commitment from the youth and there is no specific problem they are setting out to solve at HipHopportunities; Mike, Tiger, Jai and others involved in the project are seen by young people as simply being there to work with them on the things they love.

“They come here because they’re passionate... Right from the get-go, it’s a different relationship that we have with them,” Mike said.