MN Hip-Hop Summit in St. Cloud Friday

ST. CLOUD (WJON News) - Hip Hop culture and how to incorporate it into a number of different occupations is the focus of the Minnesota Hip Hop Summit this Friday at St. Cloud State University.

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The Minnesota Hip Hop and Education Summit is advertised as a one-of-a-kind professional development experience to inspire innovation within the realms of music, dance, fashion, and visual arts.

Mike Dando is the Director of the Communication Arts and Literature Program at SCSU. He says the summit will focus on the exchange of ideas between different careers.

There's actually a whole bunch of different ways that you can express yourself through hip hop: breakdancing, street art, big murals on the side of buildings, or there's also DJ. The last thing that traditionally folks have said binds these things together is what we call knowledge of self. That's the identity formation. Who am I? What's important to me? What am I good at? What am I interested in? How do I make my way through the world? How can I find a way to make a career out of my love of music, or my love of art, or my love of dance, or my love of people?

The keynote speaker is J. Rawls, a hip-hop producer and DJ. In addition to a long list of acts he has produced, he also has over 15 years of K-12 teaching experience and is the author of “Youth Culture Power: A #HipHopEd Guide to Teacher-Student Relationships and Student Engagement".