What is Hip-Hop Doing to/For Our Communities and Youth?

About the Author

bryan_a_gordon

bryan_a_gordon • 01/22/10 • 9:59am

KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Leila Steinberg

Saturday, February 27^th ^,9AM-4:30PM

Seattle Vocational Institute 2120 S. Jackson St

This year our theme will address the question of: What is Hip-Hop Doing to/For Our Communities and Youth? The NW Leadership Conference serves as a yearly opportunity to examine and explore issues related to hip-hop like sustainability, accountability, global citizenship, leadership, ownership, privilege, diversity, social justice, race/racism, sexual orientation, gender relations, and getting paid in a multicultural 21^st century America. This conference fits in perfectly with many of the issues that interest and challenge us every day. We are looking for workshop sessions that stretch participants’ thinking every day, all day all year long. The workshop sessions will be challenging, though-provoking and provide participants with practical skills and tools to listen, process and take action.

Leila Steinberg is an artist and community organizer who began working with youth twenty years ago in the San Francisco Bay area. As the daughter of a criminal defense attorney, she grew up surrounded by the workings of the justice system and took a front row seat at the personal tragedies and socio-economic pressures that turn so many at-risk youths into hardened felons. Steinberg is committed to helping people who fall through the cracks of society. As hip-hop music became the expression of today's youth, Steinberg began training artists to develop voices powerful enough to reach a generation. While conducting poetry workshops in Northern California, she met Tupac Shakur and he became a regular participant in her class. Tupac referred to Leila as the "bow" and himself as the "arrow."Steinberg started the Microphone Sessions, a weekly workshop where young musicians and hip-hop artists write and perform new material, get feedback and launch discussions about pressing issues in their lives and in their communities. Steinberg's collaboration with Tupac deeply influenced the way she developed her workshops. Tupac Shakur is now an icon. The poems published posthumously in The Rose That Grew From Concrete, were written by Tupac while he attended Steinberg's workshop. He entrusted her with original copies of his work to safe-keep. Along with Tupac's mother, Afeni, Leila was instrumental in getting them published. Steinberg was Co-Executive Producer of the spoken-word album of the same name, released on Interscope Records, with performances by Quincy Jones, Run D.M.C. and Danny Glover. She also produced and appears in the Tupac documentary, "Thug Angel," with Executive Producer Quincy Jones III.

www.hearteducation.org/leila.html

about the Diversity Speaker Series

The NW Hip-Hop Leadership Conference is a part of the Bush School’s Diversity Speaker Series (DSS). Over the past two years, The DSS has welcomed many nationally/internationally recognized speakers to engage the Bush community, and the greater Seattle area in conversations about leadership, diversity and privilege. For more information about DSS, please visit our website: www.bush.edu/diversity. If you have any questions, suggestions or concerns, please call Dr. Eddie Moore, Jr., Director of Diversity, at 555-5555 or xxxxx@xxxxx.com.

Cause: Music & Entertainment, Social Justice

Groups:

Youth Media Institute, West Seattle High School

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