On Friday 6th March, Kingsmead was lucky to have a well known UK hip hop artist Akala and his 'Hip Hop Shakespeare Company' come to our theatre to work with students from Year 7-13 about rapping and its links to Shakespeare.

Year 10 student Cordell had this to say about the event, "The music workshop I went to was very interesting.  It made me think about how exciting it is to learn about Shakespeare and the poems and plays he wrote.  I also learned that his rhythm was very similar to our present day artists that do rap, hip hop, etc.  I enjoyed that Akala came in and did this workshop with us.  He made us write rhymes to expereience how Shakespeare's flow was similar to our own.  We compared the two by experimenting with lines from his plays and read them as rap and it was the same!  I like the fact that Akala came in and I would love to do it again if we had another chance.  It was excellent."

Curtley Brown (Year 10) added, "It was fun to be with different year groups and it helped to boost our confidence because we had to perform in front of each other.  We learnt about the History of Music and its present day cousin.  It was good to see rap shown in a positive way, as it often gets a negative press."

Ms Wilson, Head of Year 10 agreed, "I was impressed with how Akala was such a positive role model and he even taught me some really interesting things about the history of rap in African history.  He challenged my perceptions of rap and made me see how talented some rappers really are.  I was really moved to see our students rapping Shakespeare's lyrics and accessing him in a way I have never seen before - there was definitely something to build into Shakespeare lessons in the future!"

Thank you to Ms Ali-Khan, Head of Media Studies, for organising this cross-curriculum and multi-year group event.