Over the past two weeks, we’ve shared BEAT’s strategic plan, and Brittany shared our goals for our Hip Hop arts education programming. I’m delighted to come to you with the element that really gets me excited: our evolution into clinical research.
Eleven years ago, I founded BEAT to preserve authentic Hip Hop culture and to teach young people how to leverage Hip Hop to better advocate for themselves and their needs. After a decade of programming, we realized the utility of Hip Hop went well beyond self-advocacy. Our participants flourished in ways that surprised us all, and one of the most encouraging observations was the connection between beatboxing and speech therapy.
Instead of just continuing with programming as usual, we decided to follow the evidence and ask why this was happening. Why were participants seeing such incredible benefits from Hip Hop? What is Hip Hop’s effect on health and wellness?
Last month, we launched our first study into the impact of beatboxing on the speech and voice characteristics of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities! Thanks to generous funding from the JANX Foundation, we’re working with Duquesne University in Pittsburgh and Ariel University in Israel to examine the effects of beatboxing on speech and voice characteristics of adolescents and young adults with Down syndrome. We are also excited to explore the therapeutic impact of beatboxing on the brain with partners at NYU. You can find more about all of these studies on our redesigned website.
We envision a world where Hip Hop is embraced as an integral tool in educational, clinical, and therapeutic settings to unlock the proven benefits of creative self-expression. Through our research, we seek to understand and optimize the power of Hip Hop as a pathway to improving health and healing. Next week, you’ll hear more about how we’ll use our research findings to train professionals to use Hip Hop as a tool to advance clinical and health practices. Today’s Hip Hop research will be tomorrow’s wellness FACTS.
We are thrilled to embrace BEAT’s evolution from arts education vendor into a champion of Hip Hop as a dynamic tool in improving physical and mental wellbeing across industries. Thank you for growing with us.
Be well,
James
