B-SIDE Hip-Hop Festival Brings Battles, Breakdancing And Beats

Birmingham Hippodrome co-produced a jam-packed free Hip-Hop festival at the theatre and in the Southside streets (Mon 7 - Sun 13 May). Across a week of festival fun, there were dance competitions, rap battles and family-friendly workshops, plus graffiti and street art - set to the sounds of the festival from live DJs and MCs. Now in its third year, B-SIDE Hip-Hop Festival attracted a wide audience of Hip-Hop fans and novices alike from around the world.

As well as the usual programme of events, new to this year's festival, was a Hip-Hop game show where people tested their Hip-Hop knowledge and competed with friends. There were also opportunities for budding creatives to learn from the professionals with artist development labs, artist talks and master classes with Hip-Hop pioneers such as Henry Link.

The festival also included B-SIDE school workshops at key schools in the Midlands, which are part of the Hippodrome Education Network. Festival directors ran workshops in Graffiti art and breakdancing for all school years.

Birmingham Hippodrome partnered with festival directors Break Mission, Juice Aleem, Mickael Riviére and GraffitiArtisit.com to produce B-SIDE Hip-Hop Festival. The event is sponsored by POSCA.

Birmingham Hippodrome is an independent, not-for-profit, registered charity (No. 510842) welcoming an average 500,000 visits annually making it the most popular single auditorium in the UK. Birmingham Royal Ballet and DanceXchange are resident partners; the theatre presents all of Welsh National Opera's repertoire, and welcomes the best in international dance, major touring dramas, West End musicals and one of the UKs biggest pantomimes. It also houses the 200-seat Patrick Centre, with extensive events facilities, and its own restaurant.

As a charity with no public revenue funding, Birmingham Hippodrome receives generous support from the business community through sponsorship and other partnerships; from individuals through donations and memberships; and from grant-making Trusts for special programming and infrastructure projects. It is a major employer and plays a leading role in the Southside Business Improvement District.

Through Hippodrome PROJECTS we deliver three strands of work:

Community - an annual programme of indoor and outdoor live performance, community work, and transformational projects. This includes festivals such as B-Side, our annual Hip-Hop festival, Summer in Southside and Chinese New Year, through to the bi-annual Birmingham Weekender.

Learning - We also deliver a broad range of learning projects from early years through to life-long learning. This includes our work within schools and colleges and community groups across the West Midlands, through to access work and our regular programme of talks and tours and initiatives such as TEDXBrum.

Artistic Ambition - We invest in artistic talent and diversity - whether a mainstage musical or a new Patrick Centre production, building partnerships to produce and present. We support local artists as an incubator of new ideas and talent, whilst bringing the best international companies to our stages.

Hippodrome Projects is a critical part of our work as a registered charity, helping us with our ambitions to deliver One Million Hippodrome Moments.

Break Mission is a Hip-Hop events and educational Community Interest Company that brings people together to experience a cultural understanding of what the Hip-Hop community is really about. They also raise awareness of the homeless situation in our local community through dance, music and art - and as a way of giving back, clothes and food donations for the homeless are entry to the events themselves.

The original concept of Break Mission was inspired by a Break Dance event which was held in Bronx, New York by Aby from The Bronx Boys rocking Crew 1975 original concrete rocking crew and it required no entry fees but food and clothes.

Photo Credit: Joe Bailey