Melbourne School Using Hip-Hop To Help At-Risk Kids

Fitzroy North's Melbourne Academy is helping at-risk and homeless youth through a new curriculum based on students' personal interests and experiences — particularly this year's group's love of hip-hop — to provide them with a practical way in which to re-engage with education. 

As ABC News reports, the Melbourne Academy is part of a Melbourne Citymission initiative to reconnect disengaged at-risk and homeless young people with schooling, and utilises an accredited "applied learning" model (the Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning) to tailor its programs to its students' needs.

Responding to an overwhelming prominence of hip-hop appreciation among its current crop, the academy "jumped on that and created a program around it", educator James Grim told the ABC.

So successful was the initiative that the academy was able to help its students put together their own rap video, for a track titled Straight Outta North Fitz — a parody of NWA's infamous cut Straight Outta Compton. The reimagined, Aussiefied version is considerably more positive (and clean) than the original, and goes to show what even those without privileges so often taken for granted are capable of when given the appropriate channel and opportunity.

Seventeen-year-old student and aspiring rapper Jeremy Horne, along with Melburnian hip-hop identity Mantra, were the chief lyricists for the rework, with the pair leading the group of students in scribing the song — the video for which earned them a nod in the St Kilda Film Festival's Armed And Dangerous youth program.

If you're still not convinced about the effectiveness of the program, hear it from Horne first-hand: "I used to be one of those kids like, 'I hate school, I don't want to be at school, I just want to sleep … but now I'm like, 'Ah, I'd better get to school — they're probably doing something good.' "

Sounds like the Melbourne Academy just might be on to something. Check out the fruit of the class's labours below.