A Northern Soul

These are the five elements of hip hop. Very few art forms require mind, body and soul.

 If you work in a school you appreciate that hip hop, along with its rap offshoots, is a popular form of cultural expression. The issue with education is that is driven by white middle-class men, more interested in the traditional, the canonical, than the contemporary and fresh. In the last few years GCSE English Literature has been adapted to include a pre-19^th century text, which means students no longer study a text written after 1945. Don't get me wrong, there is a place for heritage literature: there’s no denying that Austen, Dickens and Shakespeare require study; in fact, it’s a thrill when students see the connection between their lives and these ‘ancient worlds.' However, education shouldn’t just project institutional taste onto young people, it should respond to theirs too.

Steve Arnott is a person trying to do such a thing. He’s discovered by filmmaker Sean McAllister at an arts meeting. Now, Steve doesn’t look like a tastemaker. Everyone around him is younger, displaying a social ease he finds uneasy. Indeed, he's right to observe that ‘these people look like they’ve got nothing to worry about.’ Steve, on the other hand, does. He works in a warehouse on relatively low pay; his marriage has broken down, forcing him to move back in with his sick mother- and he has up to his neck in debt. Steve doesn’t have the lightness of being as many artists do; there is no trust fund to catch him if he falls. Despite not wanting to be, he’s a "starving artist" in every sense. And unlike the poverty voyeur of Common People, who 'could call their dad (to) stop it all,’ Steve's bank of mum and dad is payday loans.

Poster art of Steve Arnott

McAllister is drawn to him. Up in Hull to direct the first night of its Capital of Culture celebrations, he sees Steve as a kindred spirit. McAllister left school at 16 and got a job in a factory for nine years, before leaving to become a filmmaker. He understands how people can be trapped in financial and aspirational poverty. The arts were McAllister’s way out. Since leaving Hull, he’s produced documentaries on Iraq, Yemen and Syria; the latter Syrian Love Story was one of the best films I saw last year. Steve is different in that he doesn’t want to leave Hull. Instead he wants to expand it. I’m not being facetious when I say this. I appreciate Hull is often used a punch-line by southerners for all that is shit and dirty; however, it’s a city with pride. Its fisheries were once the envy of Britain, bringing huge sums of money in. William Wilberforce, the English politician who argued against the slave trade, came from there. Further, Phillip Larkin, the great post-war poet, worked in its university library. Steve’s big concern is that the City of Culture might pass the satellite estates by. He explains how some families don’t have the money to come into town, which stops them from benefitting from the artistic provision on offer. (When I worked in West Leeds there were children who had never been into its city centre- their world globe had just one location: home.)

Steve’s dream is to take a bus into deprived schools and communities, where he can then deliver hip hop tutorials to youngsters. The medium is something they are used to, which may make them more willing to communicate. His hope is that it empowers children to express themselves creatively, rather than aggressively. At the start everything seems to be going well: the company he works for donates a bus that he has kitted out with recording equipment. Soon Beats Bus is pulling into schools, teaching children how to breakdance and flow. The children are drawn into this fast vibrant world, one every bit as colourful as Alice's Wonderland. There are two kids in particular that stand out. Harvey, a boy with a stutter, who finds articulating his feelings difficult; and Blessing, a bodyshaker, who is made of charisma and light. Steve continues to go from school to school, but he also enlists the pair into his crew that perform in city festivals over the year.

Steve, the crew and the beats bus.

I appreciate my description so far might make this seem like School of Rock. It isn’t. Steve is not a hype man in the vein of Jack Black. He’s quiet and sensitive with the children - and McAllister. The time he puts into this social enterprise costs him at work, as he struggles to juggle what is effectively two full-time jobs. The daughter that he dotes on lives an hour and a half away – difficult, given he hasn’t got a car. This all occurs whilst the debts continue to mount. If he was up to his neck in it before, he’s now up to his eyeballs. Watching a man trying to keep his dignity when it’s being stripped from him is a difficult watch. Frequently, Steve’s eyes threaten tears. The trauma of witnessing abuse as a child clearly had a profound effect on him; now it’s capitalism slapping him down. Ironically, in many senses, he’s a Conservative poster boy – The Big Society in action; he should be put on a pedestal, held up as a totem for social change; instead, he’s starved out, kicked down, warned not to dream.

I’ll end by ruminating on Blessing’s words. In his first performance, he said he had ‘butterflies in his stomach’; by his second ‘dragons.' From the frantic flutter of apprehension to the focused expulsion of confidence, this is progress. White men in graves can inspire our children to learn, so too fortysomethings in tracksuits. Whomever the person, whatever the medium, it’s just important creativity catches fire.  Since the documentary £26,000 has been raised for Steve’s Beats Bus. Money that will go to supporting children like Harvey and Blessing realise that there is more to art than grammar and punctuation. 

A Northern Soul is available on iPlayer. Donations to Beats Bus can be made here: 

https://beats-bus.co.uk/