“I attack the alphabet with acrobatics* (alphabet challenge)” is a hip-hop project aimed at girls from the District Education Centre in Falenica.
It included 10 Polish language and rapping lessons, an animation and typography workshop and a professional recording session. A total of 20 girls took part in the activities. They participated in the workshops, wrote their own lyrics, some graphically designed the letters for the challenge and others decided to sing the verses and take part in the recording.
The project fits in with the Internet’s well-known ‘alphabet challenge’, which involves rapping verses written using one-letter words (while keeping rhyme, flow and as much sense as possible in the lyrics – as artist Jeden writes on YouTube).
The aim of our project, which ran from spring to autumn 2024, was to introduce participants to the culture and strengthen their language skills, and to encourage them to pursue their own creativity to help them express their feelings, reflections, fulfil their passions and establish communication with the environment and society – through rap.
The culmination of the series of workshops was for the girls to write their own lyrics – short verses for consecutive letters of the alphabet (in one verse, all words start with the same letter), which fit into the so-called alphabet challenge, sing them and co-create an animated music video for them, which was published on the Internet.
In our project, rap became a tool for the social inclusion of excluded people and a pretext for the participants to learn about national culture, in theory and practice, and to become its active broadcasters.
To carry out the project and to co-create it, we invited: rapper Mati Fuczyło, visual artist Andrzej Budek, actress and improviser Kinga Kosik-Burzyńska and poet, playwright Marcin Cecko. The music has been provided by Whysowavy. The recording was made at Flightcore Studios.
The premiere screening of the music video took place on 17 October 2024 at the Studio Theatre Gallery and Studio Bar.
* The title is a quote from the artist Jeden’s track, entitled “Alphabet challenge”.
Photo report on the screening and tour of the Studio Theatre Gallery and the theatre costume storage.
Photo: Justyna Domasłowska-Szulc
Author of the poster: Klaudia Borawiak
Photos from the project implementation
Photo: Małgorzata Brus
The project was co-financed by funds from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage within the framework of the programme National Centre for Culture: Culture – Interventions 2024.
