November 16-21, 2010

Below each workshop or event you will see a version of the following key (Organization | Scholar | Artist | Youth). This is intended to suggest to you who this workshop or event would be most appropriate for.

Day One Event

Tuesday November 16th / 12-5pm
Josephine Butler Center
2437 Fifteenth Street, NW 

Washington, DC 20009

Building an Agenda for the Cipher
Organization | Scholar | Artist | Youth

As a registered participant in this year’s teach-in, you are now part of the Cipher, the membership arm of Words Beats & Life. This agenda-setting meeting is intended to identify three to five priorities for the Cipher. Over the last few years, a number of national and international hip hop gatherings have developed what were intended to be national platforms out of which hip hop activists were to work collectively to promote lasting social change.

The Cipher’s membership is currently made up of 250 organizations, artists, scholars and activists who have attended past teach-ins. The number of members is expected to grow this year because the teach-in is expanding beyond DC to San Francisco and Chicago. Our goal in establishing a three to five point agenda is to set goals that Cipher members can work to achieve in the next one to three years. These are short-term goals; they are not intended to right every injustice in the world, but rather to play to the strengths of this field. We should select three to five priorities that are inline with the work we do within this field as a means to organize our collective energy and effort to increase our individual and collective impacts in our communities… Read More

The 2DK L.A.B. with Words Beats & Life Inc. and The Pink Line Project Present:
.26 Weapons

Monday November 15, 2010
.26 WEAPONS, is a collection of individual graffiti letter studies that are painted, sculpted, photographed and installed. This collection seeks to simplify the graffiti artist’s formula into an amuse-bouche of style. Each piece connected to the next through shared origins, yet at the same time reflects the endless possibilities each character holds to be manipulated and molded to the artists’ own unique vision… Read More