The theme of Connecticut Arts Day 2018, celebrated on April 25 in Hartford, is resiliency. Keynote speaker Bettina Love fits right in. Love has made her name theorizing on a new approach to education of urban youth: by embracing hip-hop not just as a genre of music but as a distinct culture, and using the norms of that culture to reach kids who can’t relate to traditional teaching methods.
“These kids come from a beautiful culture that prepares them for education. There is resistance and there is resiliency in this culture,” Love says. “Hip-hop comes out of African-American culture, the civil-rights movement, which is all about people resisting and fighting. It comes out of the...