Environments
The work conducted by RAP Lab scholars have materialized into a network of specifically crafted spaces intended to achieve a certain outcome and empower each other. Due to their critical and/or creative interests, scholars working with the Lab also participate within the following environments:
Lyripeutics is committed to centering youth voices through this transgenerational project to provide hip hop as a vehicle for education of self and the world as well as a tool for promoting wellness for communities and individuals. We believe that through hip hop, our communities can begin to heal and utilize the facets of the culture to raise our consciousness that will begin the conversation of radically transforming what education looks like. Lyripeutics has received funding from the Renée Crown Wellness Institute and the University of Colorado, Boulder to conduct educational work in the greater Boulder/Denver area centered on wellness and the transmission of wellness narratives within communities: the Lyripeutics Storytelling Project. The collective's last educational intervention occurred at , specifically with Carla Cariño and her 2021 Ethnic Studies classes, in which North High School students were given assistance with collecting wellness narratives present in their communities and then re-telling them through hip-hop, cultural products, and other identity-based projects.
Shades of Honey
Shades of Honey works to cultivate community through artistic lenses such as spoken word, poetry, rap, dance and other avenues of expression. It centers Black, Brown and Indigenous artists navigation and presentation of the nuances of living in America and traversing white supremacy more broadly. It in essence is resistance, survival and thriving on display. Shades of Honey has worked in partnership with ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ Boulder's American Music Research Center, Lyripeutics, and other communities and organizations in the Denver and Boulder area.
Solidarity Studios begins with a simple premise: giving people the tools and resources they need to tell their story and galvanize their communities around the issues that affect them most. What is more powerful though is when these communities, connected through the Solidarity Studios network, are able to trade more than musical tips--they are able to trade strategies and stories to help achieve justice. With this in mind, we are bringing the youth and communities of , the , and together under one set of mobile music studios meant to inspire solidarity and help spark additional change.