Can I Kick It? Yes You Can!

UCC & Cork Midsummer Festival collaboration

Griff Rollefson (Music), Jools Gilson (Theatre), Karl Kitching (EDI/Education), Eileen Hogan (Applied Social Studies)

A free hip hop takeover of UCC main campus, featuring panel discussions and live dance, rap and music performances

A Cork Midsummer Festival event in collaboration with Union Black and Cuttin’ Heads Collective, featuring rappers, singers and musicians from The Kabin Studio/Music Generation Cork City and Ireland’s Got Talent Champions, Billie-Jean’s RDC. Hosted by Red FM’s Stevie G. Live DJing, Rapping, Graffiti Art, and B-Boy and B-Girl, dance performances turned the centre of UCC’s campus into a multidisciplinary celebration of hip hop arts.

Two panel discussions supported by the British Council focused on street knowledge, exploring the common ground between hip hop, soccer, circus performance, and other allied art forms addressed in Union Black, a Cork Midsummer Festival project supported by UCC Creative. The panel featured rapper, singer, bassist Ophelia, rapper Outsider YP, UCC Director of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Karl Kitching, UCC Lecturer in Applied Social Studies Eileen Hogan, UCC Lecturer in Popular Music Studies J. Griffith Rollefson, Head of UCC School of Music and Theatre and Professor of Creative Practice Jools Gilson, Dance Curator and Artist Evaluator for Union Black Nedjma Hadj, and Artistic Director of Crying Out Loud Rachel Clare.