After a two-year hiatus, STEAM Factory is thrilled to return to Franklinton Friday by welcoming University of Illinois's Hip Hop Xpress Double Dutch Boom Bus to our community! As part of their Back of the Bus Concert Series, Hip Hop Xpress presents The Legacy of Midwest Funk in Hip Hop. This event will be hosted by program founder Dr. Will Patterson and feature Deron Bell along with the University of Illinois Hip Hop Collective. Come join us in the 400 Square lot for this special presentation with hands-on demonstrations and immersive music history from live DJs. All ages welcome.
The Hip-Hop Xpress: Double Dutch Boom Bus is a rolling innovation “flex lab” and data center designed to explore and investigate culture in communities across the country. Modeled on the work of Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver’s Jesup Wagon at Tuskegee University, the Xpress instantiates the research of Dr. William Patterson at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Patterson knows that young people from limited resource, but culturally rich communities use their skill sets in Hip Hop to remix products and make them cool again, but also they create unique user experiences that inspire other innovators in a variety of fields, disciplines, and communities.
The University of Illinois Presidential Initiative to Celebrate the Impact of the Arts and Humanities and the Student Sustainability Committee provided initial funding to develop the Hip Hop Xpress. The project is co-led by Professor Kevin Erickson (Architecture), Professor Adam Kruse (Music), Dr. Malika Mckee (Education), Dr. Sharon Irish (Community Informatics), Dr. Tiffany Saunders (Sociology/Anthropology), and Dr. Will Patterson (Music+Engineering). Students in the School of Architecture, School of Music, Gies College of Business, and Grainger College of Engineering are transforming this 35’ school bus into a flexible innovation space for community-based user experience research, project, and program development within the context of applied entrepreneurial minded learning.
The Hip-Hop Xpress has a rich presence in the Champaign-Urbana area and has expanded its network with partnering stops at the House of Miles, East St. Louis, Musical Arts Institute, Chicago, Fire House Community Arts Center, Chicago, Tuskegee University, Tuskegee, AL, and National Museum of African American Music, Nashville Tennesse. In the near future, the Xpress will make stops on the West and East Coasts, and in the Southeast. This is Xpress's first visit to Columbus, Ohio. Welcome aboard, The Ohio State University!
