Shared Territories

For 15 months I worked as artist in residence for the Edinburgh Mela Festival.

I worked with some brilliant young people in Muirhouse, Edinburgh. After quickly realising there was limited interest for sculpture and contemporary visual art, we discovered a complimentary desire: to be a hip hop group (them) – and to be a manager of a hip hop group (me).

We started off as a group of five rewriting the lyrics to “Get Your Swag On” by Soulja Boy. We then – with the thanks of Scottish Natural Heritage and the Forestry Commission – had a transformational weekend at Loch Leven with Ugandan break dance troupe, Tabu Flo and became a group of 20 hiphop artists, performing and practicing all over Scotland.

This online book outlines our journey and what turned out to be a transformative residency all round.

The residency was funded by:

All photos by Stephen McGarry