Laura Power
Northern News Services
Published Monday, November 19, 2007

NUNAVUT - When 18-year-old Natasha Mablick moved to Pond Inlet last year, she'd already caught the hip-hop bug.

She had attended a hip-hop workshop with the Canadian Floor Masters in Iqaluit, and had kept in touch with some of the group's dancers.

Natasha Mablick is involved with the TV/Video Production skills team in Pond Inlet. She is also working towards bringing hip-hop workshops to three communities. - Photo courtesy of Pamela Clarke

Soon after that, she travelled to Clyde River to help out with another one of their workshops. There, as she helped teach some basic moves to the participants, she thought it would be a good idea to get something happening in Pond Inlet.

"After the workshop, I came back up to Pond Inlet and I started trying to work with some people in getting a committee together," she said.

But it wasn't as easy as she'd hoped. Funding proposals were denied for the plan to get the Canadian Floor Masters to visit Pond Inlet, Resolute and Arctic Bay.

Ron Elliott, who is leading the effort in Arctic Bay, explained the collaborative effort.

"What we were trying to do is build on what's going on in Clyde and also strengthen the youth network," he said.

So instead of giving up on the effort, a new strategy was planned. Youth in both Pond Inlet and Arctic Bay will produce a video petition to send to possible funders.

"This is probably the more high-tech way to get everybody's attention through the skills that the kids already have," said Pamela Clarke, a media studies teacher at Nasivvik high school in Pond Inlet. "They're not comfortable writing letters to the MLA, but they're comfortable working in a media that they're familiar with."

Mablick, who learned the ropes of filmmaking in a week-long Skills Canada course last week, will be one of the main players in the project.

"I'm looking into having some youth that have dropped out of school and see what they think about a hip-hop workshop coming up here and kind of ask them if they would take part in it," she said.

The hip-hop workshops aren't all about the music and dancing - they also teach kids about positive self-image.

"A hip-hop workshop to me would mean that the youth get to see something they are really interested in but in a different perspective - it'll send out a really positive message to the youth," she said.

The video will be produced during the next couple of months.

"The youth were discouraged but at least now they're focused on working towards something," said Elliott.