Orientation With Upcoming Next Level Artists

On June 4th, 28 hip hop artists and educators came to DC to participate in Meridian's Next Level program orientation. Next Level is an ongoing artist exchange program that Meridian has done in collaboration with the University of North Carolina which is now in its fifth and largest-ever cycle. Together with the U.S. State Department, Next Level has sent 57 artists to 21 countries and will be sending these artists to an additional seven: Guatemala, Jerusalem, Nigeria, The Philippines, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and The Dominican Republic.

While at Meridian, participants in Next Level attended workshops to help them begin to prepare for their residencies, teaching their disciplines of hip hop to students around the world. In the afternoon the visual artists among them worked together to paint two stretches of canvas, which were displayed the following day when they did a live performance in front of the Lincoln Memorial.

You can read about the artists and see updates about their residencies as they take place on nextlevel-usa.org