Talking Top Gun with Hallah Edutainment

In a country where learning is heavily focused on test scores, Hashim A’Allah, a poet, live- performer, and broadcast specialist, has founded a company to help reengage students in their education. Hallah Edutainment develops creative curricula that facilitates youth programs, and they do that through an alternative method of teaching, called Hip-Hop Pedagogy. Hallah uses the arts, science, technology, engineering and the culture of Hip-Hop to engage students' aged fourteen to twenty-one in reading, writing and public speaking. They offer programs in everything from broadcast and production to emotional identity and nature exploration.

What makes you different from other after school programs?

What sets us apart is the technology we use and our educators. Our technology is industry-standard, current technology, so we use the same equipment you would find in a major broadcast production studio. Most of our educators are in the music industry; I’m actually the only one on my staff who doesn’t have a Grammy or a Peabody Award.

What’s the most important thing you’re working on right now?

The most important thing we’re working on is the company’s scalability. Hallah is partnering with the University of Maine to open our second brick and mortar location at the Innovative Media Research & Commercialization Center on UMaine’s campus. We’re hoping to use the experience as a learning opportunity and look forward to scaling up out of there.

How has the vision for Hallah Edutainment changed from when you founded it?

It’s changed because when we started Hallah Edutainment, we didn’t expect to have brick and mortar locations. Now that we’ve worked out more of the details of the programming, we realized that brick and mortar locations are key to our growth.

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