For 20 years High School for Recording Arts (HSRA) has been transforming the lives of young people through music and socially conscious hip hop culture. HSRA re-engages students who were pushed or kicked out of school to becoming high school graduates and life-long learners. The key to HSRA’s success in changing young lives is tapping into their passion for music.
HSRA is a Twin Cities and Los Angeles based public charter school that has earned an international reputation for its innovative approach to education, and helped to write the “how to of Hip-Hop music and learning.” Like many high schools across America, HSRA students experience the same curriculum as their peers, however, there is hook - HSRA boasts state of the art music and video recording studios, and the students who show up and make the grade get access to those studios.
As a result of the school’s approach to education there is a prodigious amount of music that has been made by students over the school’s 20-year history, and that tradition is true to this day. The student managed record label Another Level Records (ALR). “Our Music, Our Time” is the label’s motto. The student led independent label functions as a real record label, with the authority and resources to release HSRA student made music globally. HSRA’s Another Level Records is comprised of student label executives, who receive their training in an ongoing Business of Music class, taught by music industry professionals.