Ciaran Hapar is a traveling youth worker who found his home in London, United Kingdom, he initially discusses the traumatic events he saw first-hand on the cruel London streets. Finding out a boy he mentors brother brutally murdered on the street, to the first-hand perspective of a street knife crime and robbery. kids punished for the ‘fickle code of the rode’ (Ciaran 2016)
Over the last three years, Ciaran has been holding workshops and discussions with teenagers in south London, numerous conversations have provided him with insight into Drill’s effects on the youth and why Drill music creates a constant battleground for these young people growing up in the streets.
In 2016, Ciaran acknowledged the immense power Drill music had on these disadvantaged youths and why these kids were constantly being kicked out of class and looked down upon due to being, ‘easily distracted’. With the fighting world going on around them, was there a reason to blame? Ciaran was fascinated by the ethical complexity of UK Drill music and asked the question: Do violent lyrics reflect an honest social reality and therefore serve the purpose of empowering its artists? Or do they reinforce and exacerbate the issues they describe?
Ciaran's perspective on the topic of UK grime creates the belief that the context in which these youths are being brought up is the problem for moral panic. The environmental factors of their upbringings include the lack of institutional aid, absent fathers, confused role models, outdated education programs, and how misguided the media is in the form of misrepresenting the UK Drill. Children from single-parent homes in which are treated as an ‘automatic problem’ in school, often seek artform to establish their annoyance and resentment toward society. Ciaran concludes by explaining this desperation for a creative outlet that drove grime in its conception and it is more responsible for criminal activity when compared to any lyrics.
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