The Virus Free Generation Hip-Hop Tour is a project by Hivos, Alliance 2015 and Music Mayday attempting to raise awareness about the HIV&Aids epidemic in Africa amongst the European youth of Germany, the Netherlands, Czech Republic and Italy.

It started in February 2008 in Dar es Salam (Tanzania) and ended in Cape Town (South Africa) in April 2008. In each country a duo was formed containing of a European and an African Hip-Hop artist. Together they visited HIV&Aids related youth projects, gave workshops to local youth and musicians on how to use music as a tool of expression and education and gave a free concert where the local youth got a change to show their talent. They also recorded 3 tracks for the album and recorded a music video together with the media team.

I was part of the media team that traveled along with the artists to capture all of the activities. The virus free generation hip-hop tour could be followed live on the website, which was updated daily from Africa with Photos, Videos (webisodes) and a Blog. I also created most of the print design for the campaign surrounding the european part of the tour.

Visit the Website

The website is mostly aimed at european youth, they were able to follow a well known artist from their own country and their experiences in Africa. The site had to be interesting enough for european youth to follow daily but easy to update from Africa. thats why the choice was made to build a Flash based website which allowed for an interactive user experience through the use of photos, video, audio and an artist blog. The website focusses mostly on the Artists and Countries but extra background information about HIV&Aids can also be found in multiple languages. The Website was created in collaboration with Beer van Geer and Peter van Beek, and was scripted by Danny Grob.

Visit the Youtube Channel and watch the Webisodes

A total of 15 webisodes were edited in Africa during the tour (of which I did half), using the material shot for the documentaries. The aim was to create a short but personal video in which the artists experiences would play a central role. To make it possible to upload a new video every 3 days they had to remain short and small in filesize. All the video was edited on a macbook pro with final cut pro and a couple external hard drives. It made me realize that no matter where I am, I can always do my work, even in a country like Malawi, where even electicity isnt a sure thing.

There were over 7000 pictures taken during the tour, of which a large portion were taken by me, a lot of them (about 450) made it onto the website and some were even printed in African newspapers and magazines.

Flickr Photo Set