Rising Styles was the only UK festival purely dedicated to celebrating International Hip Hop Culture.
A festival that was created, developed and delivered by Kala Phool in partnership with volunteers, agencies, artists, creators and people wanting to give back to an artistic community without the voice it needed at that point.
Starting life in 2002 as the Brighton Hip Hop Festival, it was rebranded to Rising Styles in it’s fifth year (2006) and ran annually until 2009.
During its 8 years, the programme of events included: live music; an educational programme (which continues to this day via Audio Active and has seen the likes of Rizzle Kicks rise through its ranks); film festival; debates; exhibitions; graffiti jams; public art installations; international exchanges (venues/festivals/artists/spoken word).
The one month festival attracted up to 45,000 attendees across the various events each year.
In partnership with Hip Hop Connection magazine, we released a covermount CD annually, giving UK underground Hip Hop artists some much deserved exposure while simultaneously increasing the PR reach of the festival.
Rising Styles remains a proud part of our history and something that has enabled us to build other projects from.
