Wellcome Trust launches 'The Rap Guide to Evolution'

The Wellcome Trust is launching an online series of rap music videos, produced by the award-winning performer Baba Brinkman, to aid the teaching of evolution in schools.

The12 videos are based on the successful theatre show The Rap Guide to Evolution, which was performed to critical acclaim at the 2009 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The brainchild of the award-winning performer Baba Brinkman, the show combines the wit, poetry and charisma of an accomplished rapper with the accuracy, knowledge and expertise of an evolutionary scientist; creating a very different type of teaching resource.

The videos will be available for free online from a resource-packed website, and a DVD will be available to schools from Autumn 2011.

The show owes its origins to Dr Mark Pallen, author of The Rough Guide to Evolution, who had seen Brinkman's internationally acclaimed Rap Canterbury Tales and challenged Brinkman to "do for Darwin what he had done for Chaucer". To ensure scientific and historical accuracy, Brinkman consulted Pallen throughout the creative process, making The Rap Guide to Evolution the first peer-reviewed hip-hop show. Pallen has described Brinkman as having "swallowed the idea and turned it into a work of genius".

Read an interview with Baba Brinkman on the Wellcome Trust Blog to find out more about how the project came about and his experiences teaching evolution through rap music.