My eyes welled up as I sat down and read through Yemi Abiade’s TRENCH piece on why Ruff Sqwad should be taught in schools. The UK’s current music curriculum feels like it was written in the Fifties, and needs a major update—fast. It emphasises learning the ‘great’ classical composers and insists students know the difference between ‘paired quavers’ and ‘semi quavers’ (not the crisps). With 0 results returned for ‘grime’ in the National Curriculum—let alone ‘jungle’, ‘garage’ or ‘drill’—but several for ‘Elvis’ and ‘Beethoven’, it’s clear that mainstream schooling does nothing to support the education of Black British music, nor the communities it derives from.

After many years as a music youth worker and now a PhD student in Sociology, Urban Geography & Sound, I have witnessed first-hand how alternative education spaces empower young people. I have also learnt the ways in which our current education system serves to marginalise, oppress and reproduce inequality. But rather than criticise schools, I wanted to find a positive alternative to them, and I’ve attempted to do this through studying grime sets at DJ AG’s livestreams. Throughout 2025, I attended a lot of the grime sets, interviewed a lot of the MCs, and observed the space through film. My research findings show that grime education is in fact not possible in a school environment.

Firstly, grime education is structured by unwritten rules which enable creativity. In a grime set, MCs typically have 32 bars to perform, and as long as they stick to this ‘rule’ and ensure others get a fair turn on the mic, the rest is up for grabs: an MC is free to make their performance whatever they want. These minimal, unwritten rules do not restrict creativity—they enable it. They help produce a striking variety of flows, styles, lyrics and identities. There are no restrictions on what an MC should be—only that they play fair. The result is a highly creative and self-directed learning environment. Schools, by contrast, are not set up to allow this autonomy; they rely on lesson plans, fixed outcomes and teacher-led delivery. That structure is unsupportive for a practice like grime, which draws on life experience and creative imaginations to tell personal stories.

Grime is ‘taught’ through subtle cues in real time. At DJ AG’s sets, if an inexperienced MC overruns their 32, they’re guaranteed to get a tap on the shoulder, or made eye contact with, by a more experienced MC. This is how the rules are taught: in the moment, within the set, through embodied cues. There is no prior theory lesson or formal training; it’s a learn-on-the-job situation. And it works: MCs who attended regularly began to land their 32s on time or rewrote bars to fit better. When they did, more experienced MCs responded with nods and conversations as feedback, which motivated learning further. Not only is it incredibly rare for schools to have teachers with the knowledge of grime to pass on, but their rigid ideas of what success looks like makes it hard to bring the kind of organic, communal teaching grime requires. DJ AG enables a continuous learning environment, free from the boundaries of key stages, ability sets or learning checklists which stifle creativity in school.

The crowd is also vital to grime learning and evolution. The crowd at a grime set can be likened to examiners—only, rather than marking papers, they’re responding physically: with gunfingers, ‘oi oi’s, and calls for a reload for a good MC performance. These embodied responses provide critical feedback that MCs can use immediately or in future sets, adjusting performance energy, lyrics or flow. The possibility for an MC to move and win the crowd is always open, which makes grime sets spaces of experimentation. If something doesn’t work, the consequence is not a bad grade that limits your future—it’s an invitation to try something different. This kind of learning environment, where mistakes aren’t that deep, is conducive to creative innovation. High-pressure school environments don’t offer this to anybody, let alone grime.

Urban public spaces provide opportunities for learning. DJ AG welcomes anyone to perform or watch, made possible by its location in urban public space. The open nature of its setting fosters a kind of flat hierarchy between grime MCs that generates new ideas within the genre. I found that MCs across experience levels were finding opportunities and collaborations amongst other performers, such as singers or dancers. Schools can’t provide this kind of environment: by enclosing learning within physical boundaries, they limit the real-world stakes and serendipity on which grime thrives. They deny students of grime the opportunity to practice with people from all walks of life, which I found pushed MC learning, confidence and experimentation. Grime education goes hand-in-hand with real-world stakes.

Music is the glue that binds. It’s what draws people to DJ AG in the first place. As an affective experience, in which vibrations pass through and between bodies indiscriminately, music is both individual and collective at once, and this dynamic is what enables grime sets to support individuality within a collective musical act. Broader opportunities created by music at DJ AG, such as diverse social encounters, opportunities for self-expression and collective joy, hides grime education within a larger expression of community. Such conditions are the foundations for education models that are culturally representative, positive and supportive. DJ AG’s platform is much more than a source of entertainment: it’s an alternative to the educational status quo that is alienating and irrelevant to many people, not just grime MCs.

These findings point to a simple conclusion: grime education is already happening, and it cannot be practiced in schools without losing what makes it effective. Inside a classroom, grime would be reshaped to fit rigid structures and depoliticised in the process. This is profoundly anti-grime. As a product of and in response to institutionalised neglect towards inner-city working class and (predominantly) Black communities, grime is rooted in anti-establishment principles and cutting through the bullshit. To bring grime into schools would be to reject this history and power. Rather than seek to legitimise schools through educating grime, we need to legitimise the ways it is already being taught, and thus delegitimise schools in the process. Treating DJ AG sets as a serious site of education begins this work and offers alternative ways of education.