Princess Anne declined an invitation to learn how to rap in her signature way during an investiture ceremony in London today. The Princess Royal held investitures at St James’s Palace on behalf of her brother, King Charles.
One of those honoured with an MBE was Bhishma Asare, a teacher who is using lyrics to help “prevent social tragedies”. The 34-year-old founded Rap Therapy to teach young people to be creative and express themselves positively through rap.
Today, he was honoured for services to education and mental health awareness.
Mr Asare, who is an English teacher at the Royal Russell School in Croydon and has been a long-time rapper, said: “I was explaining the process and saying that we get children to write about a specific emotion, to explicitly mention that emotion so they can decipher those feelings.
“Then I said to her [Princess Anne] ‘maybe I could teach you to rap?’”
But the royal replied in her signature, no-nonsense way.
Mr Asare revealed: “She said she used to sing and that is about it.
“She kind of declined and said her time is up.”
Mr Asare said rap is a popular and powerful tool that helps people to communicate and express themselves.
Since 2018, the plan has been “to grow and reach as many children as possible” and “I feel like this MBE is for me but I also feel that it is for the community that I serve”.
He said: “I think one of the best things about the MBE is that it gets us in spaces to have discussions where we would not necessarily have been able to have got into those spaces.”
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.express.co.uk ’
