Jyväskylä City Library offers a home to hip hop culture association TUFF!’s collection, which contains rare gems of the subculture. The association’s collection needed a new location after the culture café previously hosting the collection had to close down. By hosting this unique collection, Jyväskylä City Library will have the first hip hop Library in Finland. The collection includes cd and vinyl records, books, sheet music, DVDs, and magazines all related to hip hop culture.
Alongside the collection, the Hip hop library hosts also workshops in, for example, rap lyrics, DJ skills, music production, and graffiti painting. The workshops in the library are organised by TUFF!’s members who have years of experience in the culture. By hosting the hip hop workshops, the library offers a new location for the association’s activities as well as for the collection. Over the years, Jyväskylä has grown to be an important centre in the Finnish hip hop scene producing many big rap artists, and the city's public library is now strongly part of this tradition. The Hip hop library was opened on 12 September 2020 in the Jyväskylä main library.
You can read the original news in Finnish on Yle’s website and the press release in Finnish on City of Jyväskylä’s website.