Rupinder Singh Sidhu, right, shows Nathan Nokadlak how to produce a snare drum beat on new recording equipment at the Inuvik Youth Centre. (Philippe Morin/CBC)

A group of artists from British Columbia is in the Arctic town of Inuvik, N.W.T., this week to stoke the creative hip-hop fire of teens at the local high school and youth centre.

Thanks to two large grants, the Inuvik Youth Centre has brought the four artists to Inuvik to work with high school students on writing, composing and recording their own music.

One of the grants, worth $10,000, has enabled the centre to buy and install state-of-the-art music recording and video editing consoles. The visiting artists are spending time at the centre as well, teaching youth there how to use the new gear.

"Hip-hop has a different engagement level with young people than Shakespeare," said Vancouver artist Rupinder Singh Sidhu, who called himself a "sound mentor" to a group of Grade 12 English students at Samuel Hearne secondary school on Thursday.

"Quite often, through schooling we develop a very strict relationship to language," he added. "We're just trying to, like, bring the idea of first having fun with that, and then also getting their messages about what they care about in the world, and what they want to say to this world."

At first reluctant, students in the English class were reciting their own rhymes by the end of the 80-minute session.

"I heard at the beginning of the class, a few of the girls were like, 'Aww, I don't really like poetry. I don't want to be here.' And then by the end of that class, watching their performance was really beautiful," said Emma Tius, another artist and facilitator.

While they are training youth, the artists are also training local adults to be facilitators, so that they can help young musicians produce their tunes once the artists leave at the end of next week.