Kiz Manley (she/her)
Hip Hop HEALS Founder | Therapeutic Hip Hop Guru | Poet | Writing for Wellbeing Workshop Facilitator | Story Director | Event Organiser | English & Drama Teacher | GCSE English Tutor
I set up Hip Hop HEALS, a mental health project that spread knowledge and research about Hip Hop’s therapeutic powers. My MSc thesis on this topic applied narrative and poetic inquiry to interpret MC interviews. I currently host and produce ‘Glowitheflow‘ podcast on therapeutic Hip Hop, offering radical solutions to homelessness and mental ill health.
Hip Hop HEALS challenges mental health inequalities in marginalised groups, particularly for Global Majority people; young people and men. Just before the pandemic began, I was selected for Lloyd’s Bank’s School for Social Entrepreneurs to develop Hip Hop HEALS into a social enterprise business, with a grant of £1000.
In 2022, we launched the worlds first Trauma-Informed Hip Hop Training Academy online, with funding from The Baring Foundation, an arts and health equalities charity. We developed our mental health resources using Hip Hop’s central tenet: ‘Knowledge of Self’, through a process of community consultation; course piloting and external evaluation.
Today, we deliver poetry therapy-style recovery; intervention and prevention workshops in the community and offer training for helping professionals with therapeutic Hip Hop as the central mode of delivery.
