This half-day session, in partnership with Bollo Brook, will help delegates gain a deeper understanding of anti-oppressive practice in music and how to support young people from all walks of life. We will confront issues facing young people, through provocation from experts and with young people themselves.
Speakers include: Dr Lambros Fatsis, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, Kiz from Hip Hop HEALS, Colin Brent and Amal Barkhad from Bollo Brook Youth Centre.
Bollo Brook Youth Centre in Ealing serves some of the most vulnerable young people in London and has been credited with saving young people from rising knife crime violence. At the heart of Bollo Brook are the Bollo Studios which is a safe space for young people to work with professional studio engineers and producers, to experiment and express themselves through music.
Sound Connections is working with Bollo Brook to explore how can the music education and youth sectors learn, share and collaborate to effectively support some of the most vulnerable young people through music?
Young people are increasingly feeling like their voices aren’t being heard, and are becoming disenfranchised with their communities, formal education and politics. Yet young people should be at the heart of shaping policy and practice, especially when it comes to an area of particular passion for them – music.
This session will confront issues facing these young people, through provocation from experts and with the young people themselves. There will be space for exploration and discussion, and to hear some of the music emerging from the Studios. It will also be an opportunity to establish a community of practice for those working with young people in challenging circumstances.
Delegates will gain a deeper understanding of anti-oppressive practice in music and how to support young people from all walks of life.
(he/him) @lfatsis
Dr Lambros Fatsis is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Brighton. His research interests revolve around police racism and the criminalisation of Black music (sub)culture(s), fusing Cultural Criminology with Black radical thought. His writing on the policing of UK drill music won the first-ever Blogger of the Year Award from the British Society of Criminology and an Outstanding Research & Enterprise Impact Award from the University of Brighton. Lambros is also a member of the Prosecuting Rap Expert Network made up of scholars and experts in rap and Black youth culture, who act as defence experts in court cases that involve the use of rap as evidence. In May 2022, he was appointed as a new trustee at the Brighton-based youth music charity, AudioActive.
I lost my older sister, Promila, in a car accident in 2000. After, I suffered a delayed traumatised grief reaction. I was an English Literature graduate and keen writer but experienced a creative block that lasted ten years. During this time, I trained as a secondary English teacher, and enjoyed a fruitful career in museum and gallery education.
When my father died in 2010, I was in recovery from a delayed traumatised grief reaction and a breakdown. This is when I discovered therapeutic writing. My writer’s block came undone. I already had an MA in Literature and decided to do an MSc in Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes to share what I’d learnt about self-healing through creativity. I set up Hip Hop HEALS, a mental health project that tackles mental health inequalities in disadvantaged groups, particularly BAME groups, young people and men.
We deliver poetry therapy-style workshops in schools, probation centres, mental health units and homeless hostels. I am also now Director of Story with Lapidus International and Communications Director for its academic research journal, LIRIC, as well as Lived Experience Champion for LENS Network (Lived Experience Network).
Outside of work, I run Dubgasm: a social action fundraiser for Brum’s foodbank and homeless communities. I still love teaching and tutor Looked After Children in my spare time. Recently, 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. Through this, I’ve been developing mental health resources using Hip Hop’s central tenet: ‘Knowledge of Self’. My goal is to spread knowledge and research about the therapeutic power of Hip Hop culture.
This is a free event, in partnership with Bollo Brook.
The Ealing Project, 1 High St, London W5 5DB
Training sessions, workshops, seminars and networking events.
If you have any suggestions about training and events that you would like to see in future, please contact Emily at emily@sound-connections.org.uk.
