Street Factory - Hip Hop Into the Lights

Street Factory’s Hip Hop Into the Lights project set up an accessible and affordable community hip hop/dance theatre company for local people in a dock-side area of Plymouth where there is a lack of accessible and community-based activities. It uses dance, theatre and group sessions to improve life skills such as communication, self-confidence, resilience and motivation.

Project member Tyler talks about his mental health issues, and how he felt he'd found a family that supported him when he joined Street Factory.

“I’ve been involved with Street factory for just over a year now. Toby, the founder, recruited me at my rehab centre where I’d struggled for nearly 13 years with an alcoholic addiction. He came up and did a talk and a couple of little moves and that was it – I was hooked. I wanted a piece of that. I want to look that good.

It started with the Creative Change programme coming every Tuesday, two hours of doing a little bit of moving, having a little bit of chatting and thinking about things differently. Thinking about life differently. Thinking about what I want and what I want to do.

Recently we’ve been thinking about morals and principles. It’s difficult changing your history, it’s difficult changing the way you act and the way you think. It doesn’t happen overnight. I sat down and I’ve made my own morals and I’ve made my own principles. I’m working on a family crest. I mean who works on a family crest! That’s what I want to do for my family, so that my grandkids can say, my grandad made that, and that’s what we stand for.

The project is a positive way of releasing something that’s always been so negative. I needed a friend and now I’ve got a family. I’ve been closed off and excluded and pushed away and bullied. It’s just nice to walk into a building and be loved by everyone in it. I get so much love from people. I’ve never had that. I needed someone to believe in me, to say ‘you can be more than you than you can, you just have to want it and to believe it.’”