Our Creative Studio provides 400 marginalised young people a year with a vital safe space. We need your support to sustain & grow this space to meet the demand we face, ensuring every young person has the opportunity to design their own future, free from violence. We’ve been co-creating creative community spaces with young people for over a decade. Our Creative Studio in Barnet has been open since 2014, it’s a hub of creative activity & home to our youth-led Nail/Hair Bar, Music & Podcast Studio. We teach creative skills & provide industry standard, accredited training. Every young person has access to specialist, trauma informed support via our team of music professionals, creative producers & nail artists, who are also mental health professionals, violence advisors & award winning youth practitioners. Our young people continue to face immense risk, exacerbated by the pandemic, with mental health being a key driver. They need this creative space more than ever.

What we'll deliver:

• Transform a shop unit into a vibrant community space for 400+ at-risk young people, open throughout the year.
• Deliver a programme of activity, co-produced with young people. Including a nail/hair bar & a Music & Podcast Studio.
• Provide specialist safeguarding, mentoring and employment support.
• Create both paid and voluntary leadership roles for young people.
• Create opportunities for young people to be heard & amplify their voices to create lasting social change.

Why it's a great idea:

Every young person should be able to build the life they want through creativity rather than violence. Yet risk factors for serious youth violence such as economic instability, unemployment & deprivation have been exacerbated as a result of C19. We’re at a crisis point & risk not being able to respond to the demand for our support. The Creative Studio will sustain critical support for young people, giving us the space, skills & capacity required to meet the volume, scale & complexity of their needs. It will allow us to reduce violent crime & exploitation in our community, by taking a long-term, preventative & strengths-based approach. It will bring trauma-informed safeguarding support to them in a place, & at a pace that works for them. We will continue to bridge the divide between young people & the institutional ecosystem around them, building their resilience & capabilities, & empowering them to change not only their circumstances but also the systems that make them vulnerable.

Steps to get it done:

• Appoint a leadership team consisting of young people in volunteer or paid roles.
• Work with young people to; redesign the space, purchase equipment and co-produce a 12 month delivery and marketing plan.
• Brief the multidisciplinary delivery team ensuring we have the capacity and expertise to deliver against the plan
• Deliver the creative programmes ie. the Nail/Hair bar, Music and Podcast Studio.
• Deliver an accredited creative skills programme embedded within the creative spaces.
• Embed our team of safeguarding professionals to scaffold crucial support for every young person who enters the space

Our Creative Studio has been open for 6 years and it’s at risk of closing. To date it’s been funded by multiple grants, however this funding is coming to an end in December 2021. In our decade as charity, it’s never been harder to secure funding. Youth services have faced a decade of austerity, they’ve been dismantled and drastically underfunded. The effect of this has been compounded by the pandemic. ​​“If we are to see the long-term reductions in violence that we all want to see in our city, we must continue to tackle the underlying causes of crime, such as poverty, deprivation and lack of opportunities for young Londoners.” - Sadiq Khan, London Mayor We need a minimum of £80k to ensure we can keep our space open 3 days a week with the specialist staff team in place to effectively support young people. Our ambition however, is to have it open 5 days a week, this would cost us £145k. We’re on a mission to secure this by February 2022, and we need your help.