REPRESENT

REPRESENT are a team of artist-mentors and young men aged 18 – 25 referred through Probation. Meeting weekly, we focus on music and lyric writing, music production, spoken word, rap and filmmaking as a means to opening up conversation, developing talent and building a creative community. The project is co-designed by the participants as they discover what they need to move forwards positively in their lives including studio time, ongoing education, mentoring or tuition.

BACKGROUND: In 2019, Sussex was one of 18 areas allocated funding by the Home Office to establish Violence Reduction Units / Partnerships, which adopt a public health approach to tackling and reducing serious violent crime. The Sussex Violence Reduction Partnership (VRP) aims to protect young people and make our communities safer. It does this by bringing together the police, local authorities, criminal justice, the NHS, public health and community organisations to tackle the root causes of serious violence in Sussex.

The Miss Represented team were commissioned by the Trust for Developing Communities and the VRP to develop REPRESENT for young men. Our first pilot project began in September 2021 and continues to provide bespoke mentoring for the young men taking part, in collaboration with workers from AudioActive and the Crawley Film Initiative.