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Our vision is to create communities of empowered, creative, confident and resilient young people with the aspirations and skills to build a better and fairer future.
Our specialism is reaching marginalised young people to engage, create and consult using radio, music and creative media production. Our work develops creativity, improves mental health, inspires confidence, raises aspirations, increases skills and fosters agency.
To have their voice heard and to be listened to is often a dramatically empowering experience. Our work encourages our young people to be expressive and convey emotions that they may struggle with. Most of our projects have a strong social action focus.
Our participants learn creative, professional, specialist digital, technical and communication skills. We have developed clear progression pathways, supporting them to discover their own values, skills and interests and we then offer work experience, AQA qualifications, and volunteering opportunities often leading to paid work. We now have 6 young people on our payroll.
As former teachers, youth workers and peer mentors we know how to effectively engage and support our young people and we are committed to learning new and effective strategies to improve their mental health. We work with leading psychologists, practitioners and peer organisations regionally and nationally to develop our therapeutic approaches to helping young people to develop new skills, build confidence, self-esteem and improve their mental health.
We have worked with many partners to pilot and evidence our approach including: 0-19, Public Health Torbay, Torbay Council, Checkpoint Torbay, Torbay Culture, NHS, Peninsula Medical School, Girls Against Anxiety, Brunel Academy.
“I saw a show with Dan when he came to have a look around. It hit me how different this was to any other youth work I’ve ever seen. Through my job I’ve interviewed lots of groundbreaking projects. But this seemed really different. The adult in the room let the young people speak. They let them talk about their own issues and their own thoughts. It’s totally young people driven which I think is amazing.”
Emma Clements, Parent + Editor of BBC Cornwall
Sound Communities worked directly with over 2115 children and young people in Torbay and South Devon in 2023.
