Hello, my name is Terri Loney. I grew up in Belfast N Ireland. I have lived in Leeds since 1973. My story is about why I started a charity for children/young people in Gipton and surrounding area.

I was at a meetings in the local community centre in Gipton when I came across some local youth causing mayhem outside and disrupting the meeting. There were many agencies at that meeting but when the meeting finished, they all got up and left, without a passing glance at these troublesome youth outside. I was already very aware that crime and anti-social behaviour was bad in Gipton. I stopped the speak to these youth, asking what they were doing causing so much mayhem and saying surly you could find better things to do than just hanging out in the street causing disturbing anti-social behaviour in your community. After their initial aggressive attitude towards me the young people calmed down and they started to tell me how there was nothing for them to do and nowhere to go in the evening apart from hanging around the streets. When l asked what they would like they said they wanted a safe place to go and get involved in things to do. What things would you like to do l said. The overriding answer to that question was the Arts and Sport. They said they couldn’t afford to go to any dance, drama or sports activities so we just muck about in the streets. It was that encounter with these young people that made me feel that l should try to do something for them. I said to these kids l can’t promise you anything, but l will see if something can be done. That was the start of my involvement and work with these streets’ kids. I started to talk to many kids on the streets in and around the community, getting their views on what they wanted. When l had enough information l started to look for funding.

I spoke to one of the regeneration funders who l had been working with in my capacity as a community representative. I told him about these young people, saying I wanted to start a Hip-hop dance class for them in the community centre. I asked if he could you let me have some of his regeneration funding budget to enable me to do this. He gave me £6,000.

I found a dance teacher, booked the hall, and went out on to the streets and into all the local schools giving out information leaflets about this Hip-hop class. When 100 children/young people turned up to join the class, l watched the colour drain out of that ONE dance teachers face. I truly did not expect some many young people to turn up. Unfortunately, l had to turn all the under 11yr olds away but told them l would look for more funding to start other classes.

I did get more funding and slowly added various new activities. It was always a challenge ensuring continuous funding. I only charged the children /young people £1. This was to insure all children/young people could afford access to the Arts and Sport classes no matter their background.

At the time l was still running the whole project on my own while working my day job. It was getting too big for one person to run on their own… So, I set up a committee consisting of the young people, parents, and people from the wider community. l was passionate about the young people being the centre of the project, enabling them to have their say on what they wanted in their community. It was also important for this project to be run by the community, for the community. Inner city communities are and always have been aware of the problems in their area. They know and always have known what is needed to sort out some of these problems. They just need the people in power to listen to them and give the funding direct to them for them to do what they know is needed to improve community outcomes for all. Over the years governments would fund many so-called professionals to be parachuted into what they called deprived inner-city communities to set up different schemes that never worked. The outcome was always the same. They would talk about exciting new changes planed for the community that just never happen before parachuting out again, leaving the community disillusioned and angry about the many broken promises made to them about improvements which were never implemented. We believe that the problems in the inner cities can only really be solved by the people who live there. The success of this project was totally due to the community coming together to help their children/young people make better choices away from the streets and the problems that were all around them on those streets.

It only takes one person to start the ball rolling (THIS COULD BE YOU) which in turn can galvanise a community to come together and make changes in their community. I listened to those disruptive youth from back then and used their choices in the Performing Arts and Sports to get kids off the streets, reducing their exposure to crime and anti-social behaviour, give them a safe place to go in the evening in a learning environment, to support and guide them in learning new skills that would help prepare them for the workplace. Every activity we did was chosen by the young people themselves. The young people, parents and the wider community continued to sit on the board and committee and some of the older young people helped run classes under the supervision of professional staff. We had up with 12 professional Performing Arts and Sport teachers running 15 classes a week in Drama, Hip-Hop, lyrical, Street, contemporary, Funk and Jazz dance as well as Musical Theatre, cheerleading, Karate and Boxing and open games night. Over 250 children/young people age 6yrs 18yrs came to the classes every week. The changes that the Arts and Sports made to these young people was amazing to watch.

I ran this charity for 18 and half yrs. l started in late 2002 as a community group. Registered it as a charity in 2011 and was very lucky to receive Lottery funding in 2016. We also got some generous funding from many other sources, one funding source came when we were featured on the secret millionaire TV program. The young people also dance in an adverting lottery advert. We worked in partnership with the police and various other local community groups as well as Performing Arts organizations, such as Northern Ballet, Phoenix dance company, Leeds Playhouse, RJC dance, Space2 and the Rotary Club. Some of our young people received scholarships with Northern Ballet and Pheonix dance company. The young people also won many dance, cheerleading and Karate competitions all over the UK. Some of our young people have gone on the teach dance as adults and others we helped to get jobs and apprentices. The local police confirmed that our activities played a big part in not only reducing crime and anti-social behaviour but by encouraging young children from getting involved in anti-social in the first place.

I retired from the charity in January 2020 at the age of just over 70 and Lord and behold nine weeks into my retirement Covid arrived and I ended up spending most of the first 2ys of my retirement in lockdown. I am loving retirement, keeping myself busy doing various activities and now l have just started attending Heydays at Leeds Playhouse.