Transforming lives for 15 years: Book celebrates Freedom Road Creative Arts’ anniversary
MAKING A DIFFERENCE: Hundreds of children have benefitted from Freedom Road Creative Arts
By Rick Lyon
Hull charity Freedom Road Creative Arts (FRCA) has produced a book to mark its fifteenth anniversary.
The charity supports young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to take part in the performing arts, and has helped transform the lives of hundreds of troubled children and teenagers since it began in 2008.
The book charts the charity’s journey and tells the stories of a dozen of its graduates.
The stories in the book include that of Luke, who has Asperger’s Syndrome. He once felt unable to talk, and spent much of secondary school hiding his face behind his hand.
With the support of FRCA, Luke went on to achieve a first-class Maths degree. He now teaches others.
SUPPORT: Members of FRCA
Luke says: “I can see outside myself now. I can think of people other than myself, and think about how they feel.
“I would like to say hats off to Freedom Road because they have done that for me. Honestly, I think looking back over the last 10 years, I don’t know where my life would have been going if I wasn’t referred to that charity. I don’t know if I’d be sitting here at all.”
Another contributor to the book is Jess, who was bullied for being poor. Jess is now a teacher in Hull, and is also the Vice Chair of FRCA.
She says: “I will always be involved in Freedom Road in some capacity. Freedom Road is my family. I feel I’d miss out if I wasn’t a part of it.
“I know that this charity makes such a difference to people’s lives, and it makes me so proud to know I was one of the first kids in the charity. It gave me chances I couldn’t have dreamed of and it changed my life.”
‘HATS OFF’: Luke is one of the hundreds supported by FRCA over the last 15 years
FRCA was set up by youth worker Ian Bolton and Iain Thompson, who works in film and has a background in drama. It has been supported over the years by Children In Need, Youth Music and the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, amongst others.
It sprung from Hull City Council’s Wilberforce 2007 project, which marked Hull MP William Wilberforce’s role in the abolition of the slave trade 200 years earlier.
A group of young people involved in Hull’s Rights and Participation Project (RAPP) were invited to record a single to mark the occasion and this sparked a chain of events that led to the birth of FRCA.
Iain said: “We were invited to perform the song at the House of Commons and then at Oxford University, when we made an amazing connection with an Australian charity that invited us to a conference in Sydney!
“The project just took off and we knew we had to carry on. We had a lot of support from Hull City Council. They encouraged us to go to Australia, I think they could see the project was having an amazing impact on the young people we were working with.
‘PROUD’: Jess says FRCA is her family
“We became a charity in 2008. Since then we have worked with a lot of different children and young people.
“Their lives are turbulent and they are having to be an adult before they are an adult. We offer somewhere calmer, where they can behave like a kid for two hours or more. I think that’s the big thing about why Freedom Road feels like a family.”
Ian Bolton, who is cited by many contributors in the book as their mentor, said: “I am really proud we have produced a book that tells Freedom Road’s stories, but I find it hard to read because it brings it home to me just how hard life is for some young people.
“It makes me determined that Freedom Road will continue to give young people opportunities.
“When we went to Australia we had a send-off from the Guildhall. There were parents and carers saying goodbye and I was on the back of the bus with one of the young people who’s carer didn’t come to wave him off. I remember him saying ‘bye, nobody’ and you just think, why didn’t they bother? Even now it gets to me. How can you do that?
“That’s a prime example of why we run Freedom Road. It’s those kinds of things we never forget.”