Hip Hop HEALS – Reducing inequalities through trauma-informed practice
Hip Hop HEALS (Health, Education, Arts & Life Skills) is the UK’s first Hip Hop Therapy organisation. They offer therapeutic Hip Hop and Hip Hop Therapy programmes, trauma-informed Hip Hop training and creative mentoring.
Hip Hop HEALS aims to reduce inequalities for marginalised groups, to offer an arts-based alternative to medication for human distress and to bridge the gap between Hip Hop, therapy and therapeutic creative writing. It recognises that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), trauma and grief are difficult to treat, let alone manage, that suicide and self-harm are the biggest killers of young people and men in the UK, and that throughout the pandemic marginalised groups were disproportionately affected by depression, anxiety and worries about unemployment and financial stress.
In response, Hip Hop HEALS aims to explore emotions through creative therapeutic writing with marginalised groups, to empower people and to amplify lived experience stories.
Hip Hop HEALS' trauma-informed Hip Hop training is constructed with lived experience experts. Their person-centred therapeutic approach is based on Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes practice, which includes narrative, poetry and music therapy as well as bibliotherapy. Their unique model of Hip Hop Therapy includes UK bass music so that it is culturally-competent and relevant to those they serve.
The programme has been run with offenders in recovery at Warwickshire and West Mercia Community Rehabilitation Company, one of the 21 Community and Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) across England and Wales.
Whilst evaluating the programme, participants said:
“I was very active mentally during the workshops, learning how to declutter my mind through writing. I found it a good way of grounding myself and relaxing. It wasn’t demanding.”
“It opened me up to having more confidence and listening to others.”
