In-spire Sounds, a local recording studio and community group, has opened a new purpose-built youth centre in Oxford.
The creative base, located at 9 Park End Street, is around 15 times larger than In-spire’s other studio on Aristotle Lane in Jericho. It includes classrooms, recording and rehearsal studios, and mentoring spaces, designed to accommodate aspiring young musicians.
In-spire Sounds was established in 2018 by Kingsley Pratt-Boyden, a musician, producer, and
youth project director. The organisation provides facilities for professional recording and mixing, and promotes music group sessions and workshops for young people.
The studio is largely funded by the Youth Music (a delegated distributor of National Lottery funds) and Arts Council England,the national agency for developing culture, as well as local grants. It particularly aims to support young people from marginalised communities and those “facing a range of adversities from mental ill-health, isolation and anxiety, to risk of criminal, drug and sexual exploitation”.
Samuel Mansell, who works for In-Spire, said: “My brother struggled with school,
criminality, and substance abuse – if he’d had an earlier intervention, things could have been
very different.
“We met one young person who couldn’t speak because of trauma, now they’re one of the
most fluent performers I’ve ever seen”.
The new centre was partly built by members of In-spire, as well as by volunteers and friends of the organisation. Pratt-Boyden said: “We didn’t have a lot of money, but if you can build success out of adversity, you build something with strong foundations”.
Pratt-Boyden also outlined his goals for the centre: “We wanted to make it feel like a
home, not a classroom.” He said that promoting “preventative creative projects keeps people
off the street and out of crisis. We should be investing in our future, and our future is young people. What we do here is show young people that they just need a different kind of support.”
Tim Parkhouse, a youth worker who has also worked with In-spire, said: “In-spire offers a unique package for young people who have an interest in music at any level, whether technical or artistic.”
He also called In-spire an “invaluable resource for which there never seems to be a shortage
of demand amongst young people at risk of social exclusion”.
