I grew up in Great Yarmouth listening to classical music, learning piano and violin, playing in an orchestra and singing the Beatles in choir. Music was something that was arranged and formal, a privilege handed to me. At 18 I moved to London to study it at university. But outside my small town, I quickly realised that I didn’t have what it took to make it as a performer.

There were, however, two course units that really resonated with me: music therapy and music in cultural industries. They weren’t about being a musician but about using music in the wider world. And so, as graduation approached, I determined that if I could build a career in organisations that helped people through music, that would be a valuable way to pass on the opportunities I’d been given to others.

In 2004 I walked into my first day of a new job at Kinetika Bloco – a summer school that used carnival music and dance to give south London kids a creative education – and found something culturally and musically totally different to anything I’d experienced.

There were 150 teenagers learning drums, brass instruments and dance. It was chaotic, loud, scary and beautiful. For me, music had been instructive; here it was raw. Kids who’d never played the trumpet before were now part of a section and it felt joyful and free.

The organisation was a couple of years old and took its name from Brazilian blocos – carnival-style street parties characterised by the same movement and sounds. Kinetika’s founder, Mat Fox, had visited them and been inspired by what it did for kids: they’d go to school in the morning, then spend the afternoon in this social space connecting and creating. A year after I joined, the film Favela Rising came out. It documented the true story of Anderson Sá, a drug trafficker turned social revolutionary who established the grassroots AfroReggae movement to draw young people away from crime and drugs in Rio’s slums. Mat suggested I’d like it.

I bought the DVD and sat down to watch it alone on the sofa. The kids on screen survived by selling drugs and guns, against a backdrop of massacres and extreme poverty. It hit hard but seeing how music became something that healed them and offered a path out was inspiring.

As it is in London, these kids needed somewhere else, another place to belong to that would show them another way. It was while watching that I understood this is what Kinetika were really about – not a music project or an orchestra clocking up grades and performances, but a space to bring young people together and show them an alternative.

Favela Rising became part of Kinetika’s ethos, and my own. AfroReggae led from the front. They came from the same community as the kids they were creating with. I wasn’t from south London, but I could inspire the young people who came through our doors so that they could lead their next generation.

For years after, we showed the film at lunchtimes and in summer schools, as we created a space to grow local musicians.

We grew from a summer school taking part in Notting Hill carnival to what we are today, running holiday programmes, workshops and after-school clubs for children and teens across London. We operate from the Southbank Centre and have created a leadership programme – the vast majority of our drum, brass and dance leaders were once young people in Bloco.

We perform across the country and we’ve taken kids to New Orleans and Cape Town. Thousands have passed through our doors, some of whom bring their kids now. Among Bloco’s alumnae are Ezra Collective’s Femi and Ife. They met here as teenagers; Femi did our leadership programme, working with kids with special needs. He always says he tries to recreate the spirit of Kinetika Bloco on stage. Our young people have performed with them, including Ezra’s 2025 performance with Jorja Smith at the Brits. Some years ago, we performed with AfroReggae too after they approached us, out of the blue, during a London visit. They had no idea about the inspiration we had taken from them and Favela Rising. I remember standing against the wall of that same school hall I first walked into, seeing them and 50 of our teenagers jumping with huge drums, thinking: this is quite incredible.

At Kinetika Bloco, Favela Rising is still baked into our mindset. It has affected and inspired us. It encourages our young people and gives them perspective. It’s like Femi says: if you want to get a young person out of trouble, put a trumpet in their hands – then just watch what they do.