Red Light Busking

Red Light Busking Vision Statement

Red Light Busking provides the high street with high quality cultural experiences with music being at the heart of what we do. We Bridge the gap between local businesses, cultures, and ages so that artists and young people with lived experiences get to create and collaborate with these businesses resulting in immersive creative experiences that the whole community can enjoy.

We have two main projects that achieve our purpose.

The first is our weekly music studio project for at risk young people referred to us from services like social services and family intervention. On this project, young people are given reign to freely express themselves through music. Having music as a common ground allows us to work closely with these young people and help them overcome the many complex issues they face. With over a decade of experience, we've become particularly adept at working with SEND young people.

While our other project is our Red Light Busking live events, which sees us transform high street shop windows into immersive installations and live performance stages. Our live events have been going on since 2019, where we started as one of the few chosen grant winners to put on events for Waltham Forests 2019 London Borough of Culture program. Since this date, the event has gone from strength to strength securing further funding from the prestigious Arts Council England.

Key Assumptions

99% of public members who we queried during our live Red Light Busking events told us that they absolutely loved seeing live music displayed so creatively and events like this would keep them visiting the high streets.

95% of the public members who saw our Red Light Busking event live when queried told us that they were local to the borough.

98% of the public members who attended our live event when queried told us that they were very happy with the safety measures we had put in place for them due to covid and felt very safe being on the streets.

A rising trend that we are seeing when querying members of the public is that the weekly videos we put out online through social media were what encouraged these public members to attend our events live.

100% of the businesses we partnered with (used their shop window) for our Red Light Busking event told us that their customers absolutely loved the live music, and for their actual business greater awareness was made for their shops, as people would look in the shop as they walked by or would stop and enter the shop to find out what was going on.

1 in 3 of the young people referred to us are at risk of exclusion from school or have already been excluded. Our music studio project has lowered the exclusion rates of these young people and helped them to become more settled at school.

1 in 15 of the young people who have been referred to us have had a death in their family. Being able to express themselves through our music studio project has been a key factor in these young people opening up and responding to outside professional help.

1 in 5 of the young people who enter our project have not been in education for up to 1 year. Our project has been key in keeping these young people engaged in regular reading and writing plus keeping them motivated for attending school after being out of the education system for so long.

99% of the professionals we work with (social workers, gang workers, family intervention workers etc) have stated that since referring their young people to our project they have seen massive improvements in their young persons home and school life.

Vibrant

This is a great idea to bring music to the centre of Walthamstow during the day and people of all ages loved it . It gave our town a rhythm, vibrancy and welcoming feel.

Positive

I have seen first-hand the positive effects it (project) has had on some of the young people we work with, one in particular arrived at the project so distant from his family and unable to communicate, often missing from home for periods of time, the difference in this young man was inspiring, he opened up to his family and found employment. Feedback from parents was full of gratitude and pride at the music he had produced.

Radical

The project was innovative and radical, themes that we encourage and embrace here in the London Borough of Culture 2019. David’s event brought a wide range of artists and audiences together and benefited the local community by opening up untraditional spaces and attracting a high footfall. David is clearly extremely passionate about bringing culture to communities and garnering engagement, this has shone through in the project that he delivered in Waltham Forest.