Tang Hall Smart: preventing people falling through cracks

TANG Hall Smart is a lifeline - and even a lifesaver - to some of the most vulnerable and marginalised people in society. The business turns lives around and catches people who would otherwise be “falling through the cracks”.

Set up in 2014 by Sue and Al Williamson at The Burnholme Centre in Tang Hall, York, it offers creative and personalised learning programmes for young people with an Educational Health Care Plan as well as creative clubs, classes and programmes for people who have struggled with mental health, homelessness and/or addiction. It also works with adults who have additional needs.

Since it was set up the York company, based in Tang Hall, has helped more than 1,000 people.

Alan Rollinson - music-tech and support assistant at Tang Hall Smart

The music arts and sports community organisation runs out of two sites, providing classrooms and rehearsal rooms, a workshop and a recording studio.

When the business was first set up Sue had no idea it was going to be so successful. She had worked for 20 years as a music teacher and SENCO at the school, Burnholme Community College, which was previously on the site. When the school was closed down she managed to get a lease in the decaying buildings before they were demolished.

In deciding what to do next she looked at her skills set - music and English - and also had a vision of what she wanted to do.

“Having worked in education for so long and aware of the wastage in terms of human potential and seeing all these fantastic, talented students and then quite often their futures not turning out particularly bright. It had always been something that concerned me, these people falling through the cracks.”

When she started out she had no idea it would end up being the business it is today.

“What I'd assumed it was going to be was something just for me really, possibly my husband as well, where I'd maybe end up doing some freelance work and maybe at a pupil referral unit and we’d have just a year or two winging it in the old school buildings.”

Al - an electrician and clock maker by trade - had a complementary skills set.

“To start with it was just me and Al and we were running eight community clubs. Al did an electronics workshop, he did one for children and one for adults and he also helped out at the adult rock school - because Al’s a musician as well. And then I did all the others, teenage rock school and junior rock school.”

Sue was awarded a small grant at the beginning from Unlimited with the condition that she should go on a residential event. And it was that event that made her focus on what she really wanted to do.

“That is when we really started to focus on two things - which was working with people with additional needs and also working with adults with multiple entrenched problems and specifically homelessness. But even at that time I was very concerned that it was a business, that it wasn’t a charity, that we didn't just apply for grants. Because I don’t think you survive for very long if that’s what you do.”

In choosing to focus on people with additional needs Sue was taking her own experience as a SENCO into account.

But there was another reason too: “I had kind of absorbed some of the horror that faces families with young people with learning disabilities when they reach that point where funding for education runs out. There is like a chasm - a great big gap - and that kind of haunted me a bit. The thought of all of that achievement and progression and then it just all stops and life contracts.”

Making music at Tang Hall Smart

Her concern for adults with problems such as addiction, homelessness and poor mental health dates back to when she had a boyfriend at university who was a heroin addict and who died.

She set out to help “people that fall through the cracks - that are the furthest away from the mainstream. In enabling those people to also be part of the same race as everybody else and kind of running alongside them whilst they do that.”

“It’s just been my teaching model,” she added. “I was always interested in working with disaffected, defiant young people. They weren’t really, it’s all bravado. It’s kind of a continuation of that.”

Very early on in the history of Tang Hall SMART she met a homeless man called Neil Card.

“He was a very talented person but he had been in active addiction since he was 12. And when I met him he was 32,” she said.

“You know when you kind of get told by other people - no way with this person, he’s the worst alcoholic in York? I always think well we’ll see about that."

“I worked alongside him and had to really think about how to plug gaps that other services weren’t offering to enable him to realise his talents.”

Neil is now an executive director of Tang Hall Smart, along with Sue, and is also the organisation’s finance manager.

“It was early on and I thought oh my goodness we have actually done something quite powerful here. He says it saved his life,” Sue said.

“Since he joined our company he’s brought out eight albums. He’s a producer, a composer and an instrumentalist - as well as being our finance manager and a company secretary.”

She said his example is extremely inspiring for other people they work with.

But even the best help and intervention don’t always work.

“One of our people died back in March [last year]. It was so sad, it was someone I worked with for quite a few years. That's what it's like, it's life and death really.”

One of Tang Hall SMART’s initiatives is a programme called Kickstart - “Nothing to do with the government’s programme of the same name. We had the name first,” Sue insists.

Sue Williamson of Tang Hall Smart

The scheme has its origins in Neil and he is “like the poster boy” for it.

“It’s an educational training programme with mentoring but extra things like going shopping with people and practical advice and support.”

When Tang Hall SMART is working with homeless people it can also help them to find accommodation, it can advocate for them and accompany them to important meetings.

In January this year the group ran a conference with York University about the issue of homelessness.

“And what we’re trying to do is launch this research into stress testing the whole of York’s services, to find out where the gaps are and what’s not going well,” Sue said.

They now hope to create extra revenue and extra resources for York to pilot a scheme which they would then take to government - with the hope of influencing national policy.

“I believe that we’ve got something that’s unusual and unique with what we’re doing. I think it’s to do with the wrap around approach and how we do relationships,” she said.

Sue has surprised herself by how much she enjoys the business aspects of what she does.

“I really like the business side of it. I really enjoy it. I find it very creative, trying to make it all fit. Juggling all the different things - like a three dimensional jigsaw really. It is just as creative a challenge as anything else - whether I can get everything lined up, all the people, resources, the sites.

“I never thought I would like it. I had no inkling I was going to enjoy that.”

There’s certainly a lot of juggling to do now. Tang Hall SMART has 31 staff and gives classes in drama, dance art and sport, as well as English and Maths. Al has taken more of a back seat but still teaches in his workshop.

As the company prepares for its 10th anniversary this year there are many things to celebrate.

“It is the stories about the people and what’s happened. There are so many of them,” Sue said.

“Every day there’s something brilliant. A girl with down’s syndrome who got her Level 3 Diploma with us. Or two guys recently who had been homeless and were on our Kickstart programme. They managed to get their Level 3 Diplomas - which is a really huge deal.”

Find out more at: tanghallsmart.com