Beats Bus Records are a multi award winning not for profit Social enterprise from Kingston upon Hull. We have won 8 awards since 2015 for our community work.
Our work has been championed by KPMG, Michael Sheen, June Sarpong, Crime Commissioner of Humberside Keith Hunter, John Prescott, Tommy Coyle, Dick Fontaine, Lucy Beaumont, Mark Ronson and Sean Mcallister filmmaker and director of our documentary “A Northern Soul” We have worked closely and have been endorsed by all the above.
The 5 elements of hip-hop are 1. Songwriting (the MC) 2. Breakdance (B-BOY/B-GIRL) 3. Graffiti 4. Djing and the 5th and most important to us knowledge. We have a mobile recording studio that is a 7.5 tonne Iveco truck that enables us to take Arts and Music into communities that don’t usually have access to these provisions. Our 9 awards proves how important this community grassroots work is. All our provisions are offered to young people at no cost breaking down barriers of Poverty and Austerity and tackling the Stigma attached.
We are unique in our practice having our mobile recording studio (A 7.5 tonne Iveco truck converted into a professional recording studio inside) This enables us to travel to organisations, youth projects and communities to carry out our outreach and research sessions. Our hip hop history and elements workshops are very popular with the young people this is exemplified by the results we have achieved. Our founder Steve has ran several very successful projects at The Warren Hull working with 18-25 year olds all resulting in great songs about racism, society, and the pressures of life. The outcomes of the projects have been the young people recording their first songs and performing live in front of 500+ people at the Freedom Festival and Humber Street Sesh 2 of Hulls biggest festivals
We have changed the lives of many young people with our work over the last 4 years and still work with a core group of young people aged 8-25 that have enrolled in our mentorship programme our 3 main tutors have all passed there teaching level 3 qualification and safeguarding children and adults qualifications and all have full enhanced DBS clearance, we pride ourselves on making sure the young people have a safe fully creative experience and space to express their creativity.
Lately we have been funded and supported by Celebrities Mark Ronson and Lucy Beaumont so this will ensure the artists we find will have a big platform to launch their work from that will be seen by celebrities and their followers/fans.
We also use our Beats Bus YouTube channel to capture progress in video and also to release Music videos for the young artists we work with we currently have 300+ subscribers and the videos on our channel are getting some great views and promotion also as a record label we release music young artists create on all digital platforms i:e- Itunes, Spotify, Amazon, Deezer etc, all costs are covered by the label for this distribution and the artists keep 100% creative control on what we release for them this is another service we offer as part of our mentorship programme.