Room to Rant: Young Men, Health Research and Rap

Suicide is the single biggest killer of men aged under 45 in the UK, and young men are renowned for their reluctance to seek help and engage in traditional ‘talking’ therapies.

This study is a collaboration with Room to Rant, a young person's music project that uses weekly rap workshops to give young men aged 16-26 a chance to 'get stuff off their chests' in a supportive, non-stigmatised environment. The aim is to design and implement an evaluative framework that can fully capture the breadth and complexity of impact of this project on the lives and wellbeing of the young men who attend.

The University of Brighton and Audioactive - a trusted grass roots music charity - are partnering to pilot this innovative health research project.

Over the course of a year, up to 30 young men from East Sussex aged 16 to 25 will work with professional rappers and spoken word artists to ‘get stuff off their chests’ in weekly workshops. Alongside qualified support staff, we will work to encourage the young men to co-produce a unique evaluative framework to enable the data to be sensitively and creatively captured. The creative work produced from this will be showcased in a series of public events at the end of the project, presenting the research in creative forms such as an open-mic night aims to attract other young men in the same demographic and engage them in thinking about their own well-being and how they could improve it.