'Community is everyone, we're stronger together': New community hub opens in Sandwell with a music studio, gym, specialist boxing and mechanics workshop
A new community hub has opened in Sandwell with a music studio, a gym with specialist boxing and body-weight exercises and a mechanics workshop - full details here
She Beasts CIC is a female led organisation founded with a mission to empower people from all walks of life, offering support and guidance as they climb their personal and professional ladders.
The new hub on Brunswick Park Road in Wednesbury offers a range of classes and memberships within their new gym space, including specialist boxing training, trampoline work and body-weight exercises, while the facility also houses a mechanics workshop, a music studio and a large communal area.
"The space is really centred around the She Beasts mission and ethos, which is 'transform, empower, employ,'" Sadie Jones, founder of She Beasts explained. "We've got a number of rooms dedicated to different streams, and it's about welcoming the community into the space and educating people.
"We run a number of classes in the gym as well as offering memberships, we've got a mechanics workshop where we offer apprenticeships and give people the chance to get actual qualifications and jobs in that industry, and then we also have a music studio which offers something really similar too.
"The heart of our space is still a work in progress. Our community room will bring people together, and will be somewhere that you can just come and be yourself, connect with others and get to know people a bit better."
Sadie, who has a background in body building, personal training and human capital management, began the project alongside her partner Moysha Shepherd, a music artists and entrepreneur better known as 'Big Stygs,' and the pair intend to use their industry connections to provide the best possible environment to work and learn in.
"We'll be leaning on our networks, and there will be different artists that come in and mentor," Sadie said. "We've already had Mist as part of this first programme, and we've had some young people in making music as part of our launch.
"A lot of the women who we've helped through our workshops have actually gone on to become part of the team, so they'll be coaching and delivering classes, and then we have a lot of referrals coming from probation services, women's refuges and women's prisons.
"Now that we've created an allyship in conjunction with my partner we'll be able to see a very similar format for young boys and for men, and our project only really works when the outside community engages with us.
"Whether that's becoming a gym member here, using our music studio, getting your motorbike or quadbike repaired here rather than elsewhere, that income is what we are then able to reinvest into the communities that we serve."
The She Beasts organisation celebrated it's fifth birthday shortly days before the launch of their new community hub, and Sadie revealed things have only gone from strength to strength for her organisation over the years.
"It hasn't gone as I first expected," she admitted. "When it started I thought it was going to be a small group of women that I would support within my immediate community.
"I started it because I am the original 'She Beast,' I've been through many of the things that we support; I've been in children's homes and I've been in women's refuges.
"What started out as just working with women then became working with young people, and that developed into us focusing on prevention rather than cure.
"Last year we started working with young boys and formed partnerships with Mankind, and now the aim is to become even bigger and better.
"All these fantastic people that we're bringing through our workshops, I want to see them come on board and be in a position where they can run particular parts of this space, or go on and create one somewhere else.
"Our target audience is pretty much everybody. When we think about the people we directly fund it's very much people from disadvantaged communities, so it might be you've been through prison, you've been homeless, suffered abuse or substance abuse.
"I'd call them the forgotten society, the people that are told to just sign on and not worry about things. Actually they're the people that we want to see here making a positive change because we know it's possible, but to do that we need the person that works over the road at Ikea to have a gym membership here, we need the guy with the bike up the road to get it repaired here.
"Really, we are what we say on the tin. We're a community project and community is everyone. We're stronger together."
