After spending 20 years in the fashion & beauty industry, founder Jane Bellis became increasingly jaded with the constant drip feed of unrealistic and damaging images from the media. Beauty standards and social expectations seemed to be pushing people further and further from happiness and fulfilment and further away from each other.
Jane decided to take a stand and challenge perceptions in July 2015 by putting on a ‘rock n roll’ fashion show called ‘Alternative Fashion Fest’ .. watch here
It soon became apparent that something of this nature was sorely needed for the people of the UK. It seemed that all of a sudden, the word ‘Alternative’ actually represented 99% of the population who didn’t feel that that they were represented within mainstream media, in our clothing stores or on our catwalks.
Rising bullying and hate crime statistics along with declining mental health and a lack of community spirit or indeed humanity led Jane to start reaching out to build a ‘Tribe’ of like minded people who could see the power of collectively harnessing skills within art, performance, music and fashion to create something magical, supportive, nurturing and could quite possibly one day change the world as we know it.
Art & Soul Tribe was created out of this vision, with Lindsey Witkowska and Laura Williams joining as Jane’s right and left hands, forming an unstoppable force of empathy, sass and glitter. Supported by some amazing individuals with the strength of warriors and hearts of pure gold, we are brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, friends, children, we are teachers, students, factory workers, accountants, we are solicitors, secretary’s, business owners, supermarket cashiers, flight attendants and florists. We have honours degrees and zero qualifications, we are gay, straight, transgender, pan, cis, black, white and multicoloured. We wear our art on our skins and on our walls, and we have a diverse range of abilities, passions, strengths and stories. We are a beautiful rainbow of awesomeness. We are human.
“There is nothing more powerful than a humble person with a warrior spirit who is driven by a bigger purpose.”
Well it is safe to say that our vibe has attracted our Tribe and we are well are our way to making our vision for social change a reality.
Now set up as a social enterprise, Art & Soul Tribe supports and nurtures its warriors by promoting their individual skills and businesses within the organisations business activity of Event Management and Entertainment. Being able to generate our own income to support our wider purpose is so important to us, and being able to support our Tribe to develop and thrive themselves is an absolute privilege.
Coming together as a collective for major events and shows throughout the year, The Tribe volunteers their time and collective skills to show the world the beauty of diversity, and that there is another way, that of tolerance, support and empathy, where we take time to understand each other and build each other up rather than tearing each other down. Where our future generations (our Youth Tribe are absolutely amazing!) will grow to be amazing leaders to change the course self destruction that the world seems to have found itself on.
To support and embed the bigger mission for social change, Jane and some of her warriors have recently set up a Charity, specifically to focus on the issues they have found to be most important and take them directly into schools across the UK to deliver targeted interactive workshops centred around Anti-bullying, tolerance, self esteem, body confidence, mental health and reaching true potential. Social Education Foundation is to deliver its pilot scheme to schools in the Northwest of England and North wales during summer term 2018 before rolling out officially in early 2019.
For more information click here
The past three years have been a roller-coaster of emotions and trial and error. Now it’s time to hit the ground running spreading our message of positivity and collecting Tribe Warriors as we go.