Episode 3: Amy Walton and Kelly Ensbury, Founders of Urban Kaos

INTRO: Welcome to the Trailblazers Podcast series by Periplum, sharing the experiences of trailblazers living and working in the Tees Valley: the innovators, activists, workers and adventurers as told in their own words. Episode 3 Amy Walton and Kelly Ensbury, Founders of Urban Kaos Kelly (Interviewee) Shall I start? Amy (Interviewee) You start, yeah. Kelly (Interviewee) So I was born in a little mining village, a pit village called Fishburn. And I've got three older brothers. Lived with my mam and dad. My dad worked down the pit for - , until the 80s. Working class family. I went to school there. I then went on to college, and I danced from the age of five. I've danced right through my life. Amy (Interviewee) And, I grew up in Stockton-on-Tees, all my family are from Stockton-on-Tees. Lived with mum and dad, and I've got a brother. My dad – we’re a working class family - my dad is a plumber, and my mum was a stay-at-home mum while we were young and then went off to work once we were a bit older. Like Kelly, I have danced all my life, and then I went on to do a college course in performing arts and then went on to work professionally, where I met Kelly. Kelly (Interviewee) Yay! [Laughs) Lynne (Interviewer) That links nicely - I was going to ask if you could tell me how you met and what it was like when you first met. Kelly (Interviewee) Cool. So Amy and I met at an audition - when we were 18 - for the first time, and it was at Dance City in Newcastle, and it was for the Northern Youth Dance Company, and it was very contemporary and very serious. And Amy's not contemporary and not serious. So, we didn't get on very well. We were both going for kind of the same job and we just didn't…well, I say we didn't like each other. I didn't like Amy. Amy (Interviewee) I had no problem with Kelly. [Kelly laughs] She didn't like me, but it's because I wasn't taking it seriously, because I think I quickly realized that that particular opening wasn't for me, because I wasn't in…at the time, wasn't into contemporary dance, and Kelly really was. So I think she was just annoyed at my not being supportive of the situation. Kelly (Interviewee) And we just had a little bit of a clash didn't we. Amy (Interviewee) We did. Kelly (Interviewee) And then we went our separate ways and got on with our lives and worked all over the place. And then when we were 21, we were both working in a cabaret show band that was all high kicks and feathers and thong back leotards and things like that. And we were touring the country with the band. Amy (Interviewee) And I was working for the same company but I was abroad, working in Mallorca and erm, when I came back to the UK, I got put into the same group as Kelly and they said, there’s gonna be this girl, that she's going to pick you up at Junction - Kelly (Interviewee) 60, on the A1… Amy (Interviewee) Junction 60, Bradbury Services. So I… met this girl I…we didn't, didn't know at the time that we'd actually met before at an audition. Jumped in the car with Kelly, and we hit it off straight away, and we didn't stop talking all the way. And we've been best friends ever since that moment. Kelly (Interviewee) Yep. So we worked for the touring cabaret show band. It wasn't all wonderful. They were… they were hard to work for. You questioned everything. You were made to feel like…you can't be too fat, you can't speak too loud. You… They even questioned what you had in your sandwich and if you should be eating that. It was just not a nice environment, and we both got to the point where we really didn't like dancing or performing anymore. We lost that love for it because we became scared of getting into trouble with the bosses all the time. Amy (Interviewee) And we were feeling judged, and we felt like we had to change who we were and what we looked like to fit in with them. And we both put up with it for so long, and then, it took us to have a particularly long stint touring - we were very tired, and we'd got into our cars to drive home, and it was about 4 ‘o clock in the morning, and we were shattered. We'd worked really hard. It wasn't an easy job because we were touring up and down the country. One…one day we might be in Scotland, the next day we’d be in London. And it was traveling, setting up, doing the show, jumping in the van and off to another venue. And we were driving home and it was 4 ‘o clock in the morning and we were both shattered and we, we pulled off the A1 and we saw a field, and the field was full of mist, and we both looked at each other and said, can you see that too? And we saw a field full of unicorns. No word of a lie - we saw a field of unicorns, we... Kelly (Interviewee) And I know that sounds really crazy. Amy (Interviewee) But we just said, you know, this is the point where we need to stop, like, we're going crazy. Kelly (Interviewee) ‘Cos we thought we were that tired we were delirious. And it was…. So we'll go back to the field of unicorns, because actually, it was ten years later that we found out about that field of unicorns. But anyway, so the next day when we, we'd had some sleep and we woke up and we went, we can't do this anymore. We, we… They're not thankful for what we do. You never get a thank you or a well done. And we just hit rock bottom. And so we went to Amy's mum's house and we got a big cup of coffee and the yellow pages and thought about setting up our own business, our own little partnership, our own company that might make us like dancing and like ourselves again. And we wanted our company to be about spreading joy and having fun, and no matter your size, your shape, your age, your gender… Amy (Interviewee) Where you came from… Kelly (Interviewee) …anything, dance should be for everybody. And we just wanted to get away from what we'd been put through in the past. So Urban Kaos was born in about an hour. We sat down with the Yellow Pages. We came up with the name. We came up with the concept. We came up with the idea. And Amy got on the phone to the Prince's Trust. Amy (Interviewee) And I thought I was actually going to speak to the Prince… Kelly (Interviewee) …at the palace… Amy (Interviewee) …which was embarrassing. Actually it was an office in Middlesbrough, and a lovely guy that took our phone call and said, come on down for a meeting. So we went and had a meeting and, discussed why we'd come up with the idea and what we wanted to do, and they gave us a grant, which bought us our very first sound system Kelly (Interviewee) And our very first marketing and branding little package. We got a logo designed and - Amy (Interviewee) Yeah. Kelly (Interviewee) And things like that. Amy (Interviewee) That’s right. And then off we went into local primary schools and community centres, and predominantly worked for free because we just wanted to share what we were doing and get people aware of what was happening and actually the style that we were dancing in was new to the area, so we were kind of using like an urban street dance, and it hadn't really hit … Kelly (Interviewee) …the North-East… Amy (Interviewee) …Teesside. So it was a bit fresh, it was a bit new and we started to engage boys and girls, people of all ages, and we realised it was something that was working. People were, you know, going out of their comfort zone and felt trust, they had trust in us, and it just kind of built from there. And we set up some summer schools, and we came in to Arc [arts venue in Stockton-on-Tees) and overheard that their street dance teacher was leaving… or their dance - it wasn't a street dance teacher – Kelly (Interviewee) Dance teacher Amy (Interviewee) …their dance teacher was leaving. So we quickly jumped in on that conversation, said hello to Urban Kaos, and they said we could take over that class - never seen us dance, which is hilarious. But we got that job and we set up a summer school. So we did our very first summer school on Arc’s stage. Kelly (Interviewee) And then over the years we, we ended up working with a lot of groups that other dance teachers wouldn't work with, or couldn't work with. So we worked in community centres, in schools, with parents, with an asylum support group, for the Youth Service. We then went on to work in Young Offenders Centres, and with young people at risk of crime, and we just kind of… it rocketed, it skyrocketed, and we got a couple of people to come and work with us. Sam, who still works with us today, has been with us… She did her first summer school at the age of 15, and she joined our summer school and loved it, and then when she was 18, started working with us. It went so well that on our ten year anniversary, we had a bit of money and we went, ooh, let's treat ourselves, we've been running the company for ten years, let's get some lovely hair, hairstyles. And we were sitting in a hairdressers and we were telling our story about how we set up, and we were talking about the field of unicorns, which everybody always thought we were crazy for talking about. And the guy that was doing our hair has a couple of horses, and he said, oh, I know what you're talking about - it's the field near Bradbury Services - they're actually a wedding company, and they have got 12 horses that they hire out to people's weddings, and you'll have seen them work ‘cos they put the horns on them in the field. So they get used to wearing the horns so they don't kind of move their head around and things. So we actually, we had seen a field of unicorns… [Laughter]… but they were horses with horns on their heads. And so, after all that time, it took ten years to find that out, and we found this company online and went: that was the company that made us start our business, because we thought we were going crazy. So there we go. Amy (Interviewee) So, the symbol of a unicorn is very kind of… Kelly (Interviewee) …poignant… Amy (Interviewee) …poignant to us. And we feel a little bit like our business was set up on a lie, because we thought we were going crazy, and actually, in fact, weren't, but… We haven't looked back. And it's 20 years next month, we’ll be celebrating our 20th anniversary. And we've worked in so many different capacities and different places, with different people… Kelly (Interviewee) Thousands and thousands of people. I wouldn't even like to guess how many thousands of people we have danced with over the years. And we've made it through a recession. We've made it through Covid. We've had bereavements, we've both had two children each. Weddings, marriages, births, deaths. We've kind of gone through everything together and danced through it all. Amy (Interviewee) And we're still best friends. Kelly (Interviewee) Most of the time. Lynne (Interviewer) What are the biggest challenges do you think that you've faced? Amy (Interviewee) I think the biggest challenges are keeping on going through changes, social changes and funding changes and, we've… Our business is very reliant on us and our energy and coming up with creative ideas, and we actually can have creative ideas until the cows come home, or the unicorns come home, but we meet barriers along the way, and those barriers tend to be access and funding. And it's picking yourself up after rejection, not getting funding bids. Covid was huge. We had to just shut the business down. There was no way of us operating. We did create a few videos that we sent out to schools for free for those that were still going to schools – they had a little bit of Urban Kaos in the classroom, but, it was bouncing back after everything that hits you, it's the keeping on going and finding that energy when you don't feel like you've got any energy left. But we always managed it, and we very lucky that we're a partnership, so there's two of us. And I think if I had to do this alone, I would have been definitely working in Tesco at least 15 years ago. Kelly (Interviewee) It's a good thing that if one of us is having a bad time, the other one is there to kind of keep that energy up and, and keep everything ticking by. And obviously, like everything, our work has highs and lows. Sometimes we’re rushed off our feet and we’re so busy and other times we have no work at all in. So, one of the biggest challenges is the uncertainty. So sometimes we go, wow, we can pay our bills this month and other months we go, oh, we can't this month, oh dear. But at the same time, we are so lucky to be our own bosses, to work on our terms, to, to say yes to things and no two days are the same. One day we’re dancin’ in a school, the next day we’re dancin’ in a retirement village and yeah, no two days are the same, and that's what we love about it most. Amy (Interviewee) I think another challenge we face is the types of groups we work with. There… It comes with a lot of problems, and we take on those problems. So a lot of the young people we work with have quite difficult circumstances, difficult backgrounds. And although we're just there to provide joy and kindness and to let them have an hour away of their chaotic lifestyle, just to have that time to be young and have fun, sometimes we kind of take those worries home with us, and it, it is hard to kind of switch off because you're constantly thinking about the young people that you work with and the difficulties that they're having, and we can't change the world, but we have to keep reminding ourselves that our role in this is to just be a friend and to be kind and to spread joy… Kelly (Interviewee) …and to give people a good time – an hour out of their lives, just to come and, like you say, have fun. Lynne (Interviewer) And what have been the highlights? I think you've touched on some of them? Kelly (Interviewee) Well, yeah, the highlights. We, we won a lot of business awards. We won the Best New Business award for like 4 or 5 years running when we first set up, we won Grazie Business Women of the year awards at one point. We don't even know how - we didn't even nominate ourselves for these awards - we got invited to the Queen's Garden Party because we were set up with help from the Prince's Trust. We got these invitations through our doors saying we'd been invited to the palace for a garden party, and, our families couldn't quite believe it. Working class from Stockton on Tees, clinking glasses with the Queen. So they’re some definite highlights. Amy (Interviewee) A few of the projects that I would say would be a highlight - we worked on a project called the Rink Revival, and it was reenacting an old dance hall called The Rink that was in Hartlepool. And we worked with… in a few care homes with people who went to the rink that met their husbands at the rink, that would go and dance with their friends, and they went through war, and we found out about how important that dance hall was to them. And then we worked with some young people from a couple of colleges, and we revived the rink. Kelly (Interviewee) And we took all of their stories, all of the, the older people's stories and memories, and we created some beautiful dance pieces and we reenacted the, the night at the rink. We did it at Hartlepool Borough Hall and the young people then got to dance with the older people as well. So we got everybody out of the care homes for the day, and they came and had an afternoon out, and they had a cup of tea and an afternoon tea, and got to dance with all the people from the colleges and tell their story. And we got a great big band, and yeah, that was a really beautiful project. And we went up against a lot of other people for the funding for that project, and we - because we believed in it so much, in the importance of people telling their story - we got that money and we did that project all on our own, with no help. Amy (Interviewee) And there was a lady that we worked with called Betty Brotherson, and she was in her 90s, and she'd lost her husband, and she swore that when she lost her husband she'd never dance again because she didn't want to dance with anybody else. And we found a young person that we really wanted to dance with, and bizarrely, he was called James, and Betty's grandson is called James, so she already felt this connection. And we didn't tell Betty's family, but she started off the whole performance, and she was sat on a chair, and James came up and offered his hand, and Betty got up and they danced together and it was just beautiful. Kelly (Interviewee) And they did ‘Save the last dance for me’. And they did it together. And Betty's family - there wasn't a dry eye. They all absolutely cried their eyes out to see their mum and their grandma up dancing again, and it was, it was beautiful. Amy (Interviewee) And coming back to our ethos that dance is for everybody. And Betty was in her 90s and... Kelly (Interviewee) ...thought she would never dance again. Amy (Interviewee) And we'd managed to pull that little dance sparkle back out of her, and that was just a really lovely moment for us. Kelly (Interviewee) Yeah. Lynne (Interviewer) Just how do you manage your work-life balance. Kelly (Interviewee) Wow, that's a hard question. Amy (Interviewee) You know what, I think we, we manage because of the two of us, and we both have things that… our children take up a lot of our time with both, you know, going through school and have got outside activities and we've got family members that we look after and we kind of help each other out. So if I've got to go off and do something Kelly's like, it's fine, I'll jump in and I'll run that session or, you know, similarly, if Kelly's got to go and take somebody to the hospital or something and I'll be like, it's fine, I'll do that session. And I think we're so lucky to have each other, and be able to manage spending time with our families, but also keep things running. And I think we are quite mindful of… we set up our own business in order to be able to do what we wanted to do as well, and have families and spend time with them. Kelly (Interviewee) And be able to do school runs and things like that. And we are lucky that we do have switch-off time. We work really hard, but then when we do switch off, we, we make up for it don't we. And sometimes we'll just do something as friends and we'll say, let's not talk about work at all and let's just be each other and be our, be our friendship, not our partnership. Amy (Interviewee) Go on camping trips… Kelly (Interviewee) Yeah. Amy (Interviewee) …with the kids and, you know, just have little adventures. So yeah, I think it is having the support of each other that we can manage having families. And… Kelly (Interviewee) But I’ve, I've got something to say. At Christmas we didn't dance at all. We both had two weeks off work and it was all about let's not, let's not do anything dance-related. Let's have two weeks off. And actually, we came back to work and we were a little bit miserable. And we said, you know what? We, we probably take for granted and don't realise how much dancing actually makes us feel good, because although we were relaxing and we, you know, we did Christmas, which was lovely, we really missed moving our bodies and jumping around and putting loud music on. And when we got back to work in January after our first session, we both felt better. So… Amy (Interviewee) Yeah, and I think the groups we work with feed us joy. So as well as us passing our joy to them, they send it right back our way. So we… it's like a shared enjoyment. And we, we missed kind of socialising and having noisy children in our lives. Lynne (Interviewer) Who or what inspires you? Kelly (Interviewee) That's a hard question. I'm inspired by so many people. I love watching… I love, I love women, I love seeing women go for it with their lives. There's so many people… I'm on Instagram and I could literally lose two hours looking at positive, brilliant, kickass women. Amy (Interviewee) Yeah, I think Kelly inspires me. Kelly (Interviewee) Oh, thanks. Amy (Interviewee) Yeah. And, and she has really creative ideas. And sometimes she'll just come out with something really profound and like, wow, let's go with that. So I'm very inspired by you. Kelly (Interviewee) Oh, thank you very much. Lynne (Interviewer) What would you like your legacy to be? Kelly (Interviewee) I would love to know that all the work we've done over 20 years… that people’ll remember, if they'd had a particularly hard day at school, that they went, oh, but we used to go to Urban Kaos at the Georgian Theatre on a Monday night and that was brilliant. If they can look back at their lives and just remember those times that they had had a good dance and… that we take things quite lightly - we're quite humorous and we find things funny. And I think it would be lovely if we've passed that on to the people that we work with. I know that, quite a few teachers in primary schools used to come to our dance classes, and I'd like to think that the way we were with them has inspired them to go on and teach, kind of, our ethos and not, not to be so serious about everything and to take things a bit light-hearted. And I'd like… I'd love the next generation of Urban Kaos. I would love a big gang of Urban Kaos teachers to then go on and do, do our work when we're not here anymore. Amy (Interviewee) Yeah. And just keep spreading happy memories in times that can be really difficult, that people have those little pockets of…remember when we did this and, and, yeah… Lynne (Interviewer) Brilliant, thank you. Is there anything else you want to talk about? Amy (Interviewee) Yes. Yes there is. So we once were, erm, contacted by Dragon's Den, and Dragon's Den were really interested in Urban Kaos, and they wanted us to go onto their programme to franchise Urban Kaos so that they could, well, make their programme, but also maybe invest in, in Urban Kaos, and… Kelly (Interviewee) And we got that phone call for three series, ever-… for the first, well, every year for about three years, we would get the Dragon's Den phone call to see if they could convince us to go on and be on telly and do it. Amy (Interviewee) And we did think about it, to be honest, because who wouldn't want to be invested in and have money spent on them? And we realised that what we have is quite unique, and it isn't franchise-able, because what we do works because of where we live and the communities we're surrounded by and the people we're surrounded by and who we are as people, and drop us into, you know, a, a community in London, for example, their community will be completely different and we'll be surrounded by different people - all wonderful, but different things will be happening, and the people will be different, and… what we have works because of who we are, where we are and the community we're in, the people we're surrounded by. Kelly (Interviewee) We're not claiming to make people into amazing dancers. We're not saying, come to us and, and you are going to have a dance career. It's not about -, it's about so much more than the dancing, it's about connecting, connectivity, community, getting together, speaking your story. There’s so much about what we do that just isn't about dance. And you’re totally right, I can remember when we convinced ourselves Dragon's Den would be a good idea, and then we kind of thought about it some more and went ‘we can't do it’. So all three times we've turned them down and we didn't - , we've never had investment from Dragon's Den. Amy (Interviewee) …because we're not franchise-able. OUTRO: Thank you for listening to Periplum’s Trailblazers Podcasts funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. To listen to more of the series, and follow our projects visit our website at periplumheritage.com