Jonathan Bellamy spoke with Arnold Yousaf and Hui Tang from the Jubilee Training Centre.

Arnold Yousaf

Arnold Yousaf and Hui Tang are students on the Creative Arts Academy at the Jubilee Training Centre and after performing a song Arnold had written live in Cross Rhythms radio studio, they spent time chatting with presenter, Jonathan Bellamy, about their backgrounds, prison, gang culture, life transformation and re-discovering your dreams and the difference Jubilee Training has made to their lives.

Jon: So Arnold you wrote the song we just heard. Is that part of your own story, are the lyrics describing your journey?

Arnold: Every year the training centre gets a topic and this year it was, 'The road less travelled'. In the Creative Arts Academy we do a CD/DVD project towards the end of the year; it's like our end of year project. The items that we were doing were based on the theme of, 'The road less travelled' and this song that I wrote is called 'Trendsetter'. It's about taking the road less travelled and going against the standard that everyone else sets. People will tell you to conform to a certain way of thinking and so for example, my story is that I came out of prison and when I came out of prison I wanted to change my life because of what God had done in my life. I became a Christian and there was this whole transformation of life, but my past was still holding me back where my friends were influencing me and encouraging me to still get involved in illegal activities. So being a trendsetter is being a pioneer and it means standing up for what you believe in. I had to break the trend that was put against me - that's the past and that's the trend that everyone else is following and I had to be a leader, and rather than being influenced by my past, I had to become a person of influence.

Jon: You briefly mentioned something of your past - do you feel like you've come a long way in your life, if you look back at where you were to where you are now? Can you share something of that journey?

Arnold: Yes definitely. I think back then if someone told me that I'd be sitting here today singing a song about leaving all of that, I wouldn't have believed it. But for me it's been a massive journey of transformation.

Arnold Yousaf

I was born into a single-parent background. My Mum raised me and my two sisters and older brother, so I'm the youngest of four. I was born in Pakistan and my Mum fled from my Dad and came to England. She was in an abusive relationship, but came to England when I was three months old. She started off in Lancashire for about four years and ended up eventually in London and that's where I spent most of my life up until now.

Growing up in East London, it was quite a rough neighbourhood and I got involved in quite a lot of crime and in the whole gang culture there as well. I made a lot of stupid decisions and I'd been in and out of run-ins with the law, but when I turned 18 I ended up getting charged with quite a serious crime and ended up in prison.

Growing up this whole life that was put in front of me was glamorised; we saw the glitz and glamour of it. The area that I grew up, there wasn't any fathers, there wasn't any role models, or father figures. So growing up, our role models and our father figures were the drug dealers, or your local pimp, or your group of gang-bangers that are in the area. What I'm getting at is the life put in front of me by my role models was glamorised to me and it wasn't until I actually ended up in prison for a really serious crime, that I started to see that it's not glamorous at all. I started to see that it's a life leading to death and destruction, that's bringing pain to my family and bringing pain to my own life as well.

When I was in a police station I was charged with conspiracy to kidnap and falsely imprison and murder as well. Talking to my barrister, he said I was looking at 25 years plus if I was to be convicted of all the charges put against me. While I was in a police station, I was going through all sorts of interviews and I remember the jailor actually came to my cell and asked me if I wanted any reading material, so stuck in a police station in four walls for four days, me being really bored, I said I'd love a Bible because I remember growing up, my Mum was a Sunday School Teacher and she took me to church and she taught me to pray. My relationship with God at the time was just pray if you need something and there were situations where I'd pray to God when I needed something; when I'm in a situation where I could possibly die and I'll get out of the situation, but then I would completely forget about God and go off and do my own thing. But this time I read the Bible when the jailor gave it to me and I got to this specific verse in the Bible and that verse is Proverbs 3:5-6 and it said, 'Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight'. These words jumped out at me from the Bible and I was like, wow, this whole time I'd been trusting in my friends, I'd been trusting in the whole street code and the money that we'd been making and I'd been trusting in everything else but God and all that's gotten me to is basically facing life in prison and all the crazy things that's happening in the background as well. So I cried out to God and I said, "Y'know what, I'm gonna give you a chance and I'm gonna rely on you and trust in you in this situation".

I spent a whole year in prison, in custody, waiting for my trial to come, but while I was in prison I was going to church. I was going to the Bible studies that they'd provided; I was going to the prayer groups and I started building this relationship with God. As I was reading through the Bible I realised that y'know, God is not this God that just wants to enforce law upon you, but actually he loved us so much that even when we didn't deserve it, he came down for people like me, he reclined with tax collectors and prostitutes. Tax collectors were the equivalent to the Mafia at the time and I just realised that God is a God that is for his people. He loves his creation. In my time in prison I gave my life to God and that radically changed my life.

Hui Tang

I got convicted for the kidnap and I got four years, but did two years inside prison. The way it works in the UK, if it's not a mandatory sentence, you do half of it inside and the other half on the outside, but with conditions. So, upon my release, my conditions were that I wasn't allowed back into my area in London. Now Maidstone wasn't on my radar at all, but I had done my last bit of my sentence in Rochester prison and they said we're not going to send you back to London on release because your conditions apply that you're not allowed there, but we're gonna put you in a hostel in Maidstone, and we're gonna monitor your behaviour for three to six months and then look to rehabilitate you back closer to home. But while I was there, I was seeing that I'd given my life to God, but what now? What shall I do now? So there was this thing in me where I wanted to pursue this relationship with God, but I didn't know how to. I was basically living this double life and so I started going to my local church, but as I started going to my local church, there were people in the local church that actually accepted me as if I'm a family member and started walking with me and encouraging me to better myself and to come closer to God. So through that I heard about the Year of Training course and the training centre and I did a Year of Training and right now I'm in the Creative Arts Academy.

I did the Year of Training and that was a character building course and God did a lot of work in there and now I'm in the Creative Arts Academy. While I was in Year of Training, I saw how because we had opportunity to reach out into the community and we used music and drama and dance as a vehicle to do that, because people relate to that and it's a language that can cross borders and as I saw how the music that we were doing, the dance that we were doing, it was really touching and inspiring people, so I was like, wow, maybe this is something that I wanna pursue.

At that time I really felt that the next step in my Christian walk was to do Creative Arts Academy and pursue my music further. So as I started doing Creative Arts Academy, I started exploring the art of music as well, but how I can use it to bring a positive influence into the community and also to be that testimony that people can see. They can see that there's this kid that came out of East London and he was involved in a gang, convicted of kidnapping and he was your local drug dealer and all the stuff of the past, but now he's changed. If you ask my friends in the past like, "How did Arnold change?", they wouldn't be able to explain how, but the answer for me - and I know, that I know, that I know that the answer for me is Jesus Christ. Without Jesus Christ, I wouldn't have been able to change. When I sit down with the probation officers they used to say, "Arnold, how did you change? We look at your criminal record and we see everything of the past and we think how come he's doing all these things in the community now and why are you doing all this now - what's the catch? What you playing at?" And I just say, "God's radically changed my life".

Jon: Thank you for sharing that story, it's a very powerful story Arnold. Hui, you were doing the vocals while Arnold was rapping, tell us about your story, because you're not from the UK are you?