Each One Teach One (EOTO) was founded by musician, actor and filmmaker Ben Drew—Plan B—to create alternative routes into learning for young people pushed to the margins of mainstream education. Its work began from a simple principle: before learning can take hold, young people need the space, trust and support to regulate, express themselves and feel that they belong.

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At Tunmarsh Pupil Referral Unit in Plaistow, where Ben himself had once been a student, EOTO established a purpose-built music studio with support from Atlantic Records. The studio gave young people a place to write, record, experiment and collaborate—not to become musicians necessarily, but to make something of their own. The programme was designed around creativity as a route to voice, self-understanding and confidence.

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In the process of making music, participants could name feelings, negotiate relationships and encounter different versions of themselves. Regulation was not taught as a rule or worksheet; it emerged through rhythm, focus, shared attention and the satisfaction of completing a track. Those conditions helped make engagement with education possible again.

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We shaped a creative environment in which expression came before assessment. The reported outcome was striking: within a term of EOTO’s intervention, almost one in four young people referred to the PRU returned to mainstream education. The work showed that, for young people who have been excluded, a studio can be more than a room—it can be a threshold back into possibility.