CHARLIE Barratt has helped hundreds of young people around Bolton to better lives but his own would have taken a very different pathway without the influence of music.

Charlie is head of Harmony Youth Project – a charity based at the top of an old mill in Wordsworth Street, Halliwell. He started it in 2000 but his life wasn’t originally destined in the direction of youth work.

Born and brought up in Vernon Street, Halliwell, Charlie was one of four children of one of the first West Indians to make a new life in Bolton. His dad Wesley, also known as George, drove a tipper truck and was a major and enduring influence in his son’s life.

As a result, it was assumed that young Charlie would follow him as an HGV driver but when he left Sharples High School – “where I was not academic at all but loved the social life,” admitted Charlie now – he became an apprentice bricklayer.

“I wasn’t even that really,” he added. “I was a big lad then, fit and strong, and I was just a labourer.” He worked at local garage IGW for a few years then failed his HGV test by hitting a small wall as he drove out of the test centre and had to re-think his career plans.

A friend, influential youth worker Hanif Ali, who also became his mentor, invited him to the Hibbert Street youth centre where Charlie soon proved adept in dealing with the youngsters there. “He noticed that I got along with them and could work with them easily and resolve problems,” recalled Charlie. “So he suggested that I took a course as a youth worker with a view to that being my job.

“I’d never even thought of that. I knew I really enjoyed being with young people but I didn’t even know you could get paid as a youth worker!” he stated with the booming laugh known to so many.

Charlie took the training course, being mentored at the same time by experienced youth worker Denise Luczka. “She showed me that, while I did lots of things by instinct, I didn’t know how or why I did them and she really helped me,” he said.

Qualified in youth work and having also begun counselling training as well (he took counselling to diploma level), Charlie went back to Hibbert Street and started a career in youth services that took him to local centres. It also, at the weekends, took him to a care home in Toxteth in Liverpool which opened his eyes even more to working with disaffected young people.

However, while he felt he had finally found his career Charlie wanted to do more, and that this could only happen outside the youth service.

He had always loved music and also wrote poetry so he felt here was an opportunity to found a youth centre that employed the creative talents of young people to help them.

He opened the doors of Harmony around 2000 with its charity status confirmed a year later. He fought for funding then and has done ever since but the result has been a popular centre for young people from Halliwell, all over Bolton and much further afield.

Two fully working recording studios, DJ decks, a dance studio, photography and video facilities, a hairdressing salon and craft rooms proved a strong lure for youngsters to try out their skills. And they really improved, showing their talents in a variety of ways including producing the Blackout Crew which had a successful album in 2009.

Today, Charlie is as passionate as ever about helping youngsters and Harmony has 70 members aged from eight to 21. Recent downs included a break-in which lost them equipment but the ups include a costly make-over of the premises by Bolton construction company Artez.

Harmony has helped youngsters from terrible backgrounds over the last 17 years and Charlie often meets individuals who know that his influence turned their lives around.

Charlie’s own “support system” is his partner of 18 years, Diane, and his five children. But, at 50, while he is still passionate about what he does and still cares with that big heart of his, he wants to enlist more people to share the burden – and to become patrons and help with long-term fundraising.

“There is still a massive need for our club. There’s still a lot of racism and bullying,” he stated. “Harmony means a lot to me, but I’ve seen what it means to youngsters who come here because they’re no good at school and not wanted at home. It can make all the difference to their lives – and it does.”