I arrived in London from Brazil aged 19, not knowing any English, and got a job cleaning toilets in a nightclub.

I’ve been working in and around clubs ever since, setting up Half Baked Records and co-founding the venues at No.90, at Main Yard in Hackney Wick. In nightlife, I’ve seen a lot of people who become addicted to alcohol or other substances as they try to find ways to repress trauma or anxiety on the dancefloor.

I had brought myself out of my own black hole of depression with the help of Dr. Jeffrey Thompson, the founder of the Center for Neuroacoustic Research in California. He’s been working with NASA for over 20 years, collecting frequencies from different planets and gathering data on how exposure to such frequencies can be used to heal people by releasing their tensions and stress.

I began experimenting with alternative ways we could use our nightclub environment for healing, running workshops where people were lying down with eye-masks and headphones on, being exposed to several different frequencies, then giving us feedback in the days after on how it had impacted things like insomnia, anxiety, depression, or whatever else.

I wrote a book about it (soon to be released), and had been thinking about the concept of doing a festival across the whole neighbourhood dedicated to all this for a couple of years. Sound of Silence finally got going when Aleksandra ‘Ayavaa’ Karpowicz arrived at No.90, originally to be my PA.

We got talking about work she’d done around mental health, and my own interest in healing your body using sound and vibration. We lined up a programme of sound workshops, gong baths, meditation, breathwork and lots more across 10 venues on one day in July, with a science-based approach to everything.

We had psychologists and therapists alongside DJs and doctors, all giving their time to the event so that we could keep it donation-based and open to everyone. Around 75% of the people who came were from the amazing community we have here in Hackney Wick, with the rest coming in especially from further afield.

Next year, we’re aiming to increase the capacity up to 2,000 people and include even more local venues. But, before that, we’ll soon be starting weekly pay-what-you-can classes based around three pillars.

The first one is that people attend a workshop and look to address an issue they are dealing with. We’ll work very closely with them using different therapies with them: sound, or meditation, breathwork, yoga, or whatever they find best.

The second pillar, once they feel healed, is to mentor them to find themselves, either through a new business or getting a new job. Having mentors was important to myself and my business partner Remy when we were getting all our ventures started. We have 12 businesses here, so there’s a lot of opportunity to offer.

Then the final pillar is bringing them back into this project again, to hold space for the next group who need help, and to become an active part of growing this community. We’ve applied to become a charity and are working closely with the Council, too, but I don’t want to be too closely attached to existing provision by the NHS and others just now.

At the moment, we’re targeting clubbers – young people who need this help, and it’s important that we speak the right language. Many of them would never approach the NHS for help, but they will come to us because they see us on the dancefloor, they know us from the clubs, and they trust us.

With people who are drinking like crazy and repressing trauma, I can use the credibility I have as a club owner to introduce them to others within the extended, trusted community, to help them. I want to make sure that whoever is going through these problems, as I have been, is actually now being guided to heal.