<p dir="ltr">Toby Gorniak MBE is a professional street dancer, choreographer, teacher and social entrepreneur who founded <a href="https://www.streetfactory.co.uk/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Street Factory Studios</a>, a community interest company which he runs with his wife Joanna here in the heart of our city, with six dance crews that regularly perform for local community and charity events.</p> <p dir="ltr">Toby is passionate about using street dance as a transformational art practice, changing the lives of young people, and finding positive solutions to issues such as racism, domestic violence, bullying, and low self-esteem, using all the discipline and commitment and creativity in performance by which streetdance connects with youth experience to make a difference, and to make change.</p> <p dir="ltr"> </p> <p dir="ltr">Of Polish Roma origin, Toby moved to Plymouth in 2001 and his dance activities have provided practical and financial support to charities and good causes in Plymouth. From fundraising for Duchene Muscular Distrophy causes, to community clean-up raids, to hip-hop groups for the over-50s – Street Factory’s brand of activism and improvisation is likely to pop-up in the least likely of places.</p> <p dir="ltr">Street Factory’s work embodies a fundamental belief in young people here in Plymouth, based on core values of respect, self-confidence and social responsibility with which social entrepreneurship begins.<br /></p>