Hedley Aylott: from gangsta rap to digital marketing

Entrepreneur Hedley Aylott set up his digital marketing agency, Summit Media, with prison inmates as the workforce. Now it's turning over £45m year.

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Hedley Aylott of Summit Media

Hedley Aylott, 45, has been passionate about music ever since he won a choral scholarship to the prestigious Norwich School as a boy. While he dutifully went on to study mechanical engineering at Nottingham University, he says, his "heart really lay in music". As a result, in 1989 he got involved in teaching inmates at Norwich prison to write songs and compose music. However, he wanted to take it further. After completing a Masters degree in studio production at Manchester he came up with the idea of making a proper commercial piece of rap music about street gangs putting aside past conflicts and laying down their weapons, which would feature current prisoners from HMP Strangeways.

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