Building the Safe Place I Needed When I Was Fourteen

Dominic Morgan — Founder of Underdog Crew Studios

My story begins with what looked, from the outside, like an idyllic childhood. I grew up on a farm, surrounded by space, animals and the kind of rural freedom many children would dream of. But inside, I felt disconnected.

As a child, I was more comfortable with animals than with groups of people. Cats, in particular, felt easier to understand than humans. One friend coming round was perfect. One person felt manageable, safe and clear. But when there were two, three or more, everything became harder. I did not know where to put my attention, how to divide my energy, or how to cope with the social noise of it all. Looking back now, through the lens of autism and ADHD, those early feelings make sense. At the time, they did not.

I was an anxious child, even though I was brave in other ways. I worried constantly. I do not remember my childhood as especially happy, even though parts of it probably were. What I remember most is the feeling of always being in trouble.

School intensified that feeling.

At Philip Morant School, I struggled in ways that were not understood. The noise, the rules, the pressure, the confusing expectations and the insistence from teachers that I look them in the eye all created an environment that felt painful and impossible to navigate. Eye contact, which some adults treated as basic respect, could feel overwhelming. But nobody explained that. Nobody asked why I struggled. I was judged by behaviour, not understood through need.

I was regularly punished. Detentions became normal. So did the cane. Nothing made much sense, except the few things that lit me up. English did. Writing did. Storytelling did. So did the old BBC Model B computers, where I wrote text-based adventure games full of choices, routes, imagination and invented worlds. In English and story, I thrived. In many other subjects, especially maths and science, I felt lost.

Eventually, I was removed from school before I could be formally expelled and sent to Elmbridge Boarding School in Fyfield, Ongar. For a long time, I carried resentment towards my parents for that decision. Now, I understand they were doing what they thought was best with the knowledge they had at the time. But the impact on me was devastating.

Elmbridge was not the fresh start a vulnerable, misunderstood child needed. For me, it became an awful, damaging and deeply traumatic chapter of my life. I was one of the former pupils who later received compensation connected to historic abuse at the school. The settlement did not erase what happened, but it did confirm something important: the children who had suffered there had been telling the truth.

I left Elmbridge empty, angry and full of hate. I carried that damage for years.

And yet, even there, creativity helped me survive.

During those two years, I wrote an enormous, detailed text-based adventure game. It was a huge, complex world of routes, choices, dice rolls, consequences and imagination. It became a place I could control when so much of my real world felt frightening and uncontrollable. A few months before I left, the work disappeared and was later found scattered around the school. It was another loss. But in another sense, it had already done its job. It had helped me get through.

After school, I went to catering college and did reasonably well for a time. But when things went wrong, my nervous system reacted as though I was back in danger. What might now be understood as trauma response, fight-or-flight and autistic overwhelm was then simply seen as behaviour. I had meltdowns. I fell into the wrong crowd, got involved with drugs and trouble, and came dangerously close to life taking a much darker route. I even experienced two very short spells in prison for non-payment of fines, which became another eye-opening part of a difficult journey.

It took years for me to rebuild myself.

What helped was an inner resilience — a stubborn, battered, Chumbawamba-like instinct to get knocked down and get back up again. Slowly, I found my way back to the things that had always been there: cameras, photography, film, storytelling and imagination. As a child, I had been fascinated by cameras and video cameras. Seeing films like Jaws opened something in me. I am quick to say I am not comparing myself to Steven Spielberg, but I recognise that same moment of cinematic awakening: the realisation that stories could be huge, emotional, frightening, funny, powerful and alive.

That love of storytelling became part of my recovery. It also became part of my purpose.

Today, I am an award-winning filmmaker and neurodivergent creative whose work is rooted in lived experience, inclusion and representation. My journey has never been a neat or easy one. It has been marked by misunderstanding, exclusion, trauma, poor choices, survival, rebuilding and, eventually, leadership.

Underdog Crew Studios grew from that lived understanding.

My wife Laura and I built the organisation from a simple but powerful belief: that people who have been misunderstood, excluded or written off do not need pity. They need belief, patience, opportunity, creativity and a safe place to grow.

For me, this is not theory. It is personal.

I built the place I needed when I was fourteen and could not find anywhere safe to land. UCS is a respite space, a creative home and a place where young people who feel broken, excluded, overwhelmed or misunderstood can begin to see themselves differently. It supports young people, young carers, SEND members, families, parents and those facing isolation, low confidence, school struggles, bullying, poverty or mental health challenges.

The Underdog Crew approach understands that what is often labelled as "challenging behaviour" is frequently distress, dysregulation, sensory overload, trauma, anxiety or unmet need. Rather than suppressing young people, UCS creates a space where movement, noise, creativity and expression can be channelled safely into regulation, trust and achievement.

That is the heart of my story.

The trauma did not make me less. The misunderstanding did not end me. The anger, emptiness and broken parts were slowly transformed into empathy, resilience and purpose. What others failed to teach me, I now teach others: fortitude, bounce-back ability, self-belief, creative courage and the knowledge that being different does not mean being defective.

At Underdog Crew Studios, there is no religion and no politics behind that belief. Just a grounded conviction that every person who walks through the door deserves to hear: you are awesome, you are special, and you can achieve something meaningful.

My life is not simply a story of survival. It is a story of rebuilding. It is the story of a misunderstood autistic child who became a filmmaker, mentor, founder and advocate. And it is the reason Underdog Crew exists.

Because when people are believed in, encouraged and nurtured, they do not just cope.

They thrive.

Startup Networks are proud supporters of the Underdog Crew Studios project!