A BARBER and mental health campaigner is returning to where it all began as he is set to ply his trade in his home town.

Ken Hermes, 30, is hoping to show his talents in hair cutting and tackling mental health issues when he starts at Dales Hair Salon on Halstead High Street on Thursdays.

Ken, of Abels Road, Halstead, has been a professional barber for more than a decade, working around the world in London, Amsterdam, Las Vegas and now Ipswich.

But he is also a passionate campaigner on mental health issues and suicide prevention.

Ken’s dad, Kenneth, took his own life in 2006.

Ken has since worked with campaigns including CALM – the Campaign Against Living Miserably – Rethink Mental Health and the Lions Barber Collective.

He was an official ambassador for the Lions Barber Collective which saw him travel the world and meet Prince William in 2019.

Now Ken also runs his own project.

He said: “After losing my dad, I didn’t speak for about 10 years.

“I first spoke in an online video in a support group on Facebook. The video was well received and I quickly moved into campaigning.

“At the end of 2019, I founded the Hermes Project – a not for profit company set up to develop a program to offer specific support to children bereaved by parental suicide, as I was.

“I experienced first hand the lack of support, so started the project to eventually offer that support.

“With the Hermes Project, I have visited some top London universities and organised pop-up mental health barbershops, where we cut hair for free and actively encouraged students to speak about their worries and stresses.

“The skill partly comes from personal experience, through grief and loss and also through my own struggles with anxiety.

“I have also trained with the Lions Barber Collective, Movember and I am accredited in mental health first aid. All of these training modules show how important talking is.”

Having grown up in Halstead after moving from Texas in 1993, Ken is now returning to Dales Hair Salon – the barbers which helped support him and sparked his career as a barber.

He said: “My dad took me to visit Dale when I was a child. He was my hairdresser, my colourist, my confidant.

“He cut my hair through some of my toughest times and especially when I lost my dad. He always had a keen ear and never judged.

“He even cut my hair on my wedding day.

“Dale encouraged me to go and visit classic barbershops and to take my first steps in the industry. It was a bold move for me to change career in my 20s, but the best thing ever.

“And it’s remarkably humbling to now be able to work alongside a man that was so pivotal in my love of hair.”

For more information and a list of services, search for Ken Hermes Hair on Facebook.