Can a youth club revival help the ‘anxious generation’?

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:06Today, can saving Britain's youth clubs help the most connected and yet isolated generation in history?

0:26I was sat on the tube on the northern line going south and I noticed a group get on, a man and three young people This is Emma Warren, a journalist and cultural historian from London and there's something happening here that I can't quite recognise but that I know so that they're not from school, don't look like it's a family group. She sat quietly watching the group, trying to figure out who was who, particularly the adult. When someone started raising something about money, which can be a very contested issue, he was just like, oh, tell me, what do you think? Oh, what do you think? Bringing people in, dropping them out.

1:01I was watching someone extremely skilful. Suddenly she realised who this man was. Oh, this is a youth worker. And he was turning the end of the tube carriage into a youth club. Emmett knows a youth worker when she sees one, because she used to do that kind of work too, when she ran a magazine with young people in Brixton in South London. Now she's written a book celebrating the youth club, an institution that looked to be heading for extinction during the Tory austerity years. Now the government wants to bring them back, to help an anxious generation who've retreated into their bedrooms after a decade of neglect.

1:37But is it too late? From The Guardian, I'm Helen Pidd. Today in Focus. From ping pong palaces to cultural powerhouses. Why youth clubs matter.

1:51Emma Warren, welcome to Today in Focus. Thanks for coming into the studio today. Thank you very much for having me. We're going to be talking about something that I didn't realise until reading your new book was a great British invention. The youth club. And your book is called Up the Youth Club. You know, we're talking at a time when youth clubs are kind of an endangered species, really, in the UK. Can you just set out what's happened to youth club provision over the past 15 years or so? Well, it's a sorry story that we had a national resource like this, a network of really easily accessible, open access youth clubs, in which incredible things happened.

2:25Very simple things like a young person having a chance just to be somewhere that's not school or home, which in some cases is really essential. And then, of course, this huge contribution to the cultural and sporting ecosystem. So one of the reasons to write this book now was because we have been through a period of very, very harsh austerity. Youth clubs were one of the biggest victims. 1.3 billion has been stripped from the youth service. Youth clubs, I think they've lost their funding by 75%. Even as recently as 2009, 40 % of young Londoners attended youth club at least weekly. Right. Now it's only one in 10 and four and a half thousand youth workers have lost their work.

3:08I think that gives you a sense not only of the depth of the losses, but also how much more the young people pay the price for austerity than other sectors of the community. You know, you said that you worked as an informal youth worker. Tell me a little bit about that. I think it was connected to a magazine, wasn't it, in South London? That's right, that's right, that's right. So between the early 2000s and about 2013, I worked in various roles on an entity called Live Magazine, which actually had a relationship with The Guardian. Yeah, I remember actually. Yeah, journalists could go and mentor young people there.

3:38Yeah, that's right, that's right. So some Guardian journalists would come down to Live sometimes. We came to like the morning briefing once. Every day we'd have some new young people coming in and be like, right, go down the street and go and interview someone. What's going on people? It's your boy Stormzy here, stiff chocolate, wicked scum man live in the flesh and right now you're watching live like UK. Some people came because they wanted to do journalism, some people came because they've been referred by say a social care team of some kind and some people just wandered in. And it was broadly I'd say a warm and welcoming space where people who are broadly in the second decade of life can come and do the things they're interested in or find out what they're interested in, where there are adults around who will make that possible.

4:17And we gave lots of people their first coverage as well. We gave K Tempest a cover way back when Jamal Edwards, when he started SBTV. I remember him coming into the office and being like, I've never been on a cover before. It started off doing UK gram and UK rap and hip-hop, spitting bars straight to the camera on the street corners, anything. And do you think of Live magazine as being a youth club? At the time I would have said, it's not a youth club. You're here to contribute to the magazine, so please hit your deadlines. So there was almost like a kind of, not exactly a pretense, but it was.

4:52Yeah. And can you explain why youth services and youth clubs were such an easy target for councils when it came to austerity, when their budgets were being cut by central government? It's because you have a statutory responsibility to provide something out of school, but no statutory responsibility to pay for it. Right. And also at that point, young people weren't voters. Yeah. And for reasons I think which probably have to do with things like class and structural power, they're not valued by people who didn't attend them. And certainly over recent decades, they've mostly been attended by people who are not on a fast track to structural power.

5:31Right. And yet everyone who's been in or through or near the youth club understands the value of it. But maybe not if, like David Cameron, who presided over austerity, who went to Eton, George Osborne went to St Paul's, one of the most exclusive private schools in the country. Maybe they didn't go to youth clubs. They didn't need to because their schools were so rich. We are not doing this because we want to. There is no ideological zeal in doing this. We are doing this because we have to. All the things that you might want to do out of school, put on a play, play some sport, make some music, that probably would have been available.

6:02And the thing about the youth club is often it's seen by those with structural power as a solution to something, often youth violence or crime or antisocial behaviour. But actually it's reasonable for young people to have access to something that's fun. Just the ability to, you know, hang out with your mates and have a good time. All of those children that are from teenagers or tweens can come to this place and enjoy and have fun. And when I look back at the histories, it's like for 150 years people have been doing the same thing.

6:38And when you set out to write this book, were you aware just how long the history stretched back? And were you surprised, like I was to read your book, that it's a sort of quite uniquely British thing? I was surprised by both those things. Absolutely. So when you look back, the sensible starting point is really the Industrial Revolution and the way that women with time and money made it their business to create rest and recreation rooms for factory girls. The wealth disparity in English cities was so horrendously wide that that extreme inequality caused youth work. And then you look now again at some of these ways in which our young people are worse off than anywhere else in comparable countries.

7:19The problem isn't fiddling around with a youth strategy or this or that. And it's the fact that historically this difference has existed and people have always stepped into the breach to do something about it on a local level. So it sounds like it was born in the industrial revolution. But when was the idea of an actual dedicated youth worker born? So the youth service kind of tracks back to the late 30s. It's a product of wartime as well and the need to work out where the young people are and what they're doing. And also a desire to make sure that young people are fit so they can be deployed after battle.

7:51Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But then in 1960, you had something called the Albemarle Report, which really was an astounding moment because, again, you had a conservative government and you had a woman, very socially powerful woman, Lady Albemarle. Yeah. And she created a report that basically led not just to the building of huge numbers of youth clubs and sports centres. It led to a whole training college for youth workers. It led to national standards. And so you had the buildings and you had the youth workers. What of those who Mr Stokes calls the misfits, or those others who, according to the recent Albumar report, find it difficult to come to terms with society?

8:29It's for people like that that places like this are slowly and painfully coming into being. And it was a really huge moment in UK youth clubs and youth culture in a way you can thank Lady Albumar for things like grime, I'd say. So there's an aristocratic link back. There's loads of great examples of youth clubs in your book, but I really enjoyed reading about one in Coventry. Tell me about that club and what it has brought to Britain. I did a talk about this in Coventry again with some other youth organisations and the opening speech was given by Pauline Black of The Selector and she said something like the story of the Hollyhead Youth Club isn't just a chapter, it's a cornerstone because it's a story of how a group of young people, many of whom were connected to either the soul clubs in Coventry or the emerging sound systems who were unwelcome in white spaces because of racism, some of whom were first-generation black British, some of whom had arrived as younger children, had gained access to a space that was derelict and turned it into their space.

9:35There were sound system dances, but also a youth club. You're talking about the early 70s, but the Holyhead lasted for a good 20 years and thousands of young people in Coventry went through the Holyhead, including lots of people not just in music you know barristers dancers tv presenters and there's now a plaque outside the hollyhead youth club building which is still there saying this is one of the places where two-tone came from you know bands like the selector in particular and the specials youth work and it's so clear from your book is not just about steering young people away from danger and onto the right track.

10:14It's also about fostering their talents and lighting a fire within them that might lead to something incredible, whether that might be in sports or it might be in music. And there's a little chapter in the book that I enjoyed, which is all about table tennis. And essentially the argument that without youth clubs, Britain would be less good at table tennis. Tell me about that. Or it certainly wouldn't have a distinctive style. So I met this lovely gentleman called David Bowles. who told me that he'd grown up in the 60s playing table tennis in youth clubs. He was mostly in East London and then in Essex.

10:50And he was describing these very cold spaces that often had like literally a fire in the middle of the space and the table tennis tables around the fire and people having to share bats because there weren't really enough bats to go around. But that people had to play in these very small spaces that were very cold. So people had to stand very close to the edge of the table and keep moving. so they developed a playing style which was notably English that came from the youth clubs and a lot of people came from the youth clubs into the UK table tennis teams so the England teams and then you know playing internationally and I just loved that and when would you say was the real golden age of British youth clubs?

11:30Post Albemarle pre Thatcher is going to be that kind of historic golden age. By the kind of mid to late 80s, you start to get lots of commentators saying we are in a really dangerous position here of losing the whole youth service. Right. Because I think depending on the age of our listeners, anybody who came of age in the 90s would think about Biker Grove.

11:56And for our younger listeners, I will explain if you know who Ant and Dec are on I'm a Celebrity get me out of here. That's where they got their big break playing PJ and Duncan, two teenagers at a Geordie youth club called Biker Grove. It's been like this all day. What's the matter? Nothing. It's you and Debbie, isn't it? You've had a fight, haven't you? No. It's nothing like that. Biker Grove was actually always under threat of closure, wasn't it? Which was kind of very much a sign of the times in the early 90s. What you had was just a real cutting away of resources. So something like your Biker Grove.

12:28Anything that was funded by the local authority you'd be having less youth workers you'd be having less time that you could open new evaluation and as you sort of get into the late 90s into 2000s suddenly you have a situation where it's not actually very easy for a local youth club to run but it's quite easy for something like live magazine to exist because it fits the kind of tick box better you know we could find measurability in a way that would be much harder for your everyday youth club to do. Can we measure in a quantitative way as well as a qualitative way what youth clubs and youth work does?

13:04Not everything that counts can be counted. Not everything that can be counted counts. I really reject measurability as the only way of telling whether or not something works. Why does the youth worker have to prove the value of what they're doing on a daily or weekly basis with work that cannot show up for decades. Somerville Adventure Playground just in South London told me the other day that they had a 55-year-old come through who said, I'm an electrician, a carpenter, and I wouldn't be either of those things if I hadn't come to Somerville. And also I learned how to cook here and I learned how to sew here.

13:38So if you want to do a long-term evaluation, you will get the answers. And actually, the Institute of Fiscal Studies, Carmen Villa, recently put out a report which just shows the complete economic ineptitude of closing youth clubs. One pound saved, three pound in cost. What I thought was so interesting about her research is that she showed for young people who lived by youth clubs that had shut, they had worse GCSE results, they were more likely to commit crimes, they spent more time on their phones, and those effects were not mitigated by being near parks, libraries or sports centres. It's literally just the youth club.

14:17It doesn't have to be like the olden days, but it does need to be accessible, physical places where young people can gather with adults who know what they're doing.

14:32When I look back at my kind of early teenage years when I attended a youth club, I think... Oh, where? Where was it? In Morecambe in Lancashire, where I'm from. And looking back, I think it was actually a stealth way to try to convert us to Christianity because it was very much linked to the local church. which I mostly like going because I got some pocket money and I could go to the tuck shop. I could buy sweets. I could play pool. That's exactly it, isn't it? Yeah. And I sort of just took it for granted. I wasn't really thinking about any youth work being done. The adults there, to me, they kind of ran the tuck shop and they would adjudicate over arguments over the pool table.

15:07Wow, precisely. But looking back with adult eyes, I guess they were doing a lot more than that. And can you just tell me, what does a skilled youth worker do? because sometimes it looks like they're not actually doing that much. Imagine the care it takes to survey a room and understand the dynamics, to notice who's not looking quite right, who might want a little chat. Notice who's actually pushing it a bit and starting to cause problems and why. And who's hungry? Let's make sure they get a free sandwich. It takes so much work and skill and expertise to be able to read the dynamics individually and collectively of a group of teenagers.

15:42And one thing you write about in the book is how important it is for youth workers to offer acceptance and kind of meeting young people where they are rather than overtly kind of trying to change them. Tell me a little bit more about that. I think probably the phrase that comes to mind is automatic positive regard, which would be a familiar phrase to anyone who's involved in like family support work or social work. Your basic assumption is you're right. if a young person were to arrive at a youth project as happened at live magazine more than once knocking on the door and saying i've come straight from prison but i want to get involved automatic positive regard would be to say oh cool come on in what's your name do you want a cup of tea there's a desk over there oh have you met so-and-so i'll just come and get some details off you in a minute and what you're interested in i'm trusting them i'm giving the benefit of the doubt and I'm treating them like a person I'm not treating them like a risk I'm not asking them about their name age ethnicity sexuality gender I'm not asking them to declare themselves I'm not judging them I'm just saying oh cool come on in and that's so powerful particularly when so many young people are greeted in the world with so much judgment you know the assumption that groups of young people are engaging in antisocial behavior yeah I think the most antisocial thing you can do is complain about young people because they're socialising and you're trying to squash it.

17:07Why would you do that? We've a lot of negative assumptions about young people and it's just not fair really. And when I think over the years I reported extensively from the North of England when I was North of England editor throughout the period of austerity and you'd often have older people complaining about there's nothing for young people to do they're just hanging around they're causing a nuisance we need to get them off the street. It's a funny idea isn't it because isn't the street for everybody. And in a way that's really culturally specific because if you think about other countries, street life is part of life.

17:39It's normal and welcome. You have a lot of people who feel like the street should be quiet. Let's just say I disagree. Why should public spaces be devoid of public? Do you think, if you listen to a lot of parents nowadays, or I think about my stepdaughter, she's 16 now, but a couple of years ago when she would be the right age really to go to a youth club was also the time when she got a smartphone and it was very hard actually to tear her away from it. Do you think that young people now do want to put their phones down and go to a physical space? Well, first of all, I'd say anyone who's been on a bus or a train recently will know that young people are not alone in this.

18:14Everybody is on their phone all the time. And again, we are culturally anomalous in that in the UK, 15-year-olds in this country use their phones more than in other countries. So it's not just phones, it's something about here. And maybe that's because we don't have the physical space where people can go. But I think my experience down at Woolwich Creative Club, it's nine to sort of 14, 15-year-olds. And sometimes at the beginning, they might just be on their phones, but then, you know, you get like the trumpet out or you stick them on the keyboards or you come over with me and sit in the corridor because we haven't really got a proper space and, you know, make a fanzine.

18:49And no one's really on their phones. Yeah. And I guess if you think about what young people are doing on their phones, they're often connecting with each other, aren't they? They're often Snapchatting, they're chatting. So they do want that connection with their peers. But there are all kinds of hazards for young people nowadays, particularly online, and the sort of lure of people offering easy solutions, whether it's people like Andrew Tate, for example, and also things like county lines drug dealing that has been a sort of sad modern phenomenon of recent years. It's a dangerous world where kids as young as 12, boys and girls, are sent hundreds of miles away from home to sell drugs in coastal resorts and leafy towns like Winchester.

19:28What do you think draws young people to those things that maybe previously a youth club would have provided? Well, the online bit. First of all, it's not either or. Online exists. The public realm should exist, but kind of somehow doesn't. So online is very well catered for. Public space isn't. It's really important to have physical spaces where young people can meet each other. And then the county lines thing. it occurred to me that people who are running county lines are youth workers they're not the kind of youth workers that we want but they're doing the same thing yeah it's a way of a young person feeling welcomed brought into something fed maybe so yeah clothes sometimes trainers they pick me up around the corner from my house they give me a lift to school and you felt like you were important and so i think it's so dangerous not to have youth workers who are interested in young people having the best possible version of the life they can, as opposed to older adults or older young people who are just involving younger young people in a business that is extremely dangerous.

20:39Coming up, what is the government actually proposing to do for young people?

20:57In December, it didn't get very much fanfare, but the government released their first national youth strategy in 20 years. I was shocked that there hadn't been one for 20 years. Can you just outline what it said, what it promised, and then what you took from it? These reports always do the same thing when I look back on the histories. They always say youth work is important, and then they fail to adequately fund youth work. This one does the same thing. Every young person in this country deserves to have places to go, things to do, and an adult who cares about them, who can help them deal with the complexity of growing up in England in 2025.

21:34It basically offers quite large amounts of money for capital projects in youth clubs or minibuses, or a fund that people can apply to. £350 million over four years. That's right, that's right. Significant amounts. only a 60 million for youth workers and then a 15 million for training of youth workers but which i found in a sort of back end one of the other documents actually would also include teachers being trained to get a youth work qualification right what that looks like is ways that you can create a situation where a government can say oh now we've got more youth workers so again it's like Where is the genuine commitment to funding, resourcing and trusting youth workers who really need support right now?

22:19The capital money is absolutely vital. It'd be wonderful to see new places opening. Yeah, and they're going to refurbish old spaces. Absolutely. All of that is absolutely stunning. And I really applaud the people that have made this happen because I can only imagine how difficult it was to encourage certain government departments to do that. But if you don't pay for the youth workers to open the doors, the doors will stay closed, quite literally. Well, I'm not great at maths, but that's not going to, it's not going to give 4 ,500 people their jobs back, is it? We can't go back, but I'm saying if you don't deal with the youth worker side of it first, nothing else works.

22:53There's something very strange in the report as well that I found strange, which was quite a significant amount of money and a commitment to increasing, I think by 30%, the number of cadet forces across the UK by 2030. and it says in it specifically in the areas of the greatest disadvantage army recruitment is predominantly from areas where people don't necessarily have other opportunities of course some people might want to join the army regardless of where they grow up or their economic circumstance but I found that troubling yeah I raised my eyebrow that as well and just finally paint me a utopian picture you're in charge of the youth strategy you've got you've got as much money as you want What would your dream youth service look like?

23:36A really simple answer would be a network of easily accessible locality youth clubs, which have paid staff in them, who you might call youth workers, you can call them other things if you want, that are just there for a really long time. So people like that 55-year-old at Summerville Adventure Playground can come back after decades and say, I wouldn't be in a place that is good like this if it wasn't for you. That's it, really. Simple. Emma thank you very much thank you that was Emma Warren her book Up the Youth Club is out now and that is all for today this episode was produced by Ned Carter-Miles and presented by me Helen Pidd sound design was by Brian McNamara and the executive producer was Courtney Youssef we'll be back tomorrow