Places to be

All over the country, strange and exciting buildings are taking shape, from an orange pod with legs in Blackpool to an outlandish caterpillar-shaped construction in the London borough of Havering. The buildings boast state-of-the-art climbing walls and high-tech recording studios, world-class skate parks, Olympic-standard BMX tracks, cinemas, beauty salons and even wildflower meadows.

These 63 youth centres, 35 of which have already opened, were borne out of the previous Labour government’s 10-year youth strategy Aiming High for Young People, which put “places to go” and “things to do” at the centre of its vision for young people.

A change of government resulted in a period of uncertainty for the scheme, and building programmes were put on hold for six months. Seven of the original 70 projects dropped out. But in December 2010, children’s minister Tim Loughton announced that the government would provide the £134m still needed to complete the then 57 outstanding venues. This has since grown to £141m, making the total government money invested £233m.

There is no doubt these buildings are impressive venues with ambitious plans. An evaluation of the programme published last year found the centres and the activities offered were praised by young people and the quality of buildings sent a clear message to local communities about the value of young people. However, the evaluation, carried out by the University of Durham and YMCA George Williams College, also found that “in the absence of adequate or secure funding, the full potential of the Myplace programme will not be reached”. As one participant in the research said: “We have the building now, but we still need to fund the work that we do.”

The Myplace grants, which ranged from £1m to £5m per centre, were always meant for the design and build of world-class facilities, rather than to fund ongoing work. But there is little doubt that the public spending cuts have hit youth work hard. Some Myplace-funded centres have already been affected by spending reductions. Among them, Bermondsey’s Salmon Centre had to introduce a “slimmed-down structure” in 2010, after receiving a £1.1m Myplace grant for an extension.

Karen Buck, shadow minister for young people, says: “Labour is incredibly proud of our record in setting up the Myplace programme, which has developed a network of high-quality services for young people across the country. We should congratulate the young people and partner agencies involved in developing sources of revenue funding in such a tough climate. But many local authorities have responded to the cuts forced on them by slashing youth services disproportionately. We have to recognise that important as buildings are, it is what goes on in them that is vital.”

The financial backdrop has prompted most of the Myplace-funded centres to revise their business plans, with “sustainability” the watchword. Norwich’s Open centre, for example, morphed from a “dry” venue to one with an alcohol license, to better serve corporate conference clients and gain bookings from commercial music promoters (see case study).

Before releasing funding to the centres after the 2010 general election, the Department for Education asked distributor the Big Lottery Fund to re-examine their business plans, explains children’s minister Loughton. “There were question marks over the first wave of centres; some were struggling because they had not diversified their funding streams,” he says. “We had to make sure they wouldn’t turn out to be white elephants.” The coalition government has also insisted that any centres where the local authority is the lead organisation will have to transfer or share management with business and the local community once construction is complete.

Not every centre is taking the same route. Many, such as Lincoln’s Showroom, a YMCA-led project, have put rooms and halls out to hire for meetings and conferences. Others have long-term tenants, such as Bristol’s Old Fire Station, which hosts LaserQuest in its basement.

Partnership working
The Link, Thamesmead, has taken a partnership approach whereby a number of providers – commercial, voluntary and public sector – have taken leases on the different archways that make up the building. The Link itself will run the building’s reception, café and social area, while the providers, including Bexley Youth Service, youth charity The Archway Project and Charlton Athletic Community Trust, will provide activities, drop-in sessions and targeted youth work.

Mark Blundell, centre manager at The Link, previously headed Bermondsey’s Salmon Centre. He says the Link’s model leaves the centre less of a hostage to fortune. “We don’t expect any partner organisation to fall over, but if they do, the burden is shared,” he says. “Funding does go up and down, and individual projects will absorb that rather than the centre as a whole. What we are doing is similar to what we were doing at the Salmon Centre, but Salmon was all under one roof and it was a problem finding funding for one organisation.”

Partnership working is something of which Helen Marshall, chief operating officer of Clubs for Young People, is keen to see more. “Recognis-ing the importance of networking and establish-ing relationships is crucial,” she says. “Any extra resource is a great opportunity and partnership working should ensure that resources and services are complementary – with different organisations able to provide a range of services.”

Opening centre facilities to other users might make financial sense, but some feel the move is retrograde, taking the Myplace centres away from their core purpose. Jeremy Glover is chief executive of OnSide Northwest, a charity that has set up four Myplace-funded Youth Zones. OnSide Northwest is planning a fifth zone in Wigan, which will be delivered solely through private sector sponsorship.

Glover says: “When the kids have to leave at 7pm so that you can make money in the evening, that is not what the vision was. It was to have facilities for young people that rival adult facilities. We do not do compromises on room hire, it is for young people only.”

Loughton defends the practice, pointing out that conferences are likely to take place during weekdays, rather than evenings and weekends when most young people will be using the facilities. “At heart, these centres provide activities, training and networking opportunities for young people,” he says. “I don’t expect to see young people squeezed out in favour of other activities. But against that has to be balanced the need to generate revenue.”

Sharing facilities
Other centres do not see a problem with opening facilities to the wider community when young people are at school. Blundell describes The Link as “a community facility primarily for young people”. “If adults want to come in for coffee during the day that wouldn’t be a problem, the gym could expand its services and do sessions for parents,” he says. “But when young people are around in the evenings and at weekends, the focus is on them.”

The model for most of OnSide NorthWest’s Youth Zones is distributed between young people paying for services (10 per cent); local authority funding (40 per cent); and donations from local businesses (50 per cent). “Young people are a stakeholder, but they only pay 50p a session, a nominal fee,” says Glover. The centres work in three-year funding cycles. “We secured all our private sector revenue just three weeks before Blackburn opened. Now we know we have revenue funding for the first three years and can concentrate 100 per cent on young people,” Glover explains.

Businesses see their donations as an investment in young people and the local community, while OnSide sells the model to local authorities with the promise of a pound’s-worth of high-quality youth work for 40p. Loughton is enthusiastic about the model. “The businesses see a mutual benefit. It is good for young people, the town, business, motivation and recruitment – a win-win situation.”

But business donations are not always easy to come by, particularly in tough economic times with charities chasing an ever-smaller pot of funding. The Myplace evaluation report recognises OnSide’s success, but also cites problems in areas such as Dartford where it found a lack of “large organisations” to be a problem and Bermondsey’s Salmon Centre where it notes “there is a perceived London effect where everyone is competing for private sector investment, often against some very large organisations that have national profiles but are based in London”.

In addition to the emphasis on sustainability, the government is focusing on youth participation in line with its Positive for Youth strategy. “I am keen the centres should have young people helping to steer the project,” says Loughton. But their participation can be the first thing to slide when times get tough. In fact, when the government imposed a building hiatus between the May 2010 general election and the Myplace announcement in December 2010, some projects found young people losing interest because of the uncertainty over the future of their centres, while youth workers were reluctant to continue to engage them in a project that might not come to fruition. The evaluation found that some organisations, while involving young people in decisions around the design and build of the centre, have not carried this through into involvement in the day-to-day running of the venue and activities.

Clubs for Young People’s Marshall sees a varied picture. “The more successful youth-led Myplace centres are those that had experienced youth practitioners in their design and development,” she says. “Some developed from existing youth clubs and already had young people’s involvement at their core. But most of the centres are either fairly new or not yet operational and would benefit from the good practice happening elsewhere – whether Myplace centres or existing youth clubs.”

Role of young people
This was evident at a recent two-day conference for Myplace centre staff, which was well attended by adults, but only attracted a “handful of young people”, says Loughton, who used the event to announce £200,000 of funding to help centres share best practice, potentially through the employment of a national co-ordinator. A future event is planned which will better reflect the role of young people in the programme, he says.

Thamesmead Youth Voice is the youth forum involved in the construction and development of The Link; its young people have been instrumental in fundraising and have been trained in recruitment. Youth Voice, which has about 40 members, has a dedicated office above the centre’s reception. Blundell says this helps to ensure youth participation is central to the centre’s development.

The government has brought another potential dimension to the programme with the launch of its flagship National Citizen Service (NCS) for 16-year-olds. Loughton sees the two programmes fitting closely together. “The NCS is expanding, it needs places to carry out its activities and a lot of Myplace centres naturally lend themselves to that,” he says. “I see Myplace as a place where NCS can happen, where NCS providers can recruit young people, as a hub where the social action projects can take place and in some cases NCS providers may be headquartered there too.”

So what does the future hold for the Myplace-funded youth centres? While the Myplace fund may have been the beginning of something in the 63 areas it has touched, there is no more public money for further projects.

Glover argues that this must be re-examined: “Sixty-three centres is a drop in the ocean. How do we push on from here? The government must find money from somewhere to carry on investment in young people and build on the momentum the Myplace projects created.”

The first Myplace: Open centre in Norwich
Norwich’s Open centre was the first Myplace-funded youth centre to open its doors, in November 2009.

The Open Youth Trust’s desire to create “amazing youth provision” sprang from a tragedy in 2001 when two teenagers drowned in the local river after a night out in the city’s “clubland”. The £22m centre, which received £1.2m Myplace funding, is located in the old Barclays Bank building in the heart of the clubbing area and was originally planned as a “drug and alcohol-free venue where young people could have a great time and realise their dreams,” says Sarah Mintey, principal of the centre.

The venue, which is split into “charity zones” and “commercial zones”, has a number of revenue streams, including a secure storage unit in the old vault, conferencing facilities and commercial music events run from the centre’s nightclub area.

In order to ensure financial viability, the centre recently applied for an alcohol license, a tough sell to trustees and the local police, but a commercial necessity, says Mintey. “We are looking to set up a safe bar, educating young people on how to have a safe night out and drink responsibly, with the focus on entertainment rather than drink,” she explains. “We don’t want to be an extension of clubland, but a solution.”

Activities and services available at the centre include a climbing wall that “pays for itself”, a recording studio offering classes in sound engineering and DJ workshops, photography and film sessions, a drop-in centre, alternative curriculum provision for pupil referral units and youth offending teams, and resources for young people with disabilities including regular club nights.

Norwich’s Open centre has a youth forum that provides input into design and activity programmes, and the centre also uses social media extensively to gain input from young people.

More than 30 partner organisations run projects at the centre, which itself employs three youth workers and 30 youth volunteers. Young people can also learn skills and gain experience by volunteering to help with lighting and sound at events, ?or through help with marketing. In 2011, 27,500 young people passed through the doors of the venue.

More information: www.opennorwich.org.uk