Celebrating Youth Work Week: Youth work in every place and space

We are marking Youth Work Week and celebrating the impact of the Youth Investment Fund, transforming youth centres across England, levelling-up the youth sector and creating life-changing opportunities for thousands of young people.

Youth work in every place and space

£160 million in grants has already been announced to 87 youth centres, from large local authority projects to renovated scout huts, and from extended community hubs to brand new youth centres: stretching from Liverpool to Lowestoft and the Isle of Wight to Sunderland. So far, the projects benefiting from Youth Investment Fund will be able to reach another 28,500 young people, giving them new opportunities to have fun, meet other young people, thrive, and learn new skills for life and work.

The grant programme has funded youth work centres in every place and every space across England, in churches, in theatres, in outdoor adventure parks, in garden centres and even in an old derelict public house. Some funded projects are creating spaces for unusual youth activities, like a new home to house a flight simulator and model aircraft projects that young people love making. And some youth services are trying new ways to develop exciting new spaces for young people, like using Modern Methods of Construction to create sustainable and accessible centres.

Amazing youth work can happen in the most extraordinary places. That’s why we are marking Youth Work Week, by sharing a new film that captures the impact of some of the newly funded youth services and to show that quality youth work can take place almost anywhere. You can watch our new Youth Investment Fund film.

Capturing youth voice

Youth voice and communicating the difference a youth centre created around their needs can make to their lives, is central to the film project. The films, developed by Heyday UK, a film company that specialises in working with young people and delivers creative and film courses for school children, communicate why youth provision is vital and its potential to transform young people’s lives. The films show why the Youth Investment Fund is so vital for young people, like one young person at Network Ryde on the Isle of Wight. Network Ryde are using their Youth Investment Fund grant to renovate a Grade II Listed Church

“Being able to come to this space, where you feel invited in. Not just, yeah, come if you want, it felt like an actual invitation, they wanted you there. [Network Ryde] is my safe space, my safe haven. It’s a space where you can calm down. You can talk about any problems, and they would be dealt with properly. That’s why spaces like this are so important”.

Opening the doors to new young people

The Youth Investment Fund film communicates why investment of this scale is so important. In March 2023 YMCA Trinity Group was awarded £5.1 million to continue and develop the work that its Cresset project provides for young people in Peterborough. The funding is transforming their youth service offer and helping them to reach more young people. Rowena Kerslake, Deputy CEO for The Cresset told us that their building and roof were falling apart and then didn’t know how they could pay for it. A grant from the Youth Investment Fund will now transform their youth offer.

Young people are at the heart of the Youth Investment Fund

Alongside enabling more young people to have life-changing youth opportunities in their communities, young people have been at the heart of every Youth Investment Fund project. All young centres applying for funding need to demonstrate how youth services have been developed around the needs of young people and show that their services are accessible to every young person in their community.

In the film young people share how why being involved in designing their youth centre is so important.

“I don’t have a positive view on Hastings, hence why I want to change it as much as possible. The funding will create a safe area where people can go to just decompress and be themselves and connect with other young people, who are in similar experiences. …it’s a great idea.”

The Youth Investment Fund, worth over £300 million, is funded by the UK Government and is delivered by Social Investment Business in partnership with Key Fund, National Youth Agency, and Resonance. You can find out more about the Youth Investment Fund and read about youth projects in every place and space funded through the grant programme here.