Five years before Youth Moves was even an organisation, things were beginning to happen in South Bristol. It started with the closure of Merrywood School. Hundreds of young people were displaced, losing a lot of support and stability.
It could have been much worse, but youth workers and community organisations across South Bristol stepped into the gap. They figured the area couldn’t afford to lose both a school and the support around it.
The council saw what the group could do and gave them the Merrywood site (which would eventually become The Park Centre – Youth Moves’ base for many years). In 2005, European funding enabled the partners to create a more sustainable form of youth work for the area: They formed a new organisation. It was called “Youth Moves”.
There are two golden threads that run through Youth Moves’ history – and you can catch both in 2007. The first is collaborating with others. That’s something that went all the way back to the closure of Merrywood school and the organisations that stepped in to help.
Collaboration took on a new form when Youth Moves entered a shared space at The Park Centre in 2007. The move meant youth work was happening inside a wider community hub. We were working together with services for families, and together we could make wraparound support for young people possible.
The second golden thread of Youth Moves can be traced back to what happened the same year: with the creation of Youth Opinions in 2007. Through Youth Opinions, young people told us what they needed and shaped everything that happened next.
We believed young people should not simply access services, but actively design them. So they shaped our open access base at the Park Centre, our residential trips, our first music studio, projects like Urban Escape and the development of a parkour site.
Together we delivered National Citizen Service programmes, developed our Breakthrough Mentoring service, and ran open access sessions that young people returned to week after week.
We kept this the priority as we launched our first LGBTQ+ session in 2017, and SEND inclusion sessions in 2022, the same year as the 15 year anniversary of Youth Opinions. We were still listening to young people, and now it showed in our practical choices about who needed to be in the room.
Recognition followed, including the CYP Now Youth Work Award in 2015 and the High Sheriff Award for Youth Opinions in 2023.
The demand for open access youth work in South Bristol was growing faster than our space at the Park Centre could stretch.
Young people were still asking for more space, more activities, longer opening hours – and thankfully, the ball was already rolling. We’d already been having conversations with Onside and Bristol City Council about creating a larger Youth Zone.
The development of a Youth Zone wasn’t going to replace Youth Moves. It would simply be us taking responsibility for all we’d learned about listening to young people and making things happen with them.
Young people’s voices shaped everything – from the design of the building to the name of the Youth Zone. In 2024, they named us 224: representing “what you do 2day, will affect you 2morrow and impact you 4ever.”