How three South London gamers set out to reinvent youth services through Esports
We caught up with Finan Trethewey, one of the founders and directors at Esports Youth Club, about their mission to evolve traditional youth service offerings by providing social, state-of-the-art gaming spaces where young people genuinely want to hang out.
Esports Youth Club Founders: Finan Trethewey, Lewis Kay, and Mark Bird
Finan Trethewey, Lewis Kay and Mark Budd – who all live “conveniently within about five minutes of each other” in Peckham and Dulwich – are keen gamers who’d already been friends for years when they decided to band together to set up Esports Youth Club (EYC): a non-profit which runs free gaming sessions and esports tournaments for young people across South London.
It was 2021, and the country was still in the grip of the Covid-19 pandemic. “It was also the time when PS5s had just come out,” says Finan. “And I don't know if you remember the news at that time, but there was just no way of getting hold of them. All the CPUs were being used for Bitcoin mining – in our group of friends, we were all going mad trying to get our hands on them.” He laughs and shakes his head slightly, recalling how one unfortunate friend received only an empty box after ordering one on Amazon – “I think the delivery man did a little con!”
He says that during lockdown, gaming and chatting over their consoles became the default way of socialising for him and his friends. Lewis, who was working as a housing officer for Lambeth council at the time, was also talking to kids on the estate he worked at and realising they were going through the same thing. “But for kids who didn't have access to this stuff, that kind of socialising was completely cut off,” explains Finan. ”The digital divide, as a concept, was really clear – like, these kids have PS5s, these kids don't, everyone wants them. So for the kids that don’t have access, it’s an easy way of feeling ‘oh, I’m left behind, I’m left out.’”
It was these conversations that gave Lewis – who had attended youth clubs as a kid, and who Finan describes as the most avid gamer of them all – the initial idea for ESports Youth Club. After quickly recruiting Mark and Finan as co-founders, the three of them set about bringing the vision to life on a shoestring. “I think we gathered about £3,000 amongst ourselves to get going,” says Finan. “We took a load of PS4s from our friends who just got PS5s, bought the actual screens and just started trying to put on some events.”
Finan describes the early days of constantly moving equipment back and forth to different sites in the back of Uber XLs, storing PCs in makeshift cabinets at random locations, and having to leave his day job at a moment's notice to sort out various crises, in a tone pitched somewhere between world weariness and amusement. “It was constant chaos,” he admits. “It was a lot of making do, [but that] was super exciting because we've worked with so many people.”
“I THINK WE GATHERED ABOUT £3,000 AMONGST OURSELVES TO GET GOING,” SAYS FINAN. “WE TOOK A LOAD OF PS4S FROM OUR FRIENDS WHO JUST GOT PS5S, BOUGHT THE ACTUAL SCREENS AND JUST STARTED TRYING TO PUT ON SOME EVENTS.”
It’s thanks in large part to some of these early connections that, three years on, EYC has evolved from its humble and slightly haphazard beginnings into a highly in-demand initiative that runs multiple events across London. They also now have a permanent space (which Finan gratefully acknowledges is the “biggest change”) and are due to open another one soon in Pop Brixton – a space aimed at 16-21 year olds, that will be equipped with a streaming studio, as well as the latest gaming PCs and PS5s.
Public grants and support from local councils provide the majority of their financial backing, but Finan estimates that last year, around a quarter of their funding came from private sources – a portion they’re hoping to increase even further. “It means we’re able to do bigger and bigger events,” Finan says. “And it subsidises a lot of the youth delivery, because there's not a great deal of margin. The private events allow us to have the best equipment too, the best games. Because in youth work, kids know when it's cheap, they know when you've cut corners – so I think it communicates the value. They feel more valued if we've shown that we've done as much as we can to give them a premium space.”
This commitment to providing high quality spaces where young people genuinely want to hang out has clearly paid off, with the state-of-the-art gaming facilities being a huge initial draw for teens. “We've always been about getting the kids who otherwise don't go to youth services, which for us is about 80% of the young people we work with, through the doors,” Finan says, adding that youth groups have traditionally shied away from gaming in general: “Maybe they've had a console in the corner, but the idea has been ‘how do we get kids to game less? How do we get them into other activities?’ But ultimately – they're gonna game, at the end of the day, and either you engage them or you just don't get them through the doors.”
And once this demographic of kids are through the doors, the goal is to also begin engaging them in other youth services, alongside their time spent gaming with friends. “There’s so many CV workshops out there, and with the greatest will in the world: if you phrase something as a CV workshop, the kids who’ll come are probably there because their parents forced them to go,” he says. “And if their parents are forcing them to go, they’re probably in a decent position already on that front. The kid who would benefit most from it will not get through the door. So yeah, it's providing a soft entry to those things, and we’re trying to innovate quite a bit on that side.”
For now, one of Finan’s favourite aspects of running EYC has been building relationships with the young people they serve, and seeing how the regular attendees have grown and progressed over the last two years. He mentions one boy who started attending at fifteen and is now working for EYC as a paid youth worker, and helping out at some of their private events. “Yeah, that was super nice to see, as a narrative,” he smiles.
And while of course they won’t be able to replicate this for every young person, Finan hopes that other opportunities will arise as they continue to expand – and also that other youth service providers will see what EYC are doing and follow suit. “As a proof of concept, if other youth groups copy what we're doing, that's a good sign,” he says. “Hopefully like 20 other groups decide to copy us and that proves that it works.”
Esports Youth Club is a not-for-profit organisation that offers young people a quality place to hang out and enjoy free gaming sessions and esports tournaments across South London. In their state-of-the-art hubs, young people are able to not only access the latest gaming technology, but also create new friendships and master other valuable skills for the future.
Website: https://www.esportsyouthclub.org/
Instagram: @esportsyouthclub