25. Table Tennis and Climbing
Karen Brown
Youth Services have declined drastically since 2010, with over 1,000 youth clubs closed and over 4,500 youth work jobs lost. Financially, the government has reduced spending by 73% equating to a reduction of over £1.5 billion in sector funding.
As a response to this growing challenge, the UK government have proposed 50 new 'Youth Hubs', a model which is based on OnSide Youth Zones.
Youth Zones are multi-million-pound state-of-the-art buildings whose facilities range from leisure time, to cooking and art classes, to vocational education, and even amateur sport of rock climbing, table tennis and boxing.
Youth Zones represent a relatively new organisational model that has not been explored academically, leaving their resilience and long-term sustainability largely unknown. OnSide operate as a mixed organisational structure where OnSide themselves are the headquarters and the individual youth zones operate autonomously but with support across the network. However they are solely a charity, and this creates persistent financial uncertainty.
This research examines the resilience of OnSide Youth Zones through organisational cultures, everyday practices and spatial environments and their role in shaping participation, perceptions of success, and long-term organisational resilience.
