Aug 17, 2026 · 34 min · 8 segments
The decimation of youth clubs during austerity was a betrayal of young people, according to Emma Warren, a cultural documentarian and author of a recent book tracing the history and significance of…
Emma WarrenGuestConnor NackenHostSo you've spent a lot of your career writing about the spaces and places where people meet and gather.
So I think perhaps the best place to start is with how you first came to the topic of youth clubs in particular and why you felt that there needed to be a history or story of youth clubs in the UK.
My work is about cultural spaces where people gather, often on a very local, grassroots street level, and that those places are inherently valuable.
And I think there's a misconception about youth clubs that they sit in a particular part of the world, which is like some kind of dusty subsector of charity.
But the other thing to say at this point is that I consider all these things to be rooms in the same house.
The youth club, the street corner, the grassroots music venue, the village hall, the village green, the park, public space where people can assemble to do their things.
are all connected and they're all essentially different versions of the same thing a safe and accessible place where people can just go and be and that is particularly valuable for young people as so evidently shown in the work that you do here you know young people get a raw deal officially
But I think it'd be good as well to start by giving a sense for people who've never been to a youth club.
I suppose in some part of the popular imagination, some people might just think of them as a building with a ping pong table.
But at the broadest level, what actually is a youth club? And why do you think they've mattered so much in Britain?
It's a warm and welcoming space where people roughly in the second decade of life can come to do the things they're interested in or to find out what they're interested in, usually with a kind of supportive adult in the picture who will make these things possible.
I found an illustration of a youth institute from 1880, which had like a kind of coffee bar type thing, some people doing some drawings and people playing some board games.
I've seen that something very similar in youth clubs I visited in the last couple of years where they'll be saying like, you know, no balaclavas or caps off or blah, blah, blah.
One are the historic levels of wealth inequality that have been present in this country, particularly since the Industrial Revolution, which were broader and deeper and worse.
So you've spent a lot of your career writing about the spaces and places where people meet and gather.
So I think perhaps the best place to start is with how you first came to the topic of youth clubs in particular and why you felt that there needed to be a history or story of youth clubs in the UK.
My work is about cultural spaces where people gather, often on a very local, grassroots street level, and that those places are inherently valuable.
And I think there's a misconception about youth clubs that they sit in a particular part of the world, which is like some kind of dusty subsector of charity.
But the other thing to say at this point is that I consider all these things to be rooms in the same house.
The youth club, the street corner, the grassroots music venue, the village hall, the village green, the park, public space where people can assemble to do their things.
are all connected and they're all essentially different versions of the same thing a safe and accessible place where people can just go and be and that is particularly valuable for young people as so evidently shown in the work that you do here you know young people get a raw deal officially
But I think it'd be good as well to start by giving a sense for people who've never been to a youth club.
I suppose in some part of the popular imagination, some people might just think of them as a building with a ping pong table.
But at the broadest level, what actually is a youth club? And why do you think they've mattered so much in Britain?
It's a warm and welcoming space where people roughly in the second decade of life can come to do the things they're interested in or to find out what they're interested in, usually with a kind of supportive adult in the picture who will make these things possible.
I found an illustration of a youth institute from 1880, which had like a kind of coffee bar type thing, some people doing some drawings and people playing some board games.
I've seen that something very similar in youth clubs I visited in the last couple of years where they'll be saying like, you know, no balaclavas or caps off or blah, blah, blah.
One are the historic levels of wealth inequality that have been present in this country, particularly since the Industrial Revolution, which were broader and deeper and worse.
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