Toxteth Youth and Sports Centre - Liverpool
Engaging young people from different backgrounds
 In the aftermath of the 1981 race riots in Liverpool, Toxteth Centre was built as part of an effort to increase services for the city's racial minority residents. In this it was successful, but the centre now wants to develop and expand to become predominantly a youth facility and bring people of all races together at a refurbished and expanded facility. They envision a centre where young people of all backgrounds and from all over the city have fun and get support together. In March 2009 it was awarded ?2.3 million of myplace funding to achieve this goal. With the funding, Toxteth Youth and Sports Centre has embarked on an ambitious plan to expand and improve its facilities, activities and outreach to bring together young people from a wide variety of ethnic, racial and religious backgrounds.
Located in an area of the city traditionally viewed as a 'black area' and built on a housing estate, the centre faces some unique challenges in its efforts to serve a more diverse client base. To overcome these challenges of location and image, Toxteth is using its funding to focus on several strategies to engage groups that have traditionally not participated in the centre's activities. For starters, they are working on making changes to their programming and to their facilities that will make the centre more appealing and more accessible to a variety of young people. For example, young Muslim women are one of the groups the centre is working to engage. To this end, they are making sure the facilities have appropriately private programmed times and activities for females. They are also working on developing activities that will bring young Muslim women to the centre, such as a women-only day, staffed entirely by female staff, and women-only time slots for some of the daily activities. A series of open days will give people the chance to see what the centre has to offer.
In order to get young people involved in the new activities, another part of Toxteth's strategy is youth-led outreach targeted at under-represented groups of young people, identified as Muslim young women, Somali young men not in education, employment or training, young people with disabilities and white young people. The Centre has created a Community Cohesion group that will produce DVDs, PowerPoint presentations, and a newsletter. They are working with local community groups to spread the inclusive message of the centre and encourage young people to get involved. Soon they will start using the materials they produce to conduct activities and events in other parts of the city to raise awareness of the centre and bring in a more geographically diverse clientèle.
Underpinning all these activities is one key ingredient: youth participation. Like all myplace centres, Toxteth is increasingly involving young people in the planning and running of the centre. A group of young people is making the DVDs, presentations and newsletters that the centre will use for outreach. A diverse group of young people is also becoming more and more involved in consulting on what activities young people would like at the centre. And starting next year, a group of young people will be involved in the hiring of adult staff. All of this means not only that the centre will be better able to provide what young people want, but also that young people from a variety of backgrounds are getting the opportunity to work together.
This cooperation may only be on a small scale at the moment, but its potential for transforming the community is profound. The Toxteth myplace centre will be a place that breaks down perceptions and stereotypes and where young people lead a new generation of peace and cooperation in Liverpool.
Find out more on Toxteth Youth and Sports Centre'sProject Page
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Resources 
Toxteth Youth Case Study (
