“A safe space to just come and be”: The radical and utopian return of youth clubs in Britain | Build

pReston, Lancashire is no stranger to pioneering architecture. The city’s bus station, the largest in Europe when it opened in 1969, is a Brutalist masterpiece. Next month, a new public building will open opposite the bus station built with similar aspirations to transform local life: a youth centre.

For a generation that grew up when cuts decimated services – between 2010-11 and 2023-24, local government spending on youth services fell by 73% and more than 1,000 youth centers closed – the idea of ​​a place designed just for young people may seem as outdated as bus travel, but 2026 brings big changes to UK youth services.

The Government’s Youth Issues Strategy, launched in December 2025, is the first national youth strategy in 15 years. It promised to invest £500 million over a decade to rebuild the service with the priority of establishing 50 Youth Futures (YF) centres, with eight pilot schemes in Nottingham, Manchester, Birmingham, Brighton and Hove, Bristol, Leeds and Tower Hamlets in London and Newton Aycliffe in County Durham.

It is hoped that the YF Centers will provide integrated mental health and employability skills support in one place, a space for sporting and artistic activities and a safe digital and physical space where young people “feel they belong”. It’s a utopian checklist that asks the question: What would these specialized spaces for young people look like?

For John Boutique, the architect behind Preston’s Youth Zone (now called the Vault, a name chosen by locals), this space should be something young people can be proud of. Boutique has not worked in YF centres, but his practice has led to the establishment of community buildings across the UK, including youth centers in Grimsby and Blackburn with a further center planned for Thurrock. He works with the charity OnSide, which creates centers for people aged 8 to 18 (or up to 25 with additional needs), in economically deprived areas.

“In Preston, we wanted the Vault to feel like a new, prominent civic presence, something young people could identify with,” says Boutique. “We spent a lot of time thinking about how to make the building fun and welcoming, yet ambitious.”

From the outside, this means yellow and black columns under a folded concrete facade, which echo the famous bus station. Inside, it has a Vault feel Recklessly ambitious. The double-height open-plan central space contains a café and games area with clear sightlines to the football pitch, kitchen, music rooms, climbing wall and gymnasium – enhancing the sense of community and flooding the space with as much natural light as Preston in February.

And if the colour-coded interiors, columns and striped fixtures bring a flash of nostalgia to some parents and grandparents dropping off their kids, there’s a reason: the scheme was created by Ben Kelly, the designer of Manchester’s legendary Hacienda nightclub. It’s not as old a reference as you might think. Young people in Preston are familiar with Kelly thanks to the late fashion designer Virgil Abloh’s fascination with factory records.

Emma Warren, author of Up the Youth Club 2025, a history of youth services in the UK, says the UK has periodically given beautiful buildings to young people. While the philanthropic desire to help young people goes back centuries, the 1960 Albemarle Report established the modern understanding of youth provision, leading to the building of 300 purpose-built centers between 1960 and 1968.

To get an idea of ​​how these places have been transformed, Warren recommends watching the beautiful short film about Grove Park Youth Club in Lewisham, created by the London County Council’s architecture team under Sir Hubert Bennett (a team also responsible for the Hayward Gallery, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Crystal Palace National Leisure Centre).

Of course, the cultural landscape now is very different from those golden days. Warren says recent research has found that half of UK young people spend most of their free time in their rooms.

“People talk about youth workers getting kids off the streets, but what amazes me is that a lot of youth work now is about getting kids out of their bedrooms,” she says. “Parents must understand that isolating their children from their peers is absolutely unsafe.”

Larry Botchway is the co-founding principal of the award-winning design practice POoR Collective, which focuses on architecture and education for youth. “Safe, free spaces outside the home are essential for connection and growth,” he says. “Dedicated spaces show that young people are important members of society, not a problem to be managed.”

While buildings like Preston’s Vault give a strong signal, not every community has the funding or land to create such impressive monuments for the next generation. This is not always a negative thing. London’s Tower Hamlets is one of the areas chosen to be a pilot for the new youth strategy.

Like the others, he was selected because of the rise in anti-social behavior and knife crime. But Tower Hamlets focused on the needs of its young residents before the government intervened. The borough has the youngest median age of any borough in the country, with one in two children living in low-income families – and the council has been working to open a space for young people in every ward over the past two years. After discovering that 70% of the center’s users are male, they opened a girls-only club last month as a priority.

The girls’ center is simple—a collection of rooms in a modern community center on Main Street—but local girls make all the decisions here. Through an opinion poll, they chose how to furnish it, the activities available, and even the name of the center. On opening night in January, the center had the pastel color scheme they requested, a sofa with throw pillows and fairy lights in the play area.

Some of the girls took selfies with Lutfur Rahman, the executive mayor, as he toured the facility to officially open the club – bringing with him a huge celebration cake decorated with the Young Tower Hamlets logo. Rahman says this is the only time he will be allowed inside.

Fourteen-year-old Amira Katyal, the young deputy mayor of Tower Hamlets, conducted the survey that shaped the design of the youth club and said she had a real throwback moment when she entered the centre. “I remember filling out the form in June last year and now it’s finally a reality. Spaces for young women have been overlooked, and it’s amazing that we have this place they can come and be there.”

The idea of ​​safe spaces for young people constantly appears in reports and conversations. This is because it is a frequent request from young people, says Mayom Talukdar, deputy mayor of Tower Hamlets and senior cabinet member for education, youth and lifelong learning.

“But a safe space means very different things to different people,” Warren says. “An example I talk about in my book is the 1970s London gay teen group. They used to hang out with some tough punks and feel protected from them; that’s what made them feel safe. I think that for adults or some institutions, safety is often confused with protection. That has its role, but it also has its limits. I think safe is a place where you get good support, where you feel less anxious, and where you can even laugh.”

Caspar Rodgers is the principal of Alma-Nac Architects, the studio behind 68 Erith Hub, a new community hub in Greater London. Rodgers’ interest in government policy is the expectation that spaces enhance social outcomes.

“Design can make community spaces more likely to be adopted, but it cannot solve problems alone. YF Centers have the potential to be much-needed additions to their communities. On first reading, they seem like highly managed judgments that, great though they may be, link success to the quality of their management and funding. My hope is that the designs focus equally on creating great places for young people to simply spend time together as much as they focus on their agenda of crime reduction and volunteer opportunities.”

For some areas, any item would be an improvement. Next Boutique Youth Center is located in Tilbury, Essex, where he grew up. “There’s nothing that can be done there, it’s a very difficult environment; delivering a building there will make a huge difference.”

Of the six people interviewed for this article, at least four attended youth centers as children and continued to support the system as adults.

Not only did Warren attend the club as a child, he is now a volunteer youth worker. She believes these experiences make a difference. “I imagine a lot of people with structural power didn’t go to youth clubs because their parents paid for their leisure activities. They missed those connective effects – and all the jokes.”

Mayor Rahman is someone in on the joke. In his short speech before handing over the new center for young women in Tower Hamlets, he described his experience.

“I grew up here in a crowded family and didn’t have anywhere to do my schoolwork, so I used to go to the youth centre. It helped me a lot – I worked hard but I had to spend time with my friends and play at the same time.” He looks with admiration at the large paper cake in front of him. “However, we have never had this kind of big cake before.”