Behind Campus
Just not in Bristol.
[Laughs] Exactly.
So, take us through each park. Let’s
start with Winterbourne.
Okay, as you come in you’ve got a coffee
shop mixed with the skate shop, with
boards on walls. Every single wall in the
park has graffiti on it and every year we
get a different artist to come and just
go crazy. The park is all wooden and
more transition based, so it’s essentially
a giant mini ramp with extensions and
driveways in the middle like a traditional
skate park. There’s a four-foot mini-
ramp, quarter-pipes at both ends and
stuff in the middle.
And The Pool?
That’s certainly our flagship park. It’s
twice the size and has a standalone
coffee shop called The Daily Grind
Coffee Shop - we do fresh salads,
wraps, excellent coffee and it has its
own entrance, but is integrated into the
skate park with windows looking into
the park.
The shop is standalone, with hardware,
soft goods, and all sorts. The park itself
is concrete and is purely skateboard
focused. It’s plaza-esque but there’re
some quarter-pipes and a bowl corner.
We’ve tried to maintain as much of the
swimming pool feel as we could, and
there’s a lowered section in the middle
with kickers, banks and ledges up onto
what would’ve been the walkway.
Aesthetically, it’s a bit cleaner. There’s
no graffiti and there’s white brick
everywhere. It’s kinda like a park you’d
expect someone like Nike would build.
Nice. Is youth work still the biggest
focus for Campus?
Absolutely. Of course Tim and I take
a salary, but it’s nothing flash. The
reason we do this is mainly to provide
something for young people and skaters
in the area.
Do you have mentoring programmes
or anything, or is it more informal?
It’s mostly informal. Kids come, they feel
safe, and that’s essentially the heart of
youth work: providing a space where
people feel comfortable or relaxed
and can get some sort of mentoring
or guidance in life. All of our staff are
trained in-house on how to communicate
and work with young people. If
something is highlighted to us, like a
child protection issue or we become
aware of a young person sleeping rough,
we have procedures to support them.
Most importantly it’s about building
relationships. Every kid who comes
regularly knows Tim and I and they know
they can talk and ask questions, and
hopefully we can encourage positive
behaviour through positive interactions.
Have you had any success stories
from your parks?
There are kids who started coming to the
park ages six or seven who are still here,
and they know this is a safe place for
them. We try and get some of them into
our volunteering programme, so they
give us their time and they can skate for
free and get discounts in our shop.
We also run an apprenticeship in
customer service or retail, and we’ve
had seven young people come through
and work for a year to learn the ins and
outs of retail while working at a park. Of
those seven, four have gone onto either
full-time or part-time employment with
us, and one of those has been working
for us for three years.
We help them progress, then try and
help them move onto bigger and better
things. That’s hard as we build such
strong relationships with them, but for
their own personal progression they
need to.
And you guys are member-based,
yeah?
That’s right. Everyone has to become a
member. Winterbourne has a database
of about 9000 now and the pool has just
over 4000 in two years, which is a great
milestone for us.
Awesome. There’s also a bit of
stigma that there’s often a religious
connection with youth work. Do you
guys have any religious affiliation?
Not at all. I don’t want to tar everyone
with the same brush, but every religious
youth group has a certain feel to it. We
certainly don’t give that message; neither
Tim nor I are religious and we don’t want
to be portrayed in that way.
There are a lot of youth clubs that are
council-run in the UK, so more people
assume that we’re council run and
receive funding from them to provide this
service.
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