Gaming has received a bad rap as an activity that keeps youngsters, especially boys, isolated in their rooms engaging with violent content on their consoles. And yet in London, gaming and e-sports are being used to bring young people together and give them a safe space on some of the city’s most troubled estates. Lewis Kay co-founded Esports Youth Club in 2021. It’s a community interest group based in South London.
‘Esports Youth Club uses esports and video games to engage young people,’ Kay explains. ‘The club offers free sessions in the boroughs of Southwark, Lewisham and Lambeth for young people age 11 plus. They come along, they get hot food, snacks, drinks and play video games on PS5, Nintendo Switch 2 or gaming PCs.’
The also club runs tournaments and even a Fortnite Academy. ‘The whole point of our youth club is to provide a safe, fun space for young people to go and do something that they love.’
The club gets young people out of the isolation of their rooms and also ensures that those who don’t have full access to gaming or a space to play at home get a chance.‘90% of young people in the UK play video games and I wanted to create a space where everyone could play on the highest spec with the latest games, the latest consoles.’
Lewis Kay got the idea for Esports Youth Club when he was working as a housing officer on Tulse Hill Estate in Brixton, when it was considered the worst area for gang violence in Europe. He set up the youth club in his spare time and ran it with a couple of mates. They found that gaming and esports engaged a broader crowd than physical sports. ‘Our impact is measurable in that 75% of the young people that come to our youth club don’t engage with any other youth services. We offer something that doesn’t have the barriers that a physical sports club may have. We’re there purely just to provide a safe, relaxed environment for young people to have fun.’
Esports Youth Club is breaking the isolation around gaming and returning it to its more sociable roots. ‘88% of the young people that join our club have made at least one new friend,’ says Kay. ‘At some point, gaming went from a communal thing that you would do in an arcade with your friends or all sat on a sofa, to being on your own in your room with a big PC, and there’s quite a few dangers there. So we’re trying to build an infrastructure to get it back into the mainstream culture where people can be together and have fun.’
