Connecting different communities will take time, he said
05:00, 13 Sep 2025Updated 12:59, 13 Sep 2025
Matt Justice, the new chief executive of Youth Moves, the South Bristol youth work organisation that will run the new 224 Youth Zone(Image: Youth Moves)
Bringing together children and young people from across South Bristol will be a slow and steady exercise, according to the head of a charity which will run a huge new youth centre in the city. Due to open in Spring 2026, the 224 Youth Zone is the biggest youth centre project in Bristol’s history.
A major concern ahead of the opening is that the centre’s location in Knowle would put off kids from Hartcliffe from attending, due to the historic rivalry between the two areas. Matt Justice, who was appointed Youth Moves CEO in January, said that challenge was at the top of his radar, and that Youth Moves had taken early steps towards addressing it.
“The big challenge (based on) the feedback from the community, is around that Hartcliffe Knowle challenge, between two communities that historically have not gotten on and we’re putting the youth zone slap bang in the middle of it,” he said. “Slowly but surely, we’re doing some work now as an organisation in partnership with some of the youth organisations over in Hartcliffe to develop some of those relationships between the two communities.”
The Youth Zone will offer a wide range of activities, from sport and music to arts and employability training. Facilities will include a climbing wall, drama studio and fitness suite.
The 224 centre is a collaboration between Bristol City Council and Lancashire-based national youth work charity OnSide, which has signed up Youth Moves to run the state-of-the-art facility.
Mr Justice said he wasn’t necessarily expecting kids from Hartcliffe to flood into the centre on day one of 224’s opening. He said the success of the centre over time would make it a more appealing place for kids all over South Bristol to visit, regardless of their postcode, although he also pointed out it would have been difficult to construct the new centre in a truly ‘neutral’ location.
“It’s a step by step process, because as we grow and as we build and as we develop, and as those positive relationships happen and when those activities happen, it will naturally come together,” he said.
“But it’s not something that we’re expecting, to suddenly open the doors on day one and it be all singing, all dancing in one day.”
“It’s something that will take a little bit of chipping away at for longer and longer, and will be part of that bigger puzzle.”
An artist’s impression of what the new ‘224 Youth Zone’ will look like.(Image: OnSide)
Mr Justice was confident the new centre was on track for a spring opening in the new year, but wouldn’t be drawn on an exact month. A possible complicating factor is the concurrent construction of a new access road to the centre, carried out on behalf of BCC by long term council construction partner ETM contractors.
Another criticism of the Youth Zone has been that it has been allocated a huge swathe of funding at a time when youth centres across the city were struggling.
Mr Justice said the centre’s leadership were working with organisations from across the south of the city to try to ensure the benefit of the new centre was felt as widely as possible.
“For example, where we know other youth clubs in South Bristol run their juniors provision on a Monday, we’ve strategically put ours on a Tuesday,” he said. “So it means that a young person isn’t having to choose, yeah, ‘do I go here or do I go here?’ but actually they can still go to their normal local youth club that they’ve been going to on a Monday night, but they get more support and more delivery, because then they can come to us on a Tuesday as well.”
224 would also open its doors to sessions hosted by other youth centres, giving them the benefit of its facilities, he added.
“It’s about how we work in partnership with those other organisations to make sure 224 isn’t this bolt on added extra thing that comes in … but it’s embedded within the community, within, obviously the south Bristol community, but also the community of play and youth organisations, so that it’s working in partnership together, rather than being something that we’re in competition or we’re working against each other.”
By the end of the Youth Zone’s first year in operation, it hopes to have at least 4000 members signed up with an average of 185 young people attending each session. The journey of each child that attends will also be monitored, to ensure quality outcomes are being delivered.