Celebrating Our New Spaces for Children and Young People

26/09/2025

Thank you to everyone who joined us to celebrate our brand spanking new spaces in Southmead for children and young people, and to celebrate the amazing work of our children and young people’s teams. But most importantly, to celebrate our young people themselves.

Over the past two years, thanks to funding from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s Youth Investment Fund, we have been working hard to: build a new state of the art Boxing Zone for young people; renovate an old building (once a school dining hall) into beautiful and calming spaces for therapeutic work; and make huge improvements to The Ranch Adventure Playground and Youth Space, including a full re-vamp of the music studio, and solar panels to help us keep maintenance costs down.

The building work is now complete and is a big moment for us. A moment to really celebrate the massive amount of work that has gone into these building retrofits, and all the amazing people who worked so hard to everything done. And, also, a moment to look to the future and to think about what is next.

Our mission is very clear. We want children and young people in our community to have access to opportunity; opportunities to play, make friends, build confidence, be active, and learn new skills – all things that will help them be resilient when life throws its inevitable curveballs. We also want them to have access to more specialist help, like mental health support, when they need it.

We are very proud to offer these kinds of services ourselves, at The Ranch and now from the newly opened Greenroooms. But these spaces mean that we can invite in our amazing partners from across the City to do what they each do best, but now closer to home.

If you were with us on the day, or if we already know each other, you will have heard me bang this drum – but I think it is worth repeating: our young people deserve to be invested in. They deserve our time, patience and care. They deserve places like The Ranch where they can enjoy being young, the Greenrooms where they can be supported more closely, and they deserve opportunities to build happy, brighter futures.

So, do join us. Partner with us, volunteer with us, or simply help us shout about our work in Southmead. I would love to hear from you.

Contact: Vicky Wall, Children and Young People’s Services Manager