We’ve talked a lot about regeneration at The Hive over the last month.
It was the theme of our summer Hive 100 networking breakfast – a chance for the incredible collective of businesses from right across the Liverpool City Region, who all support The Hive and help us deliver our work for young people, to hear from a panel of experts and perspectives from young Hive members.
It struck me, listening to Alex, a young woman who – almost a decade ago now – first got involved with a regeneration project herself, when she was the age of some of our senior members today.
She jumped at the opportunity to get involved with shaping a transformative regeneration project for this part of Birkenhead – one that would redesign opportunities for young people across Wirral, as well as reshaping part of the townscape.
The project? Our youth zone. Alex was one of the original members of the young people’s development group for The Hive: they fed into the architects discussions, chose colours and names for different parts of the building, designed the respect code which everyone – young and old – who comes through our doors needs to abide by. Most importantly, they named this place. They came up with The Hive’s brand, because we are young people led – and our name says it all about what young people wanted this place to be, and still do.
Since then, we’ve issued 16,500 memberships to young people, who’ve taken part in more than half a million activities.
And if I had £1 for every time someone tells me that they’ve walked past the building lots of times, but never knew how amazing it was inside, I’d spend less of my time fundraising!
A teacher visiting the building recently described it as a tardis, and that feels like a fantastic analogy to me. In the true spirit of Doctor Who, what you see from the outside doesn’t even scratch the surface of what you find when you dig a little deeper into what a youth zone is and does.
Just as Doctor Who regenerates, so does our youth zone: it’s here to be whatever its members want and need it to be, and that changes and evolves as members like Alex move from juniors to seniors, perhaps starting to volunteer as young leaders themselves then maybe, eventually, becoming adult volunteers or even team members when they’ve entered the working world.
And if the measure of successful regeneration – as our panellists talked about last week – is ‘pride’ and ‘optimism’ through partnership, then I can’t think of a better regeneration success story for young people in our area than The Hive. If the full potential of Wirral Waters is to be realised, engaging Wirral’s young people with it and listening to what they want to see from the jobs, homes, leisure and environment it will create is a crucial part of the process.
The Hive is privileged to have played a part in Alex’s journey; we’ve been able to support her through her own regenerations of adolescence and young adulthood. And surely, continuing to support The Hive to be there for future generations – through the amazing support of local businesses – is the ultimate long-term regeneration partnership.
As Matt Smith said in his final line when playing Doctor Who:
“We all change. When you think about it, we’re all different people, all through our lives. And that’s okay, that’s good, you gotta keep moving, so long as you remember all the people that you used to be.”
Jayne Wilson is our CEO
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