How we started
Young People Creating a Better Community!
Fitzrovia Youth in Action was set up by teenagers and young adults in 1997.
Our founding members were brought together by tensions surrounding their local football pitch and play area called The Warren, behind Tottenham Court Road in central London. The Warren was a place where people would meet at night to drink, play loud music, and graffiti the walls. The playground was littered with broken glass and rubbish was regularly dumped there. Strained relationships between White and Asian youths led to open conflict. Residents’ concerns over the vandalism and anti-social behaviour were heightened after they discovered weapons hidden in the play area.
Our founders met on the broken benches in the playground every week to plan a football tournament which would bring together players from local businesses, residents, and young people. After each weekly meeting, members got out the brooms and started cleaning the play area. Young people lifted bins from Tottenham Court Road and ‘re-allocated’ them in the playground. Soon, word spread, and young people and children of all ages began helping out. Residents living opposite the play area were hugely supportive after witnessing the results of the clean-up campaign and, eventually, the area returned to a place where children could safely play.
On the day of the tournament, on 19 July 1997, FYA was formally launched as a youth organisation, with 'young people creating a better community' as its motto.
The Warren remains a special place to us, and a particular focus of our place-based social action programmes. FYA now manages the Warren Pitch and an indoor activity space right next to it, called the Warren Centre.
From our humble beginnings, we have grown into a well-respected social action charity supporting many hundreds of young people to lead community programmes each year. Our youth-led, peer to peer approach is still central to how we operate today. Two thirds of our staff team are former young volunteers with the organisation and our work remains rooted in local communities across Camden and Westminster.
To find out more about FYA’s history and how we started, watch our 18th birthday video below.