Community chef Mike Spackman, local artist Nova and local young people share what it’s like being involved in Chill Club – a safe space set up by Newington Big Local for young people to gain cooking skills, explore their creativity and connect with each other.
It’s 5.20pm on a cold Monday in December and the sweet, earthy smell of fresh basil fills the small kitchen at the community centre in Newington, an estate in Ramsgate that is home to nearly 6,000 people.
Community Chef Mike Spackman is showing four enthusiastic 10- and 11-year-old girls how to spread pesto over thick slices of cob bread with the back of a teaspoon. “Has anyone ever tasted pesto before?” he asks. “Try it now if you like.”
The girls are learning how to make Mike’s ‘Super Duper Toasties’, a skill that won’t just arm them with cooking know-how for the future, but will also benefit the 40 other young people who will soon be flooding the hall for Chill Club, a weekly group for 10- to 18-year-olds funded by Newington Big Local.
Running alongside Chill Club is Young Chefs, a cooking programme run by Mike. Each week a small group arrives at 5pm and Mike teaches them how to make a new healthy recipe. They then make it in bulk and serve it up to their hungry peers later in the evening.
“We have a chat the week before about the sorts of foods they’d like to cook,” explains Mike. “To some extent I try to guide them because their experience around food is very limited. It’s about expanding their palette.”
On the menu this week is a selection of delicious toasted sandwiches with fillings including pesto, tomato and mozzarella, halloumi, honey and harissa, and spaghetti bolognaise. A lot of these ingredients come through surplus produce bought in from FareShare as part of a food bank scheme, another popular project run at the centre by Newington Big Local.
The toasties are already a hit with the girls. “It smells well nice,” grins 11-year-old Sapphire as she dances over to the hob to toast her bread.
Built in the 1950s for coal miners and their families, the Newington estate is ranked amongst the most deprived 20 per cent of neighbourhoods in England.
Childhood poverty and obesity levels are high. Tackling this by teaching young people how to cook healthy food from scratch rather than rely on highly processed convenience foods is one of the motivations for Mike’s work here, but it is by no means the only one.
It is also about sharing invaluable life skills in food preparation, hygiene and safety, as well as information about energy efficient cooking – vital when many are struggling with fuel poverty.
But it runs even deeper than that. Cooking together is also a positive way for young people to spend time with their friends and have regular check-ins with trusted adults in their community.
“I want to know about their day,” explains Mike. “I want to try and get a weathervane of how they’re feeling. Children’s wellbeing is at the heart of everything that we do.”
By 6pm a queue of young people has formed at the door. As Nova, the local artist who leads Chill Club, lets them in, they diligently register their names on sign-in lists and spill out into the hall.
Long tables are set up down one side, covered in open boxes of craft materials. There’s everything from glue guns to pom poms, coloured card to felt tip pens, and stickers to bells.
It’s a creative child’s heaven: heaps of resources with absolutely no expectation or rules about what they have to produce.
The other side of the hall is for sport. Over the course of the evening there is a soft foam football penalty shoot-out, indoor badminton and a very exciting dodge ball match that at one point involves all the players standing on one leg.
There is also a brilliantly simple game where the aim is to bounce ping pong balls into mugs. This is extremely popular – perhaps because the prize for being successful is a biscuit!
There’s the potential for chaos here, but while this room throngs with young life, it feels relaxed. The young people are having fun, but they remain respectful of each other and of the five adult staff and volunteers.
Right from when Nova set up the club in 2017, the ethos has been about being responsive to what young people want to do.
With her background in art, there is always the option of something creative, but they are free to just hang out and chat, or set up dancing, sport or any other games they can think of.
To them she is very much a ‘yes woman’. “Unless it’s dangerous, or they want to go to Disneyland Paris, which I can’t afford, I do just say, ‘Yeah, why not?’” she explains.
“It’s really about young people’s voices and empowering them. It’s a process of asking them what they want to happen here. They might go, ‘I’ve seen this craft thing on YouTube’. And I’ll be like, ‘OK, well write down all the materials you need and we’ll do that next week.’ But equally, no one’s forced to do anything, either. It’s just a safe place.”
This concept of a safe place is an important one because over the years, Newington has had a bad reputation due to high levels of crime and antisocial behaviour.
“There was some really poor behaviour that negatively impacted on the community,” explains Nova. “That’s changed a lot now, but the problem is, once an area’s got that kind of reputation, it takes another lifetime to shift it.”
A couple of young people mention the problems they see – teenagers littering and a high police presence they can find “scary” – but the rest speak positively about where they live.
Chill Club is definitely a highlight. As well as being a place they get to see their friends and have fun, they talk about how it gets them off their phones or Xboxes, gives them a break from siblings and gets them “out of our parents’ hair”.
Eleven-year-old Scarlett describes how it helps boost her emotionally: “If I’m a bit sad it gets me in a good mood.” While 14-year-old Lacey simply says: “I feel welcomed and safe here”.
For Nova, it’s about creating a positive place young people feel they belong to. “I just want them to come in and be themselves, but to develop confidence and self-esteem, so that when they leave here they’re going away feeling sure about who they are.”
Though at no stage does anyone mention the words ‘mental health’, it is obvious that Chill Club is a shining example of how to support young people’s wellbeing. It is about warmth, connection, community and opportunity – exactly what young people need to thrive.
Newington Big Local will close in August 2025, but, since Chill Club has become such an integral part of Newington’s young people’s lives, Nova and Mike have no intention of stopping.
While Big Local money enabled Nova to first launch the club, she has since received further funding from other sources, including a grant from BBC Children in Need, meaning Big Local’s legacy will live on.
Her aim now is for Chill Club to keep evolving. She is hopeful of securing more money through BBC Children in Need and her plans include some of the young people becoming leaders within the club.
As the evening draws to a close and every single toastie has been wolfed down, Mike is wiping down the kitchen with three young helpers. They are having a heated debate about whether Galaxy or Cadbury’s chocolate is best, before giving detailed descriptions of the best way to eat a Twix – should you save the biscuit or the caramel till last?
The hall is brimming with smiling, busy, creative young people. There are bubbles of laughter. There is the warmth of a still hot oven and the smell of hot butter and cheese from the toasties.
Newington may have had a bad reputation in the past, but the care and opportunities these young people receive at Chill Club is something today’s residents can feel very proud of.
