Lowton Youth and Community Centre has recently hosted a series of activities for young people that was partly funded with a grant from Wigan Council’s Children & Young Peoples Services. Events included a comic relief fun day and a series of projects on Friday nights for 8 to 16 year old children. In association with a number of partners from the School for Social Entrepreneurs (SSE) the XZone funding helped provide a short series of activities which included Self Defence, Street Dance and Creative Writing sessions healthy activities designed to develop confidence, self discipline, teamwork, literacy, awareness and communication skills. There was also a Band Night when the sports hall was turned into a nightclub for the event. All the sessions were well received and an increasing number of young people took part, even Lowton Youth and Community Centre director Sandy Franzen got down on the floor to develop his own street dance skills.

We have used the experience of the XZone nights to develop our own Friday night provision for 8 to 16 year old children. These will take place each Friday at Lowton Youth and Community Centre from 6:30-8:30pm with Scooby and the crew welcoming young people to join in. Future sessions will include a “Curry Night” designed to get the young people to make a healthy curry which they have to prepare and cook for themselves (Sandy will be a volunteer taster for this particular session). Also planned sessions on “growing your own food”, “gardening”,”how to eat healthily”, “sport” and “craft skills”.

Lowton Youth and Community Centre has been part of the community of Lowton for some time now. In fact, the parents of some of our youth club kids used to come here to the youth club themselves!

We are a centre that is pleased to offer a home to groups from in and around the Lowton area and have rooms to rent for conferences, training, meetings, events and courses. Many things are changing here and we want the community of Lowton to come and get involved with us as we move forwards.