Our Story
Where & How It All Started
It all began long before Streets of Growth was established with our founder’s and co-founders’ own backstories growing up on council estates in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, which was on record as being one of the most socially deprived borough wards in the UK. Growing up amongst socio-economic uncertainty and witnessing firsthand the temptation, consequences and trauma experienced by vulnerable young people who find themselves directionless, stuck, peer-pressured, bullied, and getting caught up and drawn to the allure of career criminality and associated exploitation and violence.
From Humble Beginnings to a Milestone Achievement
© Copyright Image – Gary Kinsman
Timeline
1995 – Neighbours Who Intervened
Concerned neighbour Darren Way starts going onto the streets night after night preventing and disrupting the vicious cycle of those caught up in gang postcode violence, leaving school with no progression and involved in co-offending criminality. He is joined in his pioneering street outreach intervention by neighbour and artist Lucky Nessa.
1998 - A Chance Encounter
A meeting with two Linguistic and Educational Anthropologists visiting from America's West Coast results in Darren being offered a one-week Arts Education Fellowship through The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, to see ‘best practice’ youth arts enterprise approaches and community-led models in the U.S.
2000 – Overseas Churchill Fellowship
After applying and being successfully awarded a Churchill Fellowship in 2000, Darren embarks on an intensive Three-month research residency shadowing, training and exchanging insights with gang prevention and interventionists and social enterprise organisations in The Bronx – New York, North Philadelphia, and Boston - Massachusetts.
Seasoned practitioner Diane Peters collaborates with Darren and travels with him on a self-funded post fellowship field trip to the U.S. east coast to explore the possibility of building a pioneering youth intervention organisation and model in London's East End.
© Copyright Image – Diamond Geezer
2001 – Official Founding of Streets of Growth
On September 11th, 2001, Streets of Growth founders by Darren, Diane, and co-founder Lucky Nessa, open the shutters of a disused shopfront right in the art of their neighbourhood shopping precinct in Bow E.3., and start working with the most under-served young people.
© Image Copyright – London Metropolitan Archives (City of London Corporation)
2003 – Kingsley Hall
With a growing team and still running the shopfront for outreach, street intervention and transition into further education, training and employment, we move into a small office at an historic community centre nearby where we also have access to larger multi-use spaces to develop and run our intervention programme and projects.
2010 – Repurposed Disused Print Factory
We seize the opportunity of a short-term lease of an 8000 sq ft ex-print factory in Poplar E14 and move out of our shop and community centre office. We use this as a chance to build our own outreach, intervention, education, and social enterprise employability centre, achieved with no grant build funding and 95% reclaimed and up-cycled materials.
2016 – Repurposed Disused Office Block
With the factory being demolished for private and social housing, we secure a ‘short term’ lease on Two 4000 sq ft office floors on the Canary Wharf Peninsula, Ise of Dogs, E14. Again, transforming them into dynamic intervention, enterprise employability zones, with no grant build funding.
2019 – Repurposed Disused Nursery
With the office building earmarked for demolition to make way for a hotel complex, Streets of Growth dramatically downsize to move into a small ‘temporary use’ empty nursery building in Shadwell E1. As we begin to re-establish ourselves at this site, we are given notice to fully vacate so that the building can be used as a Covid-19 Testing Site.
2021 – Repurposed Disused Community Housing Hub
Through Tower Hamlets Homes, we are offered ‘temporary use’ of their community hub centre building in Bethnal Green E.2. With crowd funding and in partnership with The British Bangladeshi Fashion Council we create a dynamic youth intervention and creative industries hub called “The Manor” creating employment pathways for young people.
2023 - Our New EpiCentre
The lease on our intervention and creative industries hub comes to an end, only this time we are preparing to move out with no new home to go to and facing closure. A lifeline comes where Unite Students are inviting Third Sector Community organisations to apply to run their Centre/Theatre Space at their new 24-storey flagship student accommodation building at Hayloft Point in Aldgate East E1. Our co-founder and CEO Diane Peters puts our charity forward and we secure our first ever long-term home - we call our EpiCentre.
- Over 6000 young people have each successfully grown through our intensive 2-year intervention model and transformed their current circumstance and life trajectories.
- 25-years on from when we first established Streets of Growth, we have won and winning local, national and international awards year on year.
- This Autumn sees the launch of our newly revised Appropriate Intervention Plus Model and our internal Centre for Applied Research & Evaluation (C.A.R.E.). where we continue to partner with our international practitioner partners - a global movement in the advancement of this highly controversial, under-resourced and often misunderstood youth intervention field.