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If you’d asked us 18 months ago what 2025 had in store, we’re not sure we’d have guessed quite this ride. It’s been one of the toughest years financially in Make (Good) Trouble’s history – funding commissions have been harder to come by, budgets have been squeezed, and like so many small organisations in our sector, we’ve had to make difficult decisions along the way.

And yet. It’s also been one of the most rewarding. We recently put together our C.I.C (Community Interest Company) annual report and I thought it merited a blog post as it got me thinking about what we do…

Why this work matters more than ever

Today’s young people are growing up under pressures that would have felt unimaginable a generation ago. A major independent review into youth mental health, ADHD and autism, that’s due to be published soon, is to push back on the idea that this is a “snowflake generation,” with its lead author, Professor Peter Fonagy, telling the BBC there has been a real rise in mental distress among children and young people – anxiety, depression, self-harm and eating disorders chief among them. NHS figures back this up starkly: the number of children and young people in contact with mental health services in England has risen by 50% in the past five years, and one in three of those referred are still waiting for help a year later. (This probably isn’t news to parents reading this.)

Fonagy pointed to economic and employment uncertainty, social media pressures, and – tellingly – cuts to youth services over the past decade, which have left young people with fewer places to simply mix, belong and participate. As he put it, “participating in things… maintains good mental health.” SEND provision is under real strain amid ongoing reform, too, and many young people are struggling simply to find a foothold in the world of work, with employers increasingly reporting gaps in confidence, communication and interview readiness among school and college leavers.

(It’s well worth reading the government’s Young people and work: interim report on this issue.) 

It’s against this backdrop that our work feels so important. We don’t just talk about building young people’s confidence and skills – we do it, one workshop, one interview, one podcast, one film at a time. Every session is, in its own small way, exactly the kind of participation Fonagy describes: a place to belong, contribute and be heard.

How we support young people’s confidence and mental health

In 2025, we helped train future NHS therapists by working with young people, at The Horsfall with the charity 42nd Street in Manchester, to turn their own lived experience – navigating services, being labelled “high risk,” growing up in the system – into training films that will shape how the next generation of therapists talk to and support young people.

We ran our Holiday Drama Club in Friston Forest for the fifth year running, with the brilliant drama therapist Rozzy from Dragon Drama, giving teenagers a safe, supported space to build confidence outdoors. As one parent told us, their son had come a long way since first joining aged nine while struggling with ADHD/ASD, past trauma and medical issues, and the club had become “one of his safe places” – somewhere “they understand me.”

Young people in their boat built from sticks at the Make (Good) Trouble and Dragon Drama Holiday Club in Friston Forest, East Sussex

Young people taking part in Make (Good) Trouble’s Holiday Drama Club in Friston Forest, East Sussex, in partnership with Dragon Drama

We took Barking & Dagenham and Islington’s Youth Ambassadors through media training with The Ben Kinsella Trust, put Wakehurst work experience students behind a microphone for the third summer running, and helped young people across East Sussex tell their own stories about loss, bullying and social media pressures through a series of school mental health films.

Make (Good) Trouble's workshop wall at Ben Kinsella Trust with post-its showing participant's goals for media training workshop including 'clarity', 'stage fright' and 'speaking under pressure'.

Workshop at The Ben Kinsella Trust where the charity’s ambassadors write their personal goals for the Make (Good) Trouble Media Training session.

Why we love this work

Working with young people is a joy. Their creativity is infectious, their energy keeps us on our toes, and what they bring to our projects through co-creation is genuinely inspiring. When we hand young people the microphone – literally and figuratively – and let them shape the questions, the themes, the stories, we get work that adult-led projects simply couldn’t produce.

We think more organisations should be doing this. Not consulting young people as an afterthought but building them into projects from day one as producers, interviewers and storytellers in their own right. It’s harder work. It’s also so much better. (Want to work with us to do this? Get in touch!)

Young work experience students at Wakehurst recording sound effects for a podcast about their time at the botanic garden.

Onwards

To every parent, commissioner, school, charity and partner who’s worked with us over the years – thank you. It hasn’t always been easy, but seeing a nervous 14-year-old walk out of a workshop standing taller, speaking louder, and believing in themselves a bit more? That’s why we do this. Here’s to more good trouble in the future.

About Make (Good) Trouble

Make (Good) Trouble is a Community Interest Company (CIC) working alongside young people to challenge the status quo and spark real change. Through creative workshops, media training and co-produced content – from podcasts to policy – we help young people build confidence, develop communication skills and tell their own stories, shaping the systems that affect them and leading the change they want to see. We work with schools, youth clubs, local authorities, the NHS and charities across Sussex and beyond, supporting young people through some of the toughest challenges they face. Find out more at makegoodtrouble.co.uk.

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Read time: 4 minutes

Emma Warren’s Up the Youth Club: Illuminating a Hidden History traces over 100 years of UK youth club history through the people who built them. It’s an important read for anyone who lives, works, or volunteers with young people – and it resonates deeply with what we do at Make (Good) Trouble.

Warren writes with warmth, love and humour (and sometimes with understandable anger) about the most valuable of spaces – the youth club. Her style is accessible and engaging, never academic or dry, even when the subject matter centres on funding cuts, closures or decades of undervaluing youth work.

Why this book is important to Make (Good) Trouble

At Make (Good) Trouble, our goal is to create safe spaces young people want to be in: delightful, joy-filled, rewarding spaces where they feel free to be themselves, to learn, or hang out, or play, or just be with other young people from their community, or with shared interests. Spaces where they have a trusted adult or two in their lives.

Up the Youth Club paints a picture of the passions and hard work of some of the remarkable people who have set up youth groups and clubs around the UK over the last 100 plus years. These clubs have given young people safe havens, inspiration, and – as Warren puts it – help finding their voice and their tribe. And that’s always been our goal.

“An era of measurement” – why youth club funding is always precarious

Youth work in the UK has never been a statutory service. Unlike education or healthcare, there’s no legal requirement for local authorities to fund it. Warren describes this as “the swinging pendulum of feast and famine.”

She also traces a shift that began under Thatcher’s government: an “era of measurement,” where authorities started demanding proof that youth clubs reduced crime, improved employability, or delivered other measurable outcomes.

Warren argues that, “much like parenting, youth club results emerge with a time lag.” In our own experience, no funding pot waits long enough for genuinely measurable results, more’s the pity. But the evidence across this entire book shows us just how valuable these spaces really are.

The make-do-and-mend history of grassroots youth clubs

Warren shares brilliant examples of clubs founded by people who saw a gap – who built the thing they themselves had needed but never had growing up. These clubs put young people at the heart of decision-making, creating spaces they genuinely wanted to be in.

There are delightful, often funny stories throughout of the (necessary) make-do-and-mend approach – or “collective, grassroots resourcefulness” – to finding spaces, volunteers, skills’ experts, and funding to get a club up and running – a pattern that repeats across generations and across the country. Warren describes laughing out loud at “so much teenage comedy” and that really struck a chord with me. I love her idea that “every youth club could generate a novel or standup show, ideally ones directed by the kids themselves.” Yes!

As Warren concludes:

“Youth is transient and no one is young for long enough to articulate all of this from within. But, luckily for us, enough people across the ages have left fragments behind them, like a youth club Hansel and Gretel: breadcrumbs of books, speeches, reports, drawings, photographs and films. Taken one at a time, they tell interesting individual stories. Together they form an irrefutable chorus. Youth clubs are socially and culturally powerful, even as their full effects are impossible to measure.”

A practical resource, not just a history

Beyond the history, the book ends with a genuinely useful set of suggestions aimed at:

  • Politicians and policy makers
  • Youth workers and youth club committees
  • Parents, carers, and responsible adults
  • School governors and senior leaders in education
  • Young people themselves

You know who you are. It’s worth reading the book for this section alone.

FAQ

What is “Up the Youth Club” about?

It’s a book by Emma Warren exploring the history of youth clubs in the UK over the past 100+ years, told through interviews with people who attended them, those who founded and ran them and people who’ve done extensive research into youth work. Plus it’s about the ongoing struggle to fund and value youth work.

Who is Emma Warren?

Emma Warren is a UK author and journalist known for writing about music, culture, and community. Up the Youth Club is her deep dive into the history and social importance of youth clubs. You can follow her on Instagram.

Why does youth club history matter today?

Because youth work remains non-statutory and chronically underfunded in the UK, understanding its history helps make the case for why these spaces are worth protecting and investing in – for young people’s wellbeing, community, and sense of belonging – particularly, as Warren notes, “in times of crises relating to the climate, politics and the economy.”

Where can I buy the book?

Up the Youth Club is available in paperback (now subtitled, ‘A Love Letter’) from your local independent bookshop or online from publishers Faber & Faber.

👋 Find out more about how Make (Good) Trouble creates safe, joyful spaces for young people: What we do.

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I’ve been following changes in the world of work over the last few years – partly because we run a business that employs and contracts young people, and partly because it’s like watching a fast-paced thriller play out. It’s fascinating. Global politics, AI, the rising cost of living and Gen Z’s evolving priorities (like more meaningful work, better work-life balance, positive company culture, supportive environments, training opportunities, and stability, say Youth Employment UK) have all contributed to a jobs market that’s constantly shifting.

It’s exciting but also overwhelming. For many young people, it’s hard enough just to find a way in, let alone work out where and how they might thrive in the long-term.

The latest Future of Jobs Report, 2025, from the World Economic Forum (WEF) gives us a clearer view of where things are heading. With insights from over 1,000 global employers, it highlights the challenges young people face. It also lays out the opportunities to be had. If we – and by ‘we’, I mean young people, employers, local authorities and governments – act now.

“On average, workers can expect that two-fifths (39%) of their existing skill sets will be transformed or become outdated over the 2025-2030 period.” Future of Jobs Report, 2025.

What should young people focus on?

The good news is that an estimated net 78 million new jobs will be created globally by 2030, according to the WEF report. But a lot of the roles we’re familiar with will either be transformed or vanish. This means that the focus needs to be on skills: what you can do, how you think, and your ability to keep adapting.

Here’s what young people should be working towards:

1. Tech skills – even the basics go a long way

You don’t have to become a coder (though if that’s your thing, go for it). But having digital confidence – like understanding AI, data, online tools, and cybersecurity – is becoming a must, no matter what field you’re in. These skills are at the heart of nearly every fast-growing job sector, according to WEF.

👉 Try this: Take a free online course in AI basics or data analytics. You don’t need to become an expert, just knowing the language will help you stand out.

2. Human skills – the ones tech can’t replace

These are increasingly important – in terms of job prospects as well as your wellbeing. As machines take on more of the routine work, your value comes from what they can’t do: critical thinking, creativity, empathy, adaptability – in our opinion, the interesting, fun stuff! Employers are increasingly looking for people who can think for themselves, work well with others, and handle change.

👉 Try this: Get involved in projects, part-time jobs, volunteering, or anything that builds your communication and problem-solving muscles. These experiences often teach you way more than formal study.

3. Green skills – for work that makes a difference

Jobs linked to climate action and sustainability – like renewable energy, environmental management, and electric vehicle tech – are booming. If you care about the planet (and over 80% of under 15s do), these roles offer a way to earn a living and make a real impact.

👉 Try this: Look into internships or modules in sustainability, even if it’s not your main focus. More industries are going green, and they’ll need people who get it.

The 3 biggest challenges young people face right now

1. Skills mismatches

Too many young people are coming out of education with skills that don’t match what employers need. At the same time, businesses are struggling to find people who are ready to hit the ground running.

This isn’t your fault. It’s a systemic issue. It means we urgently need to build better bridges between education, training, and work.

2. Automation and disappearing roles

Entry-level jobs that once helped young people get a foot in the door (like admin, data entry, retail) are being automated. That makes early career paths more fragile and competitive. 

3. Cost of living and career insecurity

Starting a career in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis is tough. When you’re juggling rent, bills, and perhaps student debt, it’s harder to take chances on training, internships, or lower-paid but valuable experience-building roles.

The 3 biggest opportunities to go for

1. Tech is hiring – and will be for a long time

There’s a global shortage of people with skills in AI, fintech, data, and cybersecurity, according to the WEF report. Even if you’re not a “tech person,” showing some fluency with digital tools can open doors.

2. Green jobs give you purpose and security

The transition to a greener economy will create thousands of jobs in the coming years and many of these are roles that didn’t even exist a decade ago. Take a look at some green careers.

3. Work is getting more flexible and global

Remote work, freelance platforms, and portfolio careers are giving young people new ways to build skills, make money, and create careers on their own terms, regardless of your location.

What employers and policymakers should be doing

If you’re an employer, educator, or policymaker reading this, here’s our key message: young people are motivated, capable, and ready to contribute but they need better systems around them.

Here’s how employers and policymakers can help:

  • Rethink education so it focuses on adaptability, digital confidence, creativity, and resilience – not just exam results.
  • Support mental health and wellbeing in the workplace. A caring environment isn’t a “nice to have” – it’s a must.
  • Invest in accessible training and paid entry-level opportunities. If a young person can’t afford to work for free, we all lose out on their talent. (You must pay interns if they’re classed as a worker, that’s the law, and just plain decency.)
  • Bridge the gap between education and work. That could be through real-world projects, mentorship, apprenticeships, and employer partnerships.

We also need to fund and champion lifelong learning – not just for young people, but for everyone. In our rapidly changing world, the ability to learn, unlearn and relearn is important – not just for work, but for life. And while that might sound exhausting, with the right support, it can be energising. It’s a chance to spark new ideas, unlock new careers, and reshape work for the better. And crucially, young people must be part of that transformation, not just as learners, but as co-creators of the future they’ll inherit.

What next?

The future of work is already here – and it’s changing fast. But young people aren’t scared of that. They’re used to change. What they do need is support, direction, and opportunity.

If you’re a young person starting out right now, here’s the best advice we can give: don’t chase job titles, build future-ready skills. Be curious. Stay flexible. Learn how to learn. That mindset is your best long-term asset.

And to the rest of us – employers, educators, governments – let’s not make young people fight their way in. Let’s build pathways, offer support, and co-create a future of work that works for everyone.

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PRESS RELEASE

Living Wage Employer logo

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 17 July 2025

MAKE (GOOD) TROUBLE C.I.C. CELEBRATES COMMITMENT TO REAL LIVING WAGE

Make (Good) Trouble C.I.C. has today accredited as a Living Wage Employer. Their Living Wage commitment will see everyone working at Make (Good) Trouble receive a minimum hourly wage of £12.60, higher than the government minimum for over 21s, which currently stands at £12.21 per hour.

Make (Good) Trouble is based in the South East, a region where over 12.9% of all jobs pay less than the real Living Wage – around 519,000 jobs. Despite this, Make (Good) Trouble has committed to pay the real Living Wage and provide a decent standard of living for all their workers.

The Living Wage Foundation’s real Living Wage remains the only UK wage rate independently 

calculated based on the cost of living, rising annually based on living costs. It gives employers 

the confidence they are paying a wage that meets everyday needs, not just the government minimum. Over 16,000 accredited employers have secured over £3.6 billion of pay rises for low paid workers since 2011 and made a profound difference to millions of lives around the UK.

Tayler Cresswell, Company Director, Make (Good) Trouble said: “As champions of young people, we’ve always believed in the importance of paying a real living wage. Everyone deserves to earn enough to live without constant struggle — and for young people especially, fair pay means the chance to be independent, secure, and truly valued. For us, accreditation is more than a badge, it’s a way to shine a light on the unfairness many young people face, and to encourage others, whether business owners or young workers, to see that fair pay should be the norm, not the exception.”

Katherine Chapman, Director, Living Wage Foundation said: “We’re delighted that Make (Good) Trouble has joined the movement of over 16,000 responsible employers across the UK who voluntarily commit to go further than the government minimum to make sure all their staff earn enough to live on.

“They join thousands of small businesses, as well as household names such as Burberry, Barclays, Everton Football Club and many more. These businesses recognise that paying the real Living Wage is the mark of a responsible employer and they, like Make (Good) Trouble, believe that everyone needs to be able to live with dignity and have a decent standard of living.”

ENDS

Media Contact

Tayler Cresswell tayler@makegoodtrouble.co.uk

NOTES TO EDITORS:

What is the real Living Wage?

The Living Wage Foundation’s real Living Wage remains the only UK wage rate independently calculated based on the cost of living, rising annually based on living costs. It gives employers the confidence they are paying a wage that meets everyday needs. The real Living Wage applies to all workers over 18 – in recognition that young people face the same living costs as everyone else. This year’s rates are £12.60 across the UK, and £13.85 in London. These figures are calculated annually by the Resolution Foundation and overseen by the Living Wage Commission, based on the best available evidence on living standards in the UK and in London. 

Over 16,000 accredited employers choose to pay the real Living Wage on a voluntary basis. The campaign for a real Living Wage has secured over £3.6bn of pay rises for low paid workers and made a profound difference to millions of lives around the UK since it began more than 20 years ago. It enjoys cross party support.

About the Living Wage Foundation

The Living Wage Foundation is the organisation at the heart of the independent movement of employers, people and communities who believe in work that works for everyone. Together we are driving up employment standards so that everyone has a decent standard of living now and in the future. Through our Living Wage, Living Hours and Living Pension accreditations, we champion and celebrate employers who make an ongoing commitment to do the right thing by their employees by providing the security and freedom they need to thrive. 

The Living Wage Foundation is part of Citizens UK; the UK’s biggest, most diverse and effective people powered alliance. Our accreditation schemes make change on the issues that matter. The Living Wage Foundation receives guidance and advice from the Living Wage Advisory Council. The Foundation is supported by our principal partners: Aviva; IKEA; Joseph Rowntree Foundation; KPMG; Linklaters; Nationwide; Nestle; Resolution Foundation; Oxfam; Trust for London; People’s Health Trust; and Queen Mary University of London.

What about the Government’s national living wage?  

In July 2015 the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that the UK Government would introduce a compulsory ‘national living wage’ (NLW). This new government rate was a new minimum wage for staff over 25 years old. It was introduced in April 2016 and the rate is £12.21 as of April 2025. From April 2024 it applies to everyone over 21 years old.  

The rate is different to the Living Wage rates calculated by the Living Wage Foundation. The government rate is based on median earnings, while the Living Wage Foundation rates remain the only ones calculated according to the cost of living in London and the UK. A full-time worker paid the £12.60 real Living Wage will receive £760.50 in additional wages annually compared to the current Government minimum. For a full-time worker in London this figure rises to £3,198.

For more about the difference and how we calculate our rates see our website.