Over the weekend of the 8th and 9th of April 2022, Esports Youth Club collaborated with the youth charity organisation Juvenis and the Met police engagement team based within Brixton to host an amazing weekend of gaming for young people in the area. We hosted the event in the incredible 3Space venue within International House, which is quickly becoming one of our favourite spaces to game and host events.
The event kicked off on Friday night with a FIFA 22 tournament hosted by ourselves and including officers from the local police team in Brixton. Before we kicked off, our EYC directors Lewis, Mark and Finan were able to give the young people a careers talk and presentation on what options are available to explore to turn your gaming hobby into a successful and rewarding career.
We had lots of young people involved in the competitive tournament which saw plenty of goals, a few upsets and loads of great funny moments. A couple of the players on the night were able to outclass the opposition and we want to congratulate the winners and everyone who took part for making the event so competitive right till the end. We hope the winner enjoyed his Nandos with his friends using the voucher that they deservedly won! Hopefully the other winners from the weekend are all still enjoying their prizes ranging from gaming headsets to copies of NBA2k22.
"Got together and met new people playing FIFA which was great."
The next day saw a productive day of solid gaming from 11am all the way through to 5pm. We did not expect our young people to turn up so promptly and stay for the duration of the whole session - so this was a welcome surprise for us. Throughout the day we played a range of games from Gran Turismo through to Crash Team Racing with a healthy dose of NBA2k22 and FIFA22 with more games inbetween. All of this was played by utilising our equipment and the additional PS5s and equipment brought along by the great people at Juvenis.
The additional PS5s we had at this event helped to elevate our setup to the next level. Speaking to the young people over the weekend, one of them had recently had their own console stolen. A couple of people hadn’t used a PS5 before so we were very happy to be able to give them this experience - we suspect a few of the gamers didn’t want to leave at the end of the weekend!
"The games were competitive and I was able to use the PS5 which I have not used before."
We squeezed in another FIFA22 tournament in the evening on Saturday which was another competitive, fast-paced affair and we saw some vast improvements from a couple of players who also attended on the Friday.
The positive feedback we received was the cherry on top of an excellent weekend. Judging from the lovely words from our young people and partners, we know you all had a great time and this makes it worth it for us. We hope to see some of you again for another event soon.
"The staff were brilliant, they engaged well with all the children who attended, be they very young 8-10 years old or older and around 15-17. They were attentive and supportive to each child's different requirements. The consoles and different games brought a common link for all the children which was great."
