By Katy Dawe | CEO
Over the course of 2025 we have been able to deepen our impact and further our efforts in securing greater sustainability. We are proud to be able to update on our highlights and the change we’ve been able to make for socially excluded young people across the borough of Barnet.
The impact of our community based delivery model.
“Art Against Knives is absolutely essential in providing much-needed creative outlets/long-term support...what makes their model unique is how deeply rooted it is in the community" Young Barnet Foundation
We’ve conducted a review of our delivery model with the entire team which captures the essential activity we need to deliver to maintain support for socially excluded young people aged 10-25 across the borough of Barnet. There are 3 elements to our delivery model;
We’re proud to report that we’re exceeding our targets already in 2025, with 182 young people receiving Direct Support from us in the first 7 months of the year (Jan 2025- July 2025) and our provision reaching approximately 100 young people per week. We’re in the middle of delivering an exciting and dynamic programme of summer activity that can be seen on our youth-led NEXT GEN website and comms channels. This will be continuing over the course of the next twelve months with new projects launching including; our new ‘Grind Szn’ workshops and 1:1 support a one-stop-shop for everything young people need in relation to education, employment and training. They can now meet with our team in person, or online - in a space and at a time that works for them. We’re set up to help with anything, whether they are struggling to keep up at school, finding a job, preparing for an interview, getting a business idea off the ground or need a portfolio for college.
Other delivery highlights include the on-going development of our youth employment framework. We continue to employ young people who have progressed through our projects in ‘Peer Leader’ roles, with 5 young people currently employed and supporting our delivery through direct support to young people through to consultation on wider strategy and organisational development. We have also introduced a new full time Trainee Youth Worker role, with one young person being employed in this for the past year. This has been a massive success, and we are proud to be able to extend this position for another year.
Our greatest learning continues to come from how we respond to the ever-evolving needs of young people and the significant risk of violence and harm they continue to face. Some of the recent prolific risks we’re seeing include; experiences of rape and sexual assault resulting in suicidal ideation and risk to sexual health, girls as young as 13 being stalked & harrassed by male peers of the same age, online grooming through dark web platforms, disclosures of historical parental abuse and parental sexual abuse. We’re proud to have an exceptional team in place who are in the best place as a result of their lived and professional experience to respond to this, including 3 Young People’s Violence advisors. We have also maintained our on-going training programme that has seen us deliver internal learning spaces on disability justice, anti-oppressive safeguarding practices and effective practices for supporting young men in relation to gender based violence.
The impact of our systems change work locally / nationally.
We have continued to deepen our impact and Young People’s influence externally, responding to contextual systemic movements and driving local systems change whilst increasing national visibility and sharing our learnings more widely.
We have conducted an analysis of our insights from Young People and Staff to understand where AAK should focus its energy to effect wider change. This year 80% of our systems change work will be ‘local’ ie. focused on the systems that directly affect young people we support in Barnet, with approx 20% of our work focusing on influencing national policy. In 2025 we have chosen to focus on the following themes:
Mental Health; including the completion of our peer-research project for the NHS which saw a team of young black men complete a set of findings as to how to address the barriers young black men face in accessing mental health services and their recommendations for systems change, and the development of our a brand new therapeutic support group for young black women and girls which will inform a blueprint for how other services and systems ie. schools can strengthen their ability to understand and respond to their unique needs.
Gender Based Violence. We have driven forward this area of work significantly, thanks to the creation of a ‘Gender Based Violence Lead’ which has increased our capacity to build relationships with membership, policy organisations and thought-leaders As a result we have co-designed a new strategy for take a community based approach to reducing Gender Based Violence which we are launching in September this year, and includes our plans for pioneering work with young men.
“I want to say a huge thank you for inviting us to your amazing space and for enabling us to engage with your inspiring and confident young people. We have taken so much from their feedback which will help to shape our strategy and action plan….we really look forward to thinking creatively about how to strengthen the partnership response across the borough with you as key partners within that” Karen Lingwood (Domestic Abuse Consultant - Barnet Family Services)
Change Exhibition. This year we opened a youth-led exhibition called ‘Change’ in which we invited young people from across our spaces to explore the reality of their daily lives through a mixed-media collection of work in which they candidly share their experiences, ambitions and ideas for change - and call on us to take urgent action. The work on show is a result of the breadth of their creative talents and a powerful example of what is possible when you put young people in the lead of designing change for themselves and their communities. We have continued to welcome in people from our networks with the ability to enact this change from local councilors, grant funders and key decision makers across the local authority and public health sectors.
Income Generation and Sustainability
Fundraising remains a key priority for us and we’ve had to remain more conscious than ever as to how we consolidate and cost save without impacting our community of young people. As a result of the challenging funding environment we have encountered additional challenges with an increase in unsuccessful applications with no feedback other than the fact that funders are oversubscribed. This is challenging for us as we can’t see the ways in which we can strengthen our applications and remain concerned about the lack of funding that is reaching the most vulnerable and socially excluded young people in the borough of Barnet. It feels challenging in that we’re being told we’re needed more than ever by the services and systems around us, yet it remains harder than ever to secure funding.
“AAK have become an essential VCS partner who pace set and share in the same core values of person led coproduction, education, rights and strength-based approaches that consistently engage, empower and support YP” Barnet Children and Families Services
This has also impacted our ability to think more strategically and ambitiously and the work we need to do to drive long-term change, and we’re having to be more conservative in how we respond to ensure we can sustain the core support for our community which remains our priority.
This has however sparked our commitment to developing alternative income streams and we have some exciting plans in place to drive forward our traded income via our online gallery, with a print sale event happening online and in person from our community gallery space later in August. We hope this will be an opportunity to test our trading model and to see if there is an appetite from the local community to support our work in this way - our learning from this will inform our future plans and how we allocate fundraising resources.
Thank you again for your incredible support.
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