Though these activities are usually supervised by staff, volunteers, paid youth leaders, participants are known as youth club members. Youth clubs were set up by adults in Crown Street, London, in the late 1870s to provide entertainment for young people. The first such club was founded by Robert Fairclough at St. Thomas’s Hall, Crisp Street, Lambeth. The first organisation running clubs specifically for young working class boys was the Young Men’s Christian Association, soon followed by the Boys’ Brigade. Foy, an informal gathering of boisterous youth, chiefly working boys, in a small London public house in the East End of the 1880s. During the 1970s and 1980s major nationwide youth club movements came under criticism. They were accused of failing to engage with the real issues of young people, of being more concerned with meeting a predetermined agenda from an external organisation, and of benefitting adults rather than young people. A large number of local operations such as The Fighting Arts Youth Project centered at the Rivington and later the Oval House Theatre in London and were in operation in the eighties and nineties. This was a time of strong criticism and re-design aimed at transforming established youth work practice. While holding onto the social processes developed by these groups the BAC shifted their focus in 1997 to making connections with children through an aftercare operation to 30,000 under-13s who had left primary education. The term 'youth worker' was abandoned in favour of 'connected worker'. The organisations working constituencies are groups of young people, their mentors, families and networks interacting in the moment. Organisations gradually learnt from and responded to their local networks. While each of these organisations worked in their own local community there has never been a national organisation. The BAC, along with organisations like the Streetwork Project, has organised parties, discos and video festivals, set up their own radio stations, media centres, fought racism and

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