A PARENT-LED MOVEMENT
The # IRL REVOLUTION is a parent-led movement to give every UK teenager somewhere to socialize in real life.
Lead by two parents and former colleagues, Cheryl & Paul (that’s us), who are deeply worried about the damage that a life lived online is doing to this generation of teenagers. Evidence of the link between smartphone uptake, the loss of socialising in real life, and a teenage mental health crisis is now overwhelming. Time and again, we hear fellow parents crying out for somewhere for their children to be that isn’t on screens in their bedrooms. All while staring out at a high street devoid of anywhere safe and welcoming for teenagers to go after a decade of cuts to government funding. And as we looked ahead to the teenaged years of our own children, all we could see was the bleak inevitability of an adolescence defined by loneliness and isolation.
So 18 months ago, we quit our jobs and decided to do something about it.
WHERE IT ALL BEGAN
In 2022 we hatched a radically simple plan. A plan to fill the void left by government funding cuts and a decimated high street, and give teenagers unlimited access to incredible venues where they could socialize together. A totally new, parent-funded model for youth clubs side-stepping the hand-to-mouth reliance on public funding in favour of a subscription fee that would allow a youth venue to make enough money not only to survive, but to create a genuinely compelling alternative to socialising on screens.
Epic spaces that teenagers would put their phones down for and come running to. Mass access to inspiring IRL spaces for young people.
We called it THE DEN. And our ambition was to put a DEN on every high street in the UK.
BLOCKED AT EVERY TURN
With fire in our belly and a target in our sights, we went out to investors and property owners to find the start-up money and the high-street sites we needed to make it happen. But everywhere we went, everyone we approached, the answer was always the same: ‘sorry, but we don’t believe that enough parents and teenagers really want something like this for us to be able to help you.’
We were gob-smacked. We’d spoken to hundreds of parents about THE DEN and the response had been overwhelmingly positive. Even more so from the desperate teenagers who rushed to tell us how much they hated their only alternatives to socialising online - hanging around dodgy and drizzly parks, wandering around shopping centres or huddling around a milkshake in McDonald’s.
stronger together
That’s when we realised we couldn’t do this alone. We needed to find a way to make the voices of the millions of parents who were crying out for somewhere for their teenagers to socialise in real life properly heard.
So we launched the # IRL REVOLUTION. A parent-led movement to convert empty high street properties into incredible youth membership venues, giving teenagers a compelling alternative to their screens and a desperately needed space to hang out face-to-face with friends.
A BIT ABOUT US
We’re Cheryl Calverley and Paul Billingsley. Long-term colleagues and firm friends, we’ve spent our lives to-date leading pretty mainstream businesses doing pretty mainstream things. Paul as Managing Director of an advertising agency best-known for creating the annual John Lewis Christmas ad, and Cheryl as CEO of an e-commerce mattress business best-known for championing the mental heath benefits of sleep.
We’re both social creatures who draw a lot of energy from being surrounded by brilliant young creative people. But we had started to experience a dramatic decline in the mental health and social confidence of the young people joining our businesses. Increasingly we saw our teams unhappy in conversation, intimidated by collaboration, and fearful of face-to-face debate.
We were also both parents of children on the cusp of teenagerdom, and it became abundantly clear that the issues we were witnessing in our young employees were sown in their teenage years: a generation that had been swallowed up by social media and starved of places to hang out in real life had been stripped of the social skills they need to develop into happy, resilient and socially functional adults.
We decided enough was enough. And, as two people who’ve never been scared to go out and make an impact on the world, we decided to do something about it. So we threw in our jobs. And the rest is history (in the making)…