The Devas Club is celebrating its 140th Anniversary with a momentous event on Monday, 2nd September 2024, from 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM in the Grand Hall of Battersea Arts Centre. The event will feature a buffet, live entertainment, a raffle, and auctions.
The Devas Club for Young People is a youth club in Battersea that provides sporting, educational, and creative opportunities for young people in the local community, particularly those who are disadvantaged or at risk. The club aims to help them reach their full potential as responsible, talented individuals and active participants in the community. It offers a wide range of activities and programs, including the popular Devas Juniors After School Club. For just £1 per day, the club is open to all children aged 8-11, regardless of school or residence, during term times from 3:30 to 6:00 PM (with holiday clubs also available). It also organizes activities for older children aged 11 to 19 (up to 25 with a Special Educational Needs referral), including pool, table tennis, gym, music, and more.
Activities, offered either through the clubs or independently, include sports such as table tennis, football training, basketball (with a court on the roof), and cricket, as well as arts and crafts, music, general games, and PlayStation. The club also provides support for homework.
They also offer music lessons and workshops in its recording studio, Stormont Studios. Additionally, it has a gym, performance space, cooking and computer facilities, and various meeting and rehearsal rooms. Boxing practice is also available for free, although it is very popular and places are limited. The Devas Music Studio can also be hired for personal projects.
On the 2nd of September, the Club will celebrate its 140th Anniversary with a special evening organised in the Grand Hall of Battersea Art Centre.
The Gala event will include:
- Buffet: Attendees will enjoy a mouth-watering array of Caribbean-British fusion food.
- Live Entertainment: special guest George The Poet will be joined by Kat B, drama troops, musical choirs, and many more!!
- Tombola, Raffle, and Auction: prizes to be won all night long!
Tickets for the 140th Anniversary Celebration are priced at £80 per person and all proceeds will support the ongoing programs and activities at Devas Club. Attendees will have the opportunity to connect with fellow supporters, community members, and the young people who benefit from the club’s services.
In these challenging times for youth services, when we see funding cuts and increasing crime, violence and isolation, your support means more than ever to them.
The Club is a registered charity with the stated purpose of “providing a youth centre for the purpose of helping and educating young persons under the age of 25 years through their physical, mental and spiritual capacities that they may grow to full maturity as individuals and members of society and that their conditions of life may be improved.” As Devas has highlighted, it’s more important now than ever to support them. Since 2010/11, youth clubs and youth workers have been cut by 69 per cent. More than 4,500 youth work jobs have been lost and 750 youth centres closed.
Devas is one of London’s longest-running youth charities, founded in 1884 as the Devas Institute by Jocelyn Devas, a graduate of University College, Oxford. Jocelyn began by offering basic educational skills to the young men of the area in a small room above a coffee shop in New Road. Tragically, less than two years later, Jocelyn was killed in a climbing accident in Zermatt. His father enlisted the help of Jocelyn’s friends and funded an initiative to continue the work his son had started in Battersea. A few years later, the club moved to larger premises on Thessally Road in Nine Elms, which provided the necessary teaching facilities, as well as a gym and other games rooms. Following the construction of the New Covent Garden Markets in Nine Elms, the club relocated in 1970 to its current location in a new building on Stormont Road, closer to Clapham Junction, and was renamed Devas Club.
The Devas Club has maintained close links with University College in Oxford, as well as with the Devas family (one of them is still acting as a Trustee), over the years. It has also developed a close relationship over many years with Wandsworth Council, who provide full-time youth staff to support the club’s activities.
From time to time, Devas participates in collaborative projects with other organisations. In 2017, Fruition Properties, a team of property developers, gave young people from the Devas Club the opportunity to create a large street art piece representing ‘Diversity’ along one side of the hoarding at their development of nine townhouses on Stormont Road.
It should be noted that the current iconic building on Stormont Road, characteristic of the 1970s “brutalist architecture” style, is now somewhat dated and no longer fully suitable for a modern youth club. As a result, a proposal, supported by Wandsworth Council with a £500k grant, has been made to transform the building into a modern center for sports and creative arts for disadvantaged youth, while also providing enhanced facilities for the local community.
- You can buy your tickets on EventBrite or contact info@devasclub.org
