Charlie Hyman: ‘believing In The Power Of Football’

Last week, Bloomsbury Football launched Everyone Gets A Shot, the London-based football charity’s first ever OOH campaign.

To find out more, and hear about the Bloomsbury Football journey so far, we caught up with its founder and CEO, Charlie Hyman.

Hi Charlie. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your career to date?

I’m the Founder and CEO of Bloomsbury Football, a charity in London using the power of football to support 5,000 young people a week. I founded Bloomsbury Football in 2018, after graduating from university.

CHARLIE HYMAN

I always played football and futsal growing up, and I love being on the pitch. I have experienced all the positive benefits of playing with my team – the way that I have learned to communicate with confidence, be resilient in harder time and stay mentally and physically well.

During undergraduate studies, I travelled to London every weekend to coach my team. Being a coach, I saw all the benefits football was having on my players, but also how inaccessible the sport was becoming. Along with two parents, I decided to do something about it – to create a team where all players were welcome.

I ran Bloomsbury Football’s first session on a pitch in Camden. Four players attended, and I have grown the charity from that first session to an organisation that engages 5,000 players a week, employing 50 full-time members of staff and 60 sessional coaches. I am very proud of Bloomsbury Football’s growth so far, and we have ambitious plans.

To those not familiar with Bloomsbury Football, can you tell us about the work you do?

Bloomsbury Football is a registered charity based in London that believes that every young person should have access to the benefits of football. We believe that football has the power to change lives and to support young people to become the happiest, healthiest versions of themselves.

We are on a mission to make football accessible, and remove the financial barriers to play through offering subsidised sessions. We will never charge a family more than they can afford, and we have never turned a child away from a session.

Bloomsbury Football is also open to all young people aged between 18 months to 18 years old. We have a wide range of programmes to ensure that there is something for everyone – from a programme for talented boys and girls to specialised sessions for young people living with disabilities and refugees and asylum seekers.

Finally, we believe in the power of football and know we’re having a real impact on the lives of young Londoners. All Bloomsbury Football sessions are built around a social and emotional learning curriculum to ensure that our players are progressing their life skills to help them perform on & off the pitch.

Bloomsbury Football has grown rapidly in recent times. What do you put that down to?

The reason Bloomsbury Football exists is because of the lack of accessible and affordable football provision in London. This is the people’s game, but too many young people are getting priced off the pitch in our city. By running high-quality sessions that all offer financial assistance, we’re overcoming this barrier and there is a real need for that.

I think our growth is also down to our belief in the power of football. Every member of our team is passionate about football and what it can do to change lives. We’re on a mission to make sure every young person can get on the pitch and experience the benefits of the sport, and this has driven us to be ambitious and scale quickly. The importance of hiring good people is key to this point – as Bloomsbury Football has grown, we have built a team of dedicated individuals who believe in our mission and go above and beyond to ensure that we reach as many young people as possible.

As a charity, we are grateful to have an amazing community of supporters who believe in our work and want to help us change the lives of young Londoners. Without these organisations and individuals, we couldn’t do what we do.

Looking back at the Bloomsbury Football journey so far, what moments stand out as highlights?

We’ve had so many amazing moments as an organisation, and we’re just getting started!

In the past few months alone, England captain Leah Williamson has visited a Girls Academy session, some of our players were mascots in the UEFA Champions League Final, we hosted an event at the House of Lords and launched a London-wide billboard campaign with JCDecaux.

All of these moments have been highlights for our community and for me personally. This is what Bloomsbury Football is all about – providing incredible experiences to our players using the power of football. Showing them that they can do anything, that they belong in this sport – on & off the pitch. You can see players growing in confidence when they get opportunities to meet their favourite players or be on a billboard, and it’s an amazing feeling. It inspires me to keep going and thinking bigger.

Despite progress, there is still work to do to ensure quality and equality in football coaching in London. Which areas are currently the priority for improvement?

We know that there are still so many young Londoners who are not getting a chance to play football due to a high price point. We want to overcome that – we are focusing on expanding our provision throughout London to ensure that our sessions are accessible to all. This is a key goal in our Five-Year Strategy, which maps out how we plan to be working with 20,000 young people by 2028.

With UEFA EURO 2024 kicking off next week, you’ve launched the charity’s first OOH campaign – Everyone Gets a Shot. Can you tell us about that?

Our first OOH campaign was an incredible opportunity for us to raise Bloomsbury Football’s brand awareness throughout London and start conversations about how young people access football in our city. We were lucky to work with JCDecaux and Havas Play to make this a reality.

Everyone Gets a Shot is all about how Bloomsbury Football is championing young Londoners – on & off the pitch. We believe that football has the power to change lives, and we believe that every young person should be able to access this. The visuals are very striking – we use images of over 50 of our players across a range of ages and programmes. It’s a real celebration of the diversity and power of the Bloomsbury Football community.

The campaign launched at the beginning of June across 133 billboards & bus shelters in London and it’s so exciting to know that Londoners all over the city are seeing our branding and hopefully being inspired by our mission. In a week, the campaign has already had 3 million impressions.

With UEFA EURO 2024, we want to ensure that young people are kept in the conversation this summer. As we see the Three Lions take to the pitch and inspire young people around the country, we are here to turn inspiration into action. When a young person in London feels inspired by Saka or Bellingham, we are here to offer them football sessions – regardless of their background or ability to play. We believe in every player’s potential, and we are proud to say that at Bloomsbury Football, everyone really does get a shot.

Zooming out and looking at the wider sport industry as a whole, what do you think are the key themes and trends heading into a huge summer of sport.

I think our billboard campaign is well placed in what will be key themes in this upcoming summer of sport – youth provision & accessibility.

Whilst we celebrate athletes at the top of their game, it is crucial that we reflect on what the talent pipelines are in various sports and ensure that budding athletes get the best chance of succeeding. If talent pipelines aren’t inclusive, then the sport won’t be at the highest levels. We need to ensure that we are giving young people the chance to get active & reap all the benefits social, mental & physical benefits of taking part in a sport. We need to ensure that this is always accessible, and that young people feel included in the conversation.

Looking ahead, where do you aim to take Bloomsbury Football? What are your big aims for the next few years?

At the end of last year, we launched our 2023 – 2028 Strategy, which was a huge moment.

This strategy lays out the roadmap for the next five years of Bloomsbury Football, which will take us from reaching 5,000 young people a week to 20,000 by 2028. As we grow our community, we want to reach gender parity, having our community consist of 50% boys and 50% girls by the end of the five years. We know this is an ambitious goal, and we’re going to give it our best shot.

Over the next few years, we also hope that our work will prove that sport is one of the most effective interventions to reduce crime, improve health, build stronger communities and improve life outcomes. We see the power that football has on the lives of our players each and every day – each coach at Bloomsbury Football has stories to tell about how they are seeing their players’ lives change for the better. It’s what motivates me to keep going – knowing that we are having a real impact, using the power of football.