Silx Teen Bar

About Us

ABOUT US

Silx Youth Project has been in Blyth for 26 years and offers free activities and support for young people aged 11-25 across three main projects: Teen Bar, Employability Project and The Detached Street Engagement Project.

Silx Teen Bar is a multi award winning project and for four nights a week offers young people aged 11-19 a range of free recreational, educational and fun activities. We provide a safe, welcoming and friendly environment where young people can meet their friends and enjoy the activities on offer, staffed by a team of qualified youth workers. We are open Monday-Thursday from 5pm-7:45pm and the young people are able to take part in a whole host of fun and issued based activities including pool, arts and crafts, healthy cooking, team games, PS5, Jewellery making, nail art, make up sessions, workshops centred around relationships, drugs, alcohol and lots more. The youth workers are available to give advice, support and guidance around any personal issues that may arise.

Aswell as our weekly programme the organisation also encourage young people to take part in social action projects that not only benefit themselves but the wider community, past projects have included Blyth Town Carnivals, Litter picks, donations and collections for local food banks.

We also like to give young people new experiences and put on at least one out of area trip every month throughout the year and during the summer holidays we plan at least one trip or residential each week. We always endeavour to make the trips FREE or cost very little to the young people.

Silx Employability Project has been going for 15 years and offers a range of support for young people aged 16-25 who are not in employment, education or training. We work closely with external providers to get young people the correct support they require to make them work ready and able to progress in life. Our drop in is open every Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 12-2:45pm and is staffed by qualified youth workers who can offer support not just around work but also benefits, housing, debt, budgeting and any other personal issues that may be a barrier to progression.

We provide free access to laptops, internet and printing facilities. Our workers will support young people with creating and updating a CV, doing a job search, completing job application forms, interview preparation, budgeting skills and applying for benefits. The team work closely with each individual and our partners to find the right training and opportunities to help them to progress.

We offer in house CSCS training in partnership with Central Training which is very popular, young people that complete this gain an IOSH safety, health and environment for construction workers qualification, CSCS test and CSCS card. As well as CSCS training we also offer a whole host of FREE online courses in a range of subject areas.

We also run a volunteering/work experience programme that matches young people to a work placement that gives them the hands on experience they may lack to add to their CV which in turn could lead to more employment opportunities. As well as this we also offer a whole range of FREE recreational activities which allow the young people to build on their confidence and self esteem whilst looking for employment, past opportunities have included Gym sessions, Team building away days, rock climbing and ice skating.

Silx Detached Project As well as our centre based provision we also carry out detached youth work 5 evenings a week. Our workers have built up great relationships with young people who choose not to access centre based provision and work closely with the police and the local community to keep young people safe and reduce anti social behaviour in the town.

(Updated February, 2024)

Registered Charity: 1118360

Silx Youth Project takes your privacy very seriously, you can access our data privacy notice here: https://www.silxteen.com/download/silx-data-privacy-notice/

LET’S PLAY A GAME OF NUMBERS!

Numerical visualisation of what we've done

Silx Teen Bar is proud to be the largest youth provider in Northumberland with innovative and new projects and activities that endeavour to meet the needs of the young people of Blyth. Our provision consists of an evening youth club project and a very successful day time employability project working with young people aged 16-25. We also deliver weekly sessions on the streets of Blyth, making contact with young people that use the streets as a means of recreation.

Below is a summary of some of our figures for the year so far (May 2022-April 2023)

RECENT BLOG ENTRIES

What spins our world

Employment

CSCS Course Success for Employability Project

October 17, 2022 By silxadmin

In October 2021, we hosted our first CSCS course at Silx with the support of Central Training. Since then the project has gone from strength to strength. CSCS cards are needed to allow people access to a construction site and although historically some people were able to work without them, now this is not the […]

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People

Silx Summer of Fun

September 17, 2021 By silxadmin

Its hard to believe that summer has been and gone and that the young people have all returned to school. We know how difficult the past 18 months had been on our young people and we wanted them to have a fantastic summer with us once restrictions were eased so we organised a fun packed […]

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CHARITY

We are Back!

April 26, 2021 By silxadmin

LATEST COVID-19 UPDATE In March 2020 we had to close the doors to the project for the first time in its history. The building has remained closed since however we have still been working and supporting young people in Blyth. We have held Zoom calls daily and offered support virtually, we have been able to […]

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People

Latest Update from Silx

February 3, 2021 By silxadmin

We can’t quite believe that we are in February already and that the pandemic has been going on for almost a year. As you all know we are in another national lockdown and we just wanted to clarify what that means for Silx and let you know what we are currently offering. TEEN BAR The […]

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People

Tier Two Rules and what it means for you & Silx

October 21, 2020 By silxadmin

The North East is currently on COVID level high which does mean there are a number of things we can and cannot do and we thought with half term looming it would be a good idea to clarify what the rules mean for you, our young people when it comes to socialising. Meeting up with […]

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OUTDOOR

Stationary Gifts for Back to School…..

September 7, 2020 By silxadmin

Last week saw the majority of our young people getting back to a sense of normality by returning to School, this was a big step after being out of school for the best part of 6 months. So, we decided we wanted to give something to our young people to make going back to school […]

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