Reading room

This report explores the contribution of social clubs to community life across the UK and considers their distinctive model of membership and governance, the challenges they face, and the lessons they offer for the future of shared civic spaces.

Play is essential to children’s physical, social, and cognitive development. But across much of the UK, safe outdoor play spaces are often difficult to access, too small, or poorly equipped.

Worpole and Burke trace the organisations and movements being formed during the growth years for socialist and trade union politics in Britain.

Informed by a series of roundtable conversations this report sets out the pressures clubs are facing, the support they need, and the case for a new Charter between the sector and government.

Drawing on their history and current practice, this report looks at how clubs have supported political participation, what has changed, and what role they could play in rebuilding democratic life today.

This report sets out the financial pressures clubs are facing, how they are adapting, and what is required from the government and others to support their future.

As part of a publishing series to start a new national conversation about the fate of Britain’s social clubs, we interviewed Ruth Cherrington, the author of 'Not Just Beer and Bingo!'.