Salford Lifestyle Centre is introducing a new community space and a gym for disabilities.
The Salford Lifestyle Centre provides a place where residents can gather to meet, work and socialize.
The centre is open to groups and organizations of all types, leading and supporting worthwhile initiatives that can make a difference to lives in Salford.
Nick Burke, Owner of Salford Lifestyle Centre says “when we started we were part funded by the church action against poverty and a couple of local housing associations.
“Our services are creating clubs such as lunch club, jobs club, or what we would call sanction busting clubs
“We would replace the jobs club with the sanction busting clubs and then sort them out with benefits so they’re not without money and then we could go on to help them continue, either onto education or employment.”
Nick explains the centre is introducing a new gym downstairs to open the facilities up for disabled people, “One of the problems of the building is there is no lift, so we want to set up a downstairs gym for the people that have access issues.”
The Lifestyle Centre also hosts sports such as wrestling, boxing and cage fighting.
Nick has also planned for the downstairs area to be changed into a community space for companies like The Lowry to utilise, “the problem with The Lowry is they need somewhere to rehearse as at the moment they’re rehearsing in storage units.
“We have currently got a deal in place, not just with The Lowry but other theater companies that can come here and rehearse but before the show premieres, but there will be a secret show for us which means we can either sell tickets or give tickets away to people in the community that may never get to experience going to the theater.”
See the full interview with Nick Burke below:
Nick Burke was determined to help others after walking out of Strangeways Prison in Manchester five years ago, and vowed to never return.
Post-release, he met Dave Frasier, a big figure in the local community.
Dave took Nick under his wing and got him involved in the Community Organisers programme run by Locality.
They gradually set up a cooperative of local people who organised food banks, soup kitchens, lunch clubs and job clubs, helping people whose families have been unemployed for generations.
Last year, they moved into a disused council building in the Broughton area, the building is now home to the Salford Lifestyle Centre.
The center is ran by Nick and 400 volunteers of the local cooperative.
As well as the gym, it has five-a-side football pitches, a community cafe, art clubs, a theater for wrestling and boxing shows and even a podcast studio – something for everyone!
Nick is also founder and editor of ‘Inside Workout Magazine’, a free fitness and well being publication distributed in prisons nationwide.
It’s a separate venture, but there’s often crossover between the two enterprises.
Inside Workout Magazine was started while Nick was still serving his sentence in which was carried on outside of prison.
The magazine focuses on subjects from cell workout exercises to accessing personal training qualifications, realistic nutrition advice and mental health topics including ways to deal with grief.
Nick explains “Whilst I was in prison I noticed a lot of people enjoyed going to the gym, for example a group of lads who enjoys the gym will learn to co-operate together as if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be allowed into the gym.
“A lot of people go to the gym in prison and they’ll do courses so they can actually use the gym, they don’t actually understand the quality of what the course actually is.”
He added: “when they come to us, we re-train them in what they’ve already learned but show them how its adaptable to actually get a job or become a personal trainer or self employed.”
For more information about the centre visit the website.
Salford Lifestyle Centre is located on Camp Street, M7 1ZT.
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