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Luke Newman on reforming wellbeing

By Luke Newman

CEO, Testlands

Motivated by his own childhood experiences growing up in Southampton, Luke Newman is dedicated to creating opportunities for the city’s young people.

As co-founder of education and wellbeing provider Testlands, Luke, alongside fellow co-founder Joe Crook, has taken the organisation on a remarkable 12-year journey.

Luke and Joe are now preparing Testlands for a new charitable chapter whilst pursuing new business avenues enabling them to continue as trustees of the charity working towards the reformation of wellbeing, education, community and leisure in the city.

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You’re extremely passionate about providing opportunities for young people, what are your personal motivations behind this?

I was born in Southampton; I always went to what would typically be known as failing schools and I didn’t really get huge opportunities. My parents didn’t have lots of money but they were always supportive of my passion for sport and helping others.

I lost my dad when I was in year 11 from a brain haemorrhage whilst we were at football. It was very sudden and such a shock. It gave me a different perspective on life as a 15-year-old and I grew up very quickly. I became focused on what I wanted my career to be and gained experience in that field.

I started to volunteer and do coaching at football clubs and then did some work experience in the PE department at my school. I realised that primary school PE was actually quite poor. I wanted to improve the quality and in my second year of college, we set Testlands up as a coaching company.

"We’re dedicated to making a difference in creating opportunities for children and young people, and more broadly improving the wellbeing of everyone."

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How has Testlands evolved since you founded it?

We started Testlands as a coaching company and we quickly realised we were working with a lot of young people who required additional support so we set up a charity to raise funds for the children we work with to run alongside the multi-sports coaching.

In 2015 we created our Testlands Hub — a wellbeing hub in a community building. It started to shape what Testlands was about: enabling the education, community and leisure sectors to work together rather than in silos.

We’re dedicated to making a difference in creating opportunities for children and young people, and more broadly improving the wellbeing of everyone. We realised that we couldn’t continue to run as both a charity and a company so have merged the two to create one charitable incorporated organisation (CIO). Alongside that Joe and I have been investing in new businesses so that we can continue to support the important work of Testlands as trustees.

What are the biggest opportunities and challenges in supporting young people in Southampton?

Southampton statistics and data around things like antisocial behaviour, violent crime and children in care tell a story we do not want to read. The public sector model has faced challenges of restructures and underfunding; this has caused services to be cut and opportunities for children and young people to be significantly reduced. However, right now, we do have so many opportunities to bring it all together.

For the past 18 months, I’ve been working on creating a city-wide wellbeing approach. It’s a project which covers three strands: giving every Southampton resident access to an online platform of resources around wellbeing, a booking system for those wellbeing services, and business support around job quality and wellbeing for employees.

The idea is that this approach is the backbone to our tangible hubs that have daytime educational and community use, and in the evenings can be used as youth clubs and provide leisure access.

"The public sector model has faced challenges of restructures and underfunding; this has caused services to be cut and opportunities for children and young people to be significantly reduced. However, right now, we do have so many opportunities to bring it all together."

Luke Newman - CEO, Testlands

What are you most hopeful about right now?

I genuinely believe that we could have a city of opportunity. I believe there’s work to do to get to those opportunities, and I don’t think they exist yet, but I do think we have the resources and the people to be able to create those opportunities.

I think that when people start to be given those opportunities, it will pick up traction, and people will start to get on board and believe that you can make a difference to yourself and Southampton, you can be successful in Southampton. It’s the scope of what we can create in terms of opportunities that I find exciting.

Much of what you do is about inspiring young people. Who inspired you at a young age?

My secondary school PE teacher was my real inspiration. When my dad passed away, he supported me a lot, he encouraged me to set up Testlands and he encouraged me to be a PE teacher.

A lot of my inspiration comes from my own experience of going through school. I don’t want that same experience for my children and the children we currently work with. That’s a huge driving force of why we do what we do: I don’t want the same Southampton that I grew up in.

What do you enjoy doing when you’re not working?

I have two little boys and my wife Jade is a Pilates instructor, so we run a Pilates business too.

Much of my time is taken by work but I try to be family-focused on the weekends. I try to play football and I do like to get out and play golf as well. I enjoy playing sport when I can as well as spending time with the family.

Luke Newman