The Mix was started in 2003 by a former youth pastor Rev. Jim Prestwood and his team at St Stephen’s Church. The Mix was envisaged as a place for the young people of Tonbridge to spend their Saturday evenings in a safe, fun and social environment to come and hang out, meet with friends and play games.

As youth culture has changed in the past decade, so has the Mix and it’s
content. Originally the Mix accommodated a skate hall equipped with ramps and other skate park equipment. As the demand for skating declined and the use of technology increased, the Mix committed to providing up to date games consoles and games that would otherwise be unreachable to its young members.

As time went on, the Mix also invested in equipment such as pool tables and table tennis as well as making one of its halls available for team sports such as football and basketball.

As a few years past, the Mix became over capacity for its current building hosting sometimes over 60 young people an evening. At this point, the Mix team decided to split the Mix into two separate events for school years 6-9 and years 10-13. The aim being to allow more people to enjoy the facilities.

More recently the Mix has gone back to a single evening for young people in school years 6-10.

As games consoles are now a common feature of many teenagers lives the Mix has moved back to its root’s as a place for the young people to socialise and get away from technology that surrounds them in their everyday lives.

In 2007 the Mix became part of the Blend Project and as a result got to take advantage of the Blend Cafe that was a renovation of the old skate hall. The Mix could now offer more in terms of its social experience to it’s members in the form of hot drinks and pannines. In 2012 the Blend Project received a grant to renovate it’s old games hall to have a new wooden floor to replace the carpet as well as repairing the ceiling, the old Basketball hoops and repainting the football posts onto the hall walls.

The Blend Project ended in 2016 but still the Mix continues to meet the needs of the young people of our town. Seeing a regular attendance of 50-65 young people every other week. We have continued to run the Cafe, updated our equipment and regularly host special events including our very popular end of year summer bash, Christmas party and Easter egg hunts. As well as these we provide regular food prep and craft activities for young people to engage with while allowing space them to develop relationships and the always present offer of a listening ear from one of our many trained volunteers.