News & Projects
Grown up?
Journeys to adulthood
We’re thrilled to announce that Hot Chocolate Trust has been selected as a delivery partner for the Ada Lovelace Institute’s research project, Grown Up?, which explores young people’s lived experiences of digital technology.
Together with our brilliant partners at Social Research, ReImagined (led by Victoria Jupp Kina, PhD), we’ll be co-designing and delivering a creative, peer-led, and relationship-based research process – grounded in 24 years of youth work practice here at Hot Chocolate Trust.
We kicked things off by asking some big questions: What is digital? What even counts as technology? And what does ‘digital life’ actually mean to young people today?
Through playful, hands-on ‘digital’ taster sessions, young people explored everything from old-school tech to cutting-edge gadgets – including retro video games, fruit DJing, and even becoming a human record player.
Spectrum memories and a casio watch
As a youth work organisation that has journeyed with young people through both pre- and post-digital times, we’re especially excited to explore how ‘digital natives’ understand life, connection, and identity in today’s digital age.
This work comes at a crucial time, as society grapples with the role of technology in shaping how young people relate to themselves, each other, and the world around them.
This means:
- Young people asking the questions
- Young people shaping the process
- Young people leading the conversations
- Young people making sense of what matters
We’re proud to be part of a project that values inclusive, qualitative research and places young people’s voices at the heart of the process. By centring youth voice and creativity throughout, we’re ensuring that the research reflects real experiences – not assumptions – about young people’s digital lives.
Gaming at Hot Chocolate
Follow along as the research unfolds → https://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/research/our-programmes/grown-up
Home Fae Home
Home Fae Home was an exciting and innovative capital project undertaken by Hot Chocolate Trust which ran between 2019-2023.
The mighty young people of Hot Chocolate, in collaboration with an incredible team of designers, psychologists and contractors, co-designed a range of new spaces within the existing building.
These spaces were deliberately designed to increase a sense of home, belonging and safety for young people. They help reduce stress, aid the recovery from adversity and trauma, and create new opportunities for young people to develop additional skills, confidence and experiences which will help them to thrive in life.
Building Boards (McIntosh, 2019)
Building Boards Installation (Lyle, 2019)
The impact
“I feel heard. And proud. They’ve actually listened to us. We’ve not done a whole project and then they’ve just gone and done their own thing anyway. They’ve put what we wanted into the drawing. It’s so open and flexible – that's taken some big brain hours to come up with!”
“This place works because it feels like a teenager’s bedroom. It’s exactly how we like it. We’ve picked the colours, we’ve got our photos all over the place. Things move around a lot, but the essence remains the same. You rearrange a bedroom god knows how many times as a teenager. And here you get to do that too.”
You can read more about the process and impact here, in the journal for Child and Adolescent Mental Health: Home Fae Home: A case study in co-designing trauma-informed community spaces with young people in Dundee, Scotland
If you’ve never seen inside the great Hot Chocolate Trust building, now’s your chance! Includes footage of the Home Fae Home beach huts.
Hear from the people, the process, and the power of youth work.
Hot Chocolate TV @hotchocolatetv808
Hot Chocolate TV (HCTV) is the official YouTube channel of Hot Chocolate Trust. The channel serves as a digital extension of the charity’s core mission: creating a safe, creative space for young people aged 12–21. It offers a window into their community work, spotlighting art, music, cooking, sports, and mental‑health programming—all designed to inspire and empower youth through informal drop-ins and one‑on‑one support.
For decades, the area outside the Steeple Church was a meeting place frequented by young people, often from difficult backgrounds or homes, who frequently felt they had nowhere else to go. A small group of churchgoers (now known as Hot Chocolate Trust) wanted to change this and provide a safe space where these individuals could meet, socialise with their peers, and give a sense of ‘home’, thereby offering a support group they may not have elsewhere.
Back in 2001, this small group of volunteers ventured out into the cold November weather to build relationships with these young people and provided Hot Chocolate drinks for them to warm up. The rest is history!
Today, their drop‑in sessions include sports, arts workshops, filmmaking, and opportunities for young people to shape the experiences themselves. Through its YouTube channel, HCTV reflects this vibrant energy and ongoing commitment to youth agency, inclusion, and holistic wellbeing, offering both documentation of past events and invitations to upcoming ones.
If you're interested in youth-led initiatives, community impact, or creative youth work, Hot Chocolate TV offers a warm digital doorway into a charity making real change in Dundee.
Also check out @unlockdigital9529
Highlighting digital projects created at Hot Chocolate Trust.
Artefact /ˈɑːtɪfakt/ noun
1 /// an object made by a human being, typically one of cultural or historical interest.
2 /// something observed in a scientific investigation or experiment that is not naturally present but occurs as a result of the preparative or investigative procedure.
3 /// In natural science and signal processing, an artifact or artefact is any error in the perception or representation of any information, introduced by the involved equipment or technique(s).
Drawing on diverse photography and print techniques, as well as found objects, writing, sound and games design, it draws connections between past, present and future.
Through playful creative and cultural archaeology, the Artefacts project emphasised unexpected discovery through process and medium, in both the art and the artists. The results can be seen in Slessor Gardens during May.
Taking place over 2020/21 during the corona virus pandemic and accompanying lockdowns, Artefacts also draws connections between a scattered community.
Limited and constantly changing capacities to physically connect transformed the project in terms of the forms of making, collaborating and exhibiting used. The end result is a selection of fractured glimpses, traces, fragments and memories that reflect back not only new imaginary worlds but the lived realities of the artists involved over what has been a very strange year indeed.
Key artists involved:
Amy Kemp
Caitlyn Mackenzie-Snow
Chantelle Patton
Ebony Hunter
Elise Boath
Erin Hardy
Hannah Cook
Holly McLaren
Jenny Low
Kieran Mowatt
Mikaela Aktag
Noah Downie
Ollie Brough
Quin Beattie
Rachael Lindsay
Reji Williams
Toni Greig
with help from the wider HC family
Special thanks to:
Biome Collective - biomecollective.com
Drew Cunningham - mrdrewphotography.co.uk
Dundee Contemporary Arts - dca.org.uk
Leyla Josephine - leylajosephine.co.uk
Su Shaw - shhe.bandcamp.com
Artefacts was made possible by funding from
The Ragdoll Foundation: - ragdollfoundation.org.uk
