In today’s blog community member and and volunteer Leo shares how the support he found at Railway Gardens has helped him start Knight Club, a family chess club.
In 2024 I started playing chess more regularly with my kids. I found it was really good for us all – we got to spend more time together, and the games had surprising benefits like helping us to improve our ability to focus, plan ahead, and deal with setbacks.
I was enjoying playing so much I thought about joining a chess club. I couldn’t find anything that seemed casual enough for my level and I found the idea of turning up to a more competitive one a bit intimidating. I wondered whether there were enough people like me – with a casual but committed interest in chess – to be able to form a club with an emphasis on having a fun and low pressure environment.
I knew that I could probably run the club from Railway Gardens because I was aware that they’ve encouraged and supported community groups to run from there in the past. However, I had no idea where to start. I had never done anything remotely similar, and struggled to get beyond just talking about it and never doing anything to make it happen.
I spoke to Green Squirrel about whether it sounded sensible. They suggested that a good start would be putting a post on some facebook groups to gauge interest in the idea. They helped me draft a short post which I shared on the Splott community group and the Cardiff-based chess group.
The comments were all positive but to my surprise nearly all of them said that their children would love to join if it were to go ahead.
I hadn’t considered this – I had assumed the club would be for adults. But the feedback was really pushing towards something for kids so I thought this was at least worth trying out. Plus it was a great opportunity for my kids to get to know others with a similar interest.
After the positive response on facebook Becca recommended I run a few pilot sessions at Railway Gardens to see whether anybody would book onto it. We agreed that a Sunday afternoon would make the most sense in terms of people’s availability.
At this point I realised I had to work out how to take bookings and start planning my first session! The Green Squirrel team walked me through setting up my event on tickettailor. It’s free and really easy to use. I used some stock photos of people playing chess to make it a bit more eye-catching. They also helped me write the blurb for the event on its box office page to ensure it contained information such as the site’s accessibility and the expectation that parents stay for the duration of the event. The club’s name came from thinking of chess puns for about a minute and picking the first one that made any sense: Knight Club. Green Squirrel gave me some pointers using Canva, a free online design tool, so I could design a flyer and a header for my ticket page.
I wondered about whether to charge for tickets to cover the cost of room hire, but because these were pilot sessions the room hire was free, so I was able to offer the tickets for free. I was really happy when the first order came through into my emails! In fact in the first couple of days of the advert going onto facebook I got six families signed up to attend the first pilot session. Green Squirrel also helped by advertising the event on their social accounts and to their newsletter subscribers. After a few weeks the event was sold out! I realised I had to get some more chess sets for people to use, and asked friends to look out for them if they were passing a charity shop.
I hadn’t opened up the Railway Gardens site and community room before on my own but I was given all the information I needed ahead of time and it was all straightforward. I was also able to find help from Alex – a regular volunteer at Railway Gardens – who had heard about the event on the volunteer’s WhatsApp group. I was quite nervous about how it would go. It really helped to make a rough plan of what the afternoon would look like, despite my instincts to let people self-organise for the afternoon. I am pleased that I gave the session some structure (e.g. an ice-breaker, a specific break time half way) as I think it reassured the attendees that the event was going to be time well spent.
The first Knight Club went as well as I could have hoped! Parents and kids were enjoying games throughout the afternoon, getting to know each other, and taking breaks outside to enjoy the sunshine. Another area where Green Squirrel had supported me was designing a simple feedback form. I handed these out at the end to ask about things like whether they’d enjoyed it and, if tickets weren’t free, how much they’d be willing to pay to attend.
The first few sessions were similarly well attended and so Railway Gardens put me down as a regular event on their calendar. I had assumed that I would now need to cover the cost of room hire and was concerned about whether starting to charge for the tickets would cause a drop in attendance. However Green Squirrel told me that I was able to use the room for free because:
a. .Knight Club benefits the community and is accessible to all families.
b. It was well attended
c. It met one of the needs the local community had identified – more things for parents and slightly older kids to do together!
This was a big relief, although I still needed to cover the cost of public liability insurance. Green Squirrel showed me what I needed to look for and I got a quote.
I wanted to ensure that people who couldn’t afford to pay for a chess club could still attend, so I decided to make tickets free by default, but with the option to add on a donation at a recommended price (based on the original feedback I collected during the pilot sessions), or the option to set a custom donation amount.
So far I’ve run 7 Knight Club sessions and 123 people have attended in total! Through asking for donations I have raised enough to cover the cost of insurance and drinks and biscuits for the children.
We have regulars and a steady stream of newcomers, and have even had a representative from the Welsh chess olympiad attend with his daughter. We have also had some nicer sets donated to us by Chess in Schools and Communities. I have had some lovely feedback from attendees, including that Knight Club gives their otherwise very shy child confidence in talking to others, and how nice it is for their kids to be away from screens for a couple of hours.
I think that running Knight Club has giving me a lot more confidence in my ability to run and plan event, and also to do more volunteering work. Before I did Knight Club I was nervous about my ability to organise something like this and I was worried about putting on something that would be described as a failure. Being encouraged to pilot something for free at Railway Gardens felt like a low risk and supportive way to test my idea. I’ve since gone on to start another chess club at my children’s school, and I’ve started volunteering with my local Cubs troop – I don’t think I would have done either of these things without this opportunity.
So if you’ve got an idea for making your community better I’d wholeheartedly recommend giving it a go!
If I were to give advice to someone else thinking of running an event at Railway Gardens I would say:
- Get a date in the diary to give you something to work towards – but give yourself enough time (at least two months I think!) to make sure you can plan without stress.
- Reach out for help to make it happen – don’t go it alone if that is going to be stressful.
- Think about what it would feel like for you to go somewhere and feel included – what is the journey of someone who has just found out about your event? What information do they need? How do you want them to feel when they first walk through the door? The little things, like good communication and a warm welcome make it easier for people to take part. I always work on the basis that someone leaving their house and taking part in my event is something I should feel grateful for and I want them to feel part of a community.
