Every person who bought a copy of Everton, Howard’s Way will have helped to save lives in L4 after all the funds from the film were pumped into the building of The People’s Place.
Everton in the Community’s The People’s Place is the first purpose-built mental health and wellbeing hub attached to a Premier League football club and was officially opened this week by Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, who is also a lifelong Evertonian. Those being helped at the centre have another boyhood Blue to thank for turning the club’s charity’s vision into reality though in the shape of Phil Brown, the Scouser who has been chief executive officer of London-based Causeway Technologies since 1999.
Not only did Brown fund the film Everton, Howard’s Way – the 2019 documentary that charts the rise of the Blues’ most-successful team in the mid-1980s under the management of the club’s former midfielder Howard Kendall – he then used the proceeds to create The People’s Place back in his home city. Brown told the ECHO: “It’s incredible. I’m so proud of everybody who has made this thing happen because it’s been a big effort, not just from people who have been able to financially contribute but people like Carina (Duffy, Everton’s fundraising manager); Sue (Gregory, Everton in the Community’s chief executive officer); Lesley (Beattie, Everton in the Community’s former director of development) before; Richard Kenyon (Everton’s director of communications) and Mike (Salla, Everton in the Community’s deputy chief executive officer) of course.
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“The work that they do to make things like this become real is incredible. The fact that they are able to build this in the shadow of Goodison Park, it’s quite poignant isn’t it?
“When the club moves on from that stadium, the legacy of the team is going to be profound. There’s a lot of blue here but it’s open everybody who has those issues so I’m really proud that they’ve managed to achieve it and make it a reality.
“Mike (Salla) got a phone call in which he was told he had to get himself down to Salford to do an interview. I think he had about an hour’s notice but he got in his car and got straight across.
“I was driving in my car listening to BBC Radio 5 Live and Mike was talking about Everton in the Community and what they do. To be honest, while I knew we had a community project, I hadn’t realised just how impactful it was.
“They had a couple of people on who had contemplated suicide and Mike spoke about the concept of having a physical place that would be there for everybody in the community around L4 and how it would act as a springboard, not just for Everton in the Community but other charities. I listened and thought, ‘we need to try and help that’.
“Fast forward a few months later and we were releasing the film Howard’s Way and we said, ‘why don’t we give the proceeds of this film to this project?’
“For all the Evertonians who bought Howard’s Way or streamed it, to know that all the money from that ended up here in this legacy project, is incredible really. I think it’s fitting to the memory of Howard and it just feels right and felt so from the off.”
Causeways Technologies’ mental health ambassador Trevor Steven, one of the stars of Kendall’s great Everton side in the 1980s, who spoke to the ECHO back in September about how he is tackling construction site workers’ vulnerability to suicide, was also present at the opening and Brown explained about the role the former Blues midfielder now plays in the sector. He said: “We met Trevor through the making of the film. We supply software to construction businesses and one in four workers within the industry – three times the figure in other sectors – contemplate suicide.
“I hadn’t realised that either but I said to Trevor, ‘we need to do something about this, we need to leverage the power of the badge on the shirt to shine a light on the issue’. Construction is very much a male-based industry and even though lots more women are getting involved which is great, so is football.
“A lot of people who work on construction sites go and watch their team play on a Saturday. If their club have interventions to help someone who is in a dark place, perhaps they can catch on to that and maybe we’ll save at least one life and that makes a difference. I think this project will save many lives.
“Some of these people who are helped come back and one or two of them are actually working here full-time. So the whole thing goes full circle.
“We had a guy at Causeway who was a returning soldier with PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and was very close to suicide and long story short, he heard about Everton in the Community, came along, they intervened and turned his life around. Now he works here and he told his story to our employees and you could have heard a pin drop.
“We were trying to communicate to our team about the project we were supporting but when they heard him talk, it realty resonated with them. That sparked a real dialogue within our own company about mental health and Trevor started ‘Tea with Trevor’ where they’d sit down with him over a cup of tea and speak about their own challenges.
“It then became okay to speak in the workplace about such matters. It removed the stigma and made people realise that it’s okay not to be okay and that’s what this is doing.”
The People’s Place is situated on Spellow Lane – a mere Jordan Pickford punt from Goodison Park – but along with neighbouring projects, it is going to be part of Everton’s commitment to the area they’ve called home for over 130 years when they’re scheduled to move to their new 52,888 capacity stadium by the banks of the River Mersey in the 2024/25 season. Everton in the Community’s deputy CEO Salla told the ECHO: “We’ve got the Free School here, the People’s Hub, the Cruyff Court, the Blue Base and now the People’s Place which is our fifth capital project so this completes the current Everton in the Community campus. As well as a real focus on mental health, there is also an integration of mental health with physical health and how we can deliver a whole range of evidence-based activities to help improve mental health and wellbeing.
“The current campus will remain here. When the team move to the new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock we’ve got plans to have a significant involvement with the Goodison Park footprint as well which will see a huge expansion of Everton in the Community and ensure that legacy remains here and continues to provide support for the local community.”
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