A new gym in De Beauvoir has announced plans to reinvest 100% of its profits into free classes for local young people living below the poverty line to help improve their health and wellbeing.
Pattern Gym aims to help bring the community of Hackney together by providing classes for young people, while giving trauma support for those in economically disadvantaged households.
All the money from the gym’s day passes and memberships goes back into free classes for young people to allow them access to fitness lessons.
The initiative comes amid ongoing concerns about the rise of the cost of living in the Hackney area. In 2025, 64.1% of children in the district were living within an income-deprived household according to a study by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, the second-highest poverty rate in London.
Hannah Lustig, one of the founders of Pattern Gym, advocates for making facilities like these more accessible for low-income households: “When young people are at risk in their communities, It’s the context that they are in that needs addressing rather than them as individuals.”
After speaking with young people who engaged in the project, Lustig spoke of the low-pressure environment at the sports center: “This was something they wanted, it made them feel good and they could come to it as they were. They could come to us about the issues that they are facing, or they cannot, and just work out and feel good.”
This initiative is led by former youth workers and social workers of the Hackney community, with some of their directors having grown up in the area themselves and other staff members living locally for over 20 years.
“One of the young people that was involved in the first version of the project completely turned his life around, qualified as a personal trainer, got a job at the gym, and he’s now one of the directors at our company.”
