Michael Hoskins passed the grounds every day growing up and now he gets to work at the world’s most famous tennis tournament helping visitors get their Pimm’s or strawberries and cream
“Two years ago I was asked if I wanted to work at Wimbledon and I couldn’t believe it,” Michael Hoskins told MyLondon. “I said, ‘me, can I? You mean paid work?’ Some people doing interviews had decades of experience or had been studying law at university, so to get through felt incredible.”
Since 2024, Michael has spent the annual tennis tournament directing spectators around the grounds and helping them with their tickets from various information points on-site. Growing up in Wimbledon and Merton, he suffered multiple brain tumours which have left him with visual impairment.
But the 20-year-old didn’t let this stop him from seizing the chance to work at the world’s most famous tennis tournament. “A key question I get asked from tourists is, “Where can I get strawberries and cream? Or, where can I get Pimm’s?
“I just love the opportunity to meet people from all over the world. Nowhere on the planet can you meet so many different people in one place. I grew up passing Wimbledon every day on the way to school. I could see the buildings and I’d always look out for the tents going up before the tournament.”
Michael got his job through the ‘Work at Wimbledon’ scheme which seeks to remove barriers that have previously stopped young people across Merton and Wandsworth from working at the event. After launching the scheme in 2021 with just 16 workers, this year 207 people will be employed at the tournament through Work at Wimbledon – equivalent to 20 per cent of the entire workforce – when it begins on Monday, June 29.
“I’m able to see a lot around me but I can’t see signs or when there’s a really high contrast between objects,” Michael said. “This made the job quite demanding at times but I really enjoyed it.”
Despite taking a break from working at Wimbledon this year, Michael is hoping to return for many years to come in what he describes as “the dream first job”.
The employability scheme functions so that any young person who applies through it automatically gets an interview. Work at Wimbledon is typically eligible for any young people associated with charities, sports/youth clubs and other organisations who partner with the tournament across Merton and Wandsworth.
Janaiya Hanson, 19, from Battersea, was told about the scheme by her boxing youth club Carney’s Community. Last year she worked in the museum shop and will return again for the next fortnight for a role in the players’ dressing rooms.
“I didn’t grow up knowing much about Wimbledon, which is why I like this scheme so much,” she told MyLondon. “We’re often confined to our own bubble and how we grew up. None of my family were into tennis so I never knew just how important it was.”
A particular highlight of last year for Janaiya was getting to see Venus Williams up close when she suddenly walked into the museum shop, while she generally enjoyed the buzz and excitement of working at such a big event. She added: “After working last year I had a much bigger chance of being kept on again.
“This year when the players come in [to the dressing room] and take a shower or get ready I’ll need to make sure they have clean towels and their dressing table is tidy. I’ll also scan their passes and give them a cue card to enter them. It’s crazy to think I’ll be able to see some of the greats just before they walk out.”
Paige Murphy, who heads up the Wimbledon Foundation, said she never anticipated the scheme being this successful within five years, labelling it a “fantastic achievement”. Paige said: “We have a lot of jobs available during the Championships but we weren’t seeing a lot of local young people applying to those jobs.
“Our head of grants said to our HR team that we should start to work with our charities to offer a supported employment route, so everyone who applies through Work at Wimbledon is guaranteed an interview, and that’s how the scheme got rolling.
“We’ve really unlocked an opportunity that a lot of people in our community didn’t see as for them.” Paige said a main challenge that needed to be addressed were the invisible barriers that might stop young people in the nearby area from taking advantage of the opportunities.
“We get a lot of young people who have never worked and haven’t had an opportunity to take a first job, we also get a lot of young people who’ve had involvement in criminality, which is again a big barrier to accessing employment.
“We’ve had young people who don’t have that level of confidence or self belief, which is a key thing that gets underestimated as Wimbledon can be an intimidating place. We’re doing everything we can to help people feel comfortable and feel this space is accessible and welcoming.”
Former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, who is now the Minister of State for Skills, visited the All England Lawn Tennis Club on Wednesday, June 24 to see how similar projects could be useful across the rest of London and the United Kingdom.
Speaking to MyLondon, she said: “One of the things that this scheme does is give young people the opportunity to try out work, and to do it, because it’s Wimbledon, with really high standards that they’ve been talking to me about today.
“That gives people confidence and understanding about that work and gives them the name of Wimbledon on their CV for the future. Alan Milburn, in his review of why there are too many young people who aren’t earning or learning said one of the things that’s changed in the labour market is the ability for young people to be able to get that first job, that Saturday job, that work experience.
“So the more that we’re able to do and to support to enable young people to have those opportunities to know what work is, and in this case to break down some of the barriers that people might feel about a place like Wimbledon, it’s it’s really good and I’m enormously encouraged by the work of the Wimbledon Foundation.”
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