Youth group socials: 10 fresh ideas to fire up your gatherings

Nothing quite invigorates a youth group, or a programme, like a great social event. When they work well, socials are great for building relationships, breaking down cliques, and increasing a sense of belonging in any group. The trouble is, it can sometimes be hard to think of good ideas for what to actually do - especially if your group has fallen into a habit, or have a tradition, of always running social nights in the same way.

Of course you can just put on some music and break out plenty of free food, but we want to lift your sights just a little higher than that. Here are ten tried-and-tested ideas for social events that you could fire up your youth programme. Obviously we need to be aware of COVID-19 implications and other potential risks (always do a risk assessment!) but in principle, we think every entry on this list could be a winner for you this term.

1. Silent Disco

This one involves a fair amount of expense, but it's probably the event that has proved most popular with young people in my experience. You hire a number of headsets and transmitters from a dedicated company (e.g. www.thesilentdiscocompany.co.uk) and then run a party – in complete silence. It's pretty eerie when you walk into the room without a headset on to find a bunch of kids throwing shapes as if they've all gone mad. Best of all you can run several different radio channels at the same time – meaning you can cater for diverse musical tastes.

2. Junk crazy golf

This is an event in two parts, and requires a bit of prep (namely raiding a few recycling bins beforehand). The first part is classic junk-modelling. Your group splits into teams, and each team creates a crazy golf 'hole' using the junk and their imaginations. This works best if they have a decent amount of time to craft their creations – even adding paint and other decoration if they feel artistically inclined. Then in part two, they grab some putters (or unihoc sticks, or whatever you have lying around), and play their way around the new junk golf course you've all just created.

3. Scavenger Hunt

A bit of a youth work staple: you create a list of items – ranging from everyday to obscure – and then send the young people off in teams to find them against the clock. You could run this in your venue if you have a wider building such as a church to explore, but it probably works best on a larger canvas – like your local area. This can be really fun – if you have enough drivers and volunteer leaders to stay safe – in cars, but you can easily do this on foot too.

5. All-night hike

Most suited to the summer months, this is the entry on this list which requires the most preparation, but also carries potentially the largest reward. You need to find a route that will keep you away from major roads and any risk that you'll create too much noise, and you'll have to ensure you can find enough leaders foolish kind enough to want to join you on an all-nighter. But there's no denying the power and potential that a night hike has for growing group cohesion, creating great memories and offering plenty of opportunities for deep, real and meaningful conversations.

6. Cake decorating challenge

If your young people aren't ready for a full-scale bake-off, perhaps they'll take a nod from another popular TV food show – Netflix's Nailed It – and take part in a battle of icing? Get or bake some simple sponge cakes – you can either go for single large cakes, or a series of small plain cupcakes. Then either let them completely follow their imaginations, or instead attempt to recreate a specific object or even face in icing form. Here's what happened when my youth group attempted to make a cake portrait of yours truly: