4Front began in 2012 as a spark - one 16-year-old girl’s grief turned into action.

When Temi Mwale lost her childhood friend, she was hurt and angry. Marvin was murdered one month before his eighteenth birthday. But for those he left behind - including Temi, his next door neighbour from Grahame Park Estate, there was no support. This was the catalyst. 

What started as a campaign for care became something much bigger: a youth-led, community-rooted organisation dedicated to healing harm, resisting criminalisation, and reimagining safety on our own terms.

Over the years, 4Front became a home. A platform. A movement.

A space where the young people most affected by violence, trauma and systemic injustice found belonging - and built power.

We created spaces where young people could unpack trauma, rebuild their identity, and find strength in their vulnerability.

These haven’t just been services - they’ve been lifelines.

Whether supporting someone through a mental health crisis, sitting beside them in hospital, or holding space after loss, our commitment has always been this:

care without judgment.

In moments where harm could have escalated, we reached out. We listened. We created pathways back to understanding.

This has always been love in action - rooted in the belief that relationships can heal.

Grahame Park Estate has been the heart of our work - a place where many of our team grew up. Where we laughed. Grieved. Learned.

It’s where relationships were nurtured, and where we built something new. But it was also marked by systemic neglect, over-policing and rapid gentrification.

Now renamed Heybourne Park, it’s undergoing full-scale demolition - erasing not just buildings, but the communities rooted in them.

Our work was a response to this violence - filling the gaps left by the state, and holding space for young people during profound, painful transformation.

In 2020, we launched Jahiem’s Justice Centre - transforming a disused chemist into the UK’s first Community Justice Centre.

We built it in honour of Jahiem Legister-Hall, a core 4Front member whose life was taken far too soon.

This Centre wasn’t just a building. It was a dream - a kitchen, a studio, a gathering space. It was warmth, food, music, and memory.

A place where young people were able to be. 

In a world that isolates, our Centre created a sense of connection.

Our community dinners were more than meals a they were acts of resistance. We practiced freedom and community care.

We showed up when it mattered most. Our members knew they weren’t alone — not in grief, not in fear, not in struggle.

We’ve walked beside young people through some of the hardest moments of their lives — navigating criminalisation, exclusion, grief and neglect.

We’ve stood in courtrooms, sat in police stations and hospital rooms, visited prisons, written letters, character references and songs. We listened. We responded in crisis.

We’ve held space for families navigating unimaginable loss.

Every time the system failed, we tried to be there - fully, fiercely, without condition. No one should face harm or injustice alone.

While Grahame Park was our home, 4Front’s power could never be contained to one postcode. Our work has travelled — through collaborations with community organisers, grassroots groups and youth collectives across the UK and beyond.

Together, we’ve shaped a vision for a world that centres healing over punishment, and people over systems.

From Sheffield to Chicago, from courtrooms to classrooms, from protests to poetry readings — our movement has always been grounded in connection.

We were never working in isolation. We were part of something bigger.

We centred political education, not as theory - but as survival. We created spaces to imagine new possibilities, to study systems, and to learn from each other. We’ve taught abolition. Held circles on transformative justice.

Our members have become educators, facilitators, mentors, and organisers. They learned not just for themselves — but for the movements they would go on to shape. They’ve not just shaped their own futures — they’ve shaped ours.

As we close this chapter, we stand in deep pride. 4Front was never just about fighting back. It was about making something beautiful in the ruins.

4Front has been a space where care met action. Where defiance met dignity. Where radical imagination took root and bloomed.

Our legacy is not just in what we’ve done — it’s in who we’ve been. In the people we’ve loved, supported, grown and fought beside. Our work has always been rooted in love, resistance, and the radical belief that healing and justice can be made possible — even in the harshest conditions.

This is what we leave behind. This is what we carry forward.