Community is at the heart of youth competition

The owner of a new retro gaming store is aiming to foster school pupils’ community spirit with an innovative competition.

Gaming Squad opened in The Arcade, Newark, earlier this month, becoming the firm’s fifth store nationwide.

Owner Mr Luke Mitchell is keen for schools and their pupils to enter a challenge he has set up where the winning team members receive consoles from the store.

The Yorkshire-based entrepreneur, who founded the firm at the end of 2014, has already run competitions in his home county where groups of pupils were asked to devise an event that would help the community.

One winning group of ten-year-olds held a food drive before preparing and serving meals to groups of elderly people in a village hall.

Mr Mitchell, 29, wants to extend the idea to schools in the Newark, Sleaford and Grantham areas.

He said: “It is about teaching children the sense of community values. That was drummed into me when I was younger.

“Pretty much everything we do is about showing that children can be fantastic.

“Newark is a community-centred town and it would be nice if we could show that.

“The team in Yorkshire won because they didn’t just collect the food, but also brought people together so that they weren’t lonely.

'Children can use their imagination'

“Apart from the competition we would also like to work with schools, as consoles are not just about sitting down and playing games.

“A Nintendo Wii, for instance, is one of the most social consoles out there. You can plug it in to a monitor and run PE lessons from it. You can plug cyber bikes into it and get people active.

“We can strip old Ataris, de-solder the joints and pupils can see how it works, to look at the resistors, for instance.

“Some people might think gaming is just sitting in a room but I believe in everything in limitation. Children can use their imagination with these consoles.”

Mr Mitchell, who runs the firm with his wife, Catherine, will be at the store — which also sells retro toys — for the next six weeks until he moves on to the next new shop, in Southampton.

A manager will step in once he has finished in Newark.

“It’s nice that the store is a little bit different, as 95% of our games are retro,” said Mr Mitchell.

Schools or individual pupils can apply throughout the next four weeks, with the competition to be held over Christmas.

For more information contact enquiries@gaming-squad.co.uk