Bristol Rovers Community Trust’s Chief Executive Officer, Adam Tutton, speaks to BRTV about his role at the club and the massive plans for 2025!
Adam, thank you for joining us today. Could you please introduce yourself, including your name and your job role?
"My name is Adam Tutton, and I am the Chief Executive Officer of Bristol Rovers Community Trust."
What does your job at Bristol Rovers Community Trust entail?
"As the Chief Executive, my role entails all the day-to-day dealings of the club's official charity. Bristol Rovers Community Trust is an independent charity. Obviously, it’s very, very tightly linked to the football club. We’ve been around for over 20 years now, and over the last few years, we’ve seen real growth in what we do.
"The charity itself deals with four key areas. We have what we call our four areas of impact, and those are in the areas of health, education, sport and inclusion. Within those four quarters, much like the Bristol Rovers badge, we do many, many projects, and my role as Chief Executive is to develop those projects, find the financing for those projects and strategically manage the day-to-day running of the club’s charity.
"In today's environment, it can be very difficult, and it’s very challenging. The charity sector is very, very challenging at the moment, but with the support of Gasheads, as we always have, we are continuing to grow."
Tell us a bit about your career and your experiences and how they’ve brought you to Bristol Rovers.
"I am a born and bred Bristolian. I spent most of my life here up until I was 18 when I moved up to London, and I undertook a business management degree up there. I enjoyed London when I was a bit younger. London is a great place to be. I went from job to job following my graduation from university.
"My first foray into the footballing world was a strange route as I became the Head Barman at London’s infamous celebrity haunt, the Groucho Club. I was a Barman there for several years. That was around the time of Cool Britannia and the young British artists, and a lot of those people were members of the club at the time.
"It was around then that I met up with the artist Damien Hirst, the actor Keith Allen and Alex James, who was the bass player in Blur. On a drunken evening, they decided that they would like to approach me and ask if I would like to set up a record company for them, which I did."
"We went on to release the multi-award-winning Vindaloo, which was the 1998 World Cup song. That was my first introduction to football. It was a strange way into football, but I worked with them for a few years, and I’m delighted. I’ve got a gold disk on my wall at home for that record, and we sold over 600,000 copies.
"Following that, I felt it was important for me to try and get a proper job. So, I diversified, and I went into teaching. I did some football coaching qualifications, and I qualified as a teacher. Then, I spent a couple of years in London teaching in some quite challenging parts of London. We were in Hackney for several years. Obviously, it gave me a grounding into some of the needs of the young people across England.
"I then returned to Bristol, where I continued to teach, and I qualified as a Head Teacher. Following qualifying as a Head Teacher, I was very, very lucky in that a role came up here at Bristol Rovers for the Head of Education. We’re going back to 2009 now and managed to get the job. At the time, I was working under Pete Aitken, who was the Community Manager. It was a great few years here. We really expanded the education program at Bristol Rovers.
"We initially started with six pupils on the project, and now I am delighted that since then, we’ve grown to over 70 full-time pupils in our education program. We’ve also got 20 pupils in a degree program. That was the route. Then in 2015, I took over the role of Chief Executive of the charity, where I was then responsible for all elements of the charity's growth. I’ve been at the club for 15 years. So, apart from Clare in the shop, I think both of us are two of the most longstanding members of the club. I’ve loved every day that I’ve been in this role. It’s helping people across the city of Bristol, and it’s with the team I love. I feel very blessed to be in my role."
Tell us a bit about what you and your team achieved throughout 2024.
"2024 was a great year for the charity. As I said earlier, it was a very challenging time of the year. The whole charity sector is up against it. People are struggling with the cost-of-living crisis. So, there have been challenges, but we’ve had some real successes. One of the key successes for us was that the women’s team finally reached the National League. As I am sure a lot of people will be aware, the rebirth of the Gas Girls was actually a community-led project started by us back in 2019.
"We’ve obviously seen great growth. We’ve seen a great development in women's football during that time, and with the support of the team of volunteers that we had, we finally achieved promotion to the National League.
"At that point, things became semi-professional. It moved away from the community, and I think my highlight of the year was that Hussain and Abdullatif offered to take over the running of the club, which was a real honour.
"It showed their commitment to the women's game, and everyone and the charity was delighted to be able to hand over the reins, and they’ve gone on to even bigger and better things since then. As well as that, we’ve seen our education program grow. We’ve now got and run out of the stadium, the Bristol Rovers Community College, which is a very, very successful program, where we run BTEC and degree programs. We’ve got over 70 full-time pupils on the BTEC and 20 pupils doing the degree.
"The key for success, we were looking and now that over 50 per cent of my full-time staff have come through our education program. So, it’s a fantastic route for young people in our city to learn a skillset and then get a full-time job out the back of it."
Finally, what do you and your team hope to achieve in 2025?
"We’ve got huge plans for 2025. I’m delighted to be able to announce that the Community Trust is in the process of taking over a 16-acre plot of land in north Bristol. What we hope to deliver there is a community facility for members of the community.
"It will be a 3G floodlit football pitch with seating, where we will be able to deliver our community projects. But also, we’ll have a community space where we will have classrooms for our education programs. We will have a gym where we can deliver our health programs, and we’ll also have community space where we can deliver a lot of our mental health work – so Talk Club and Rebound with Rovers. Also, we’re going to have the ability to put on our own events there.
"The plans for this will really change everything at Bristol Rovers Community Trust. We’re hoping at that point, that over the next year once we’re complete on the build, we should be able to engage with up to an extra 10,000 people a year. So, we’ve got really, really exciting times ahead. Obviously, finance and funding are always very key to these projects, but we’re very, very excited about what the future holds for the club's official charity."
