It’s late afternoon at the pony club, and a girl on a piebald horse is trotting confidently around the sun-dappled arena, a helmet above her pink hijab. We are not in the home counties, surrounded by galloping countryside and leafy bridle paths but in a paddock fringed by high-rise council blocks, and the stables sit under a row of graffitied railway arches. Grey Thameslink trains trundle past overhead and in the distance there’s the intermittent wail of police sirens.

This is the Ebony Horse Club, where kids who would be as likely to go to the moon as learn to ride a pony get to do just that. One of the riders today is Marie, 13, who lives on the third floor of the tower block opposite and can see the stables from her window. “When I tell people I ride horses they say, ‘Where do you do that?’ And when I say ‘Brixton, right next to where I live,’ they’re amazed. Hardly anyone knows there’s a pony club here. People are surprised; it’s not what they’re expecting.”

But spend an afternoon at the club and you leave wondering why they don’t come as standard in every area of inner-city need. Take the story of Calvin Cassar, 18, the club’s poster boy. On his first visit here six years ago he was a troubled youngster, a pupil at a special school, battling all sorts of difficulties. “I was going through a hard time at home, pretty distant from my family, not getting on with my dad. I’ve got ADHD, dyslexia, autism, anger-management issues – you name it, really. I would get very frustrated at myself, and then at everyone else. I spent a lot of time on my own in my room; I had meltdowns, and I wasn’t an easy person to be around.”

‘The horses themselves have taught us a lot’: Omari and his younger brother O’Shane. Photograph: Hollie Fernando/Observer

His very first visit to the club brought a sense of something better, something worth striving for. “I’d never been on a horse and I remember getting on to Buddy and being really scared, but knowing I had to not seem scared. And somehow once I was there I felt relaxed: I had to concentrate on it, and I forgot about my learning difficulties and my ADHD. And also, I realised I could do it: I could ride a horse, I understood horses, and together we could achieve things.” Buddy was also, literally, a shoulder to cry on. “When things were really tough at home, I could come here and cuddle the horses,” he remembers. “It helped.”

When things were really tough at home, I could come here and cuddle the horses. It helped

Naomi Howgate’s early experience of riding was both similar and different to Calvin’s. She grew up in North Yorkshire, owned a pony, enjoyed the same bond as Calvin does with the animals. When she grew up she moved to London and got a nine-to-five corporate job; but then she heard about Ebony, and came here as a volunteer – and today she’s one of its instructors and managers. The horse industry might dispute it, she says, but equestrian stereotypes have proved stubborn: as well as the dearth of ethnic-minority riders, pony club membership is overwhelmingly female. At the Ebony Horse Club, as many boys ride as girls – and just like Calvin, all of them thrive. “In many ways, you find the children who are most up against it get the biggest benefits. You get kids who’ve struggled in school, who are being bullied or are self- harming, who are in care – or perhaps young carers themselves,” says Naomi. “Many of them have chaotic lives and they’ve become trapped in a narrative where their problems are central to everything – and when they’re here the focus isn’t on them, and that gives them such a break. They’re not being judged, and we’re not interested in their academic ability – all we see is how well they get on with the horses.”

And riding can upturn a child’s expectations of their abilities. “It’s a great leveller. You get A-graders who are confident, but whatever you think you know, things can be different when you’ve got half a ton of horse underneath you. People shine who haven’t shone before.”

‘This place totally changed my life’: Calvin believes Ebony has kept him out of every kind of trouble. Photograph: Hollie Fernando/Observer

Challenging behaviour isn’t unknown here but, says Naomi, it doesn’t tend to last for long. “For the young people who come here, riding quickly becomes something they want to do – so they don’t want to act up, they want to fit in. We hear from teachers about children who’ve started to behave in school because they don’t want to get a detention that will stop them from coming riding.”

It’s not just the children who have to fit in here – the horses have to be amenable to what’s required, too. “We can’t take any horse, it’s got to be a particular kind of horse,” Naomi explains. “Some like one person riding them the whole time, and they can’t have that here – we’ve got more than 100 children riding every week. And they’ve got to be able to cope with urban realities: they’ve got to not mind the sirens, and the trains – and if the air ambulance needs to land in Brixton, it comes to land right beside us, so that’s something else not all ponies could cope with.”

The club also offers opportunities for social mixing that work in both directions: a few days earlier, a group of 30 young Ebony members were off to spend a day at a Hampshire pony club. They spent the day with the club’s members, whose parents put on a barbecue for them; for many, says Naomi, it was a glimpse into a way of life they’d never seen before. “On the coach they were filming the fields from the coach windows – some of them had never seen the countryside before. One child said to me, ‘I didn’t know this world existed.’ And on the way home, some of them were saying they’d like to live in the countryside when they were older – it’s expanded their horizons, in one day out.”

‘I come here to be with friends. It’s become a huge part of my life – it’s just a big family here’: Maria with one of the horses she helps look after. Photograph: Hollie Fernando/Observer

Ebony’s roots go back 22 years, when its founder Ros Spearing, a local resident, started taking children pony riding. She’d learned to ride as an adult, and realised how good it would be for youngsters in the disadvantaged community around her to know the same excitement, and to have the same sense of triumph and pride in learning to do it. At that time, the land which is now the Ebony Horse Club was, according to Calvin, who used to play here as a child, “a rundown, druggy park” littered with used syringes. The children travelled to other London clubs for lessons and treks.

Seven years ago the land was reclaimed for the stables, with space for up to nine horses, an arena and a paddock; today, around 120 children ride here each week, most of them paying just £7 per lesson (the going rate in the vast majority of clubs is around £35-45 for a half-hour’s tuition). Running costs aren’t cheap – around £400,000 a year, most of it contributed by charities and trusts – but much of the work is done by volunteers, including the children who pay to ride here, and the club has a keen patron in the Duchess of Cornwall, who has visited with the Queen and, says Naomi, “takes a big interest in what we’re doing”.

The club’s outcomes, in terms of kids who’ve learned self-confidence and self-esteem, are immeasurable; Naomi says she cries most days when she realises the difference riding has made to some up-against-it youngster. Calvin has never looked back: “This place totally changed my life. I used to be always in trouble, I was no good at reading and things like that. But when you work with horses you don’t need to be good at reading: there’s the odd form to fill in, but that’s it. I discovered I had another big skill: I found I could ride horses, and bond with horses, and after that I realised I could bond with other people, too.” If it wasn’t for Ebony, he reckons he’d be drug-dealing, in a gang, maybe even in prison by now; instead, he’s just applied to join the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery, and his long-term dream is to run a centre for rescue horses. “Today I’ve got ambitions: I see myself as a talented and aspirational young man,” he says. “And I know that what I do matters, because I’m a role model for the children who are riding here, and I take that very seriously.”

For more information, visit ebonyhorseclub.org.uk. The photographs are from Hollie Fernando’s Ebony project