Media Cafe was established in 1998 as a creative response to supporting the needs and aspirations of young residents of the White City, College Park, Old Oak, Edward Woods and Shepherds Bush areas of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. The project was originally jointly funded by the education Department of the borough and with Single Regeneration Budget funds distributed through the then White City Partnership, since reorganized and relaunched as Regenasis.

The project originally delivered ICT and New Media training and employability services specifically for 16 to 24 year old residents of the target areas, although some support was also available to other local residents. Originally training was delivered at an introductory and basic level. Relatively quickly there developed a demand for both skills progression and for interventions to address the needs of other local people, such as unemployed local people between 24 and 35 who had pre-existing ICT skills seeking to train to a higher, more employable level in the areas of digital design and new media. Simultaneously, Media Cafe demonstrated that innovative use of outreach and collaborative multi-agency working was the most effective means to ensure that provision reached those whom it was meant to target.

Joint working with the Pupil Referral Service, HAFAD, the Probation Service and the Youth Service ensured that target users within these agencies were able to better access the project. In the case of HAFAD and the Pupil Referral Service, specific on-site provision meant that disabled people and pupils outside mainstream schooling, respectively, could be accessed from within the local diverse and socially excluded population.

In 1999 Media Cafe delivered the first Industrial Web Programme funded through the Urban Partnership Group's dissemination of European Social Funds. This innovative programme meant that local people could train to an employable level as web designers and was the basis for the range of high-end new Media training that the project now delivers. Very soon into delivery, this programme that sought to match formal training with the evolving vocational skills required by the sector proved useful in finding local people who faced a range of barriers to employment "fast track" access to employment and self-employment.

In 1999, Media Cafe and partner organisations also started examining ways in which the range of local initiatives could work more effectively together to optimise benefit to local provision. In addition to the development of the Hammersmith & Fulham Media and Cultural Industries Providers Consortium, this work has produced a number of specific projects, most notably the recent InSynch Project and the Community Grid for Learning.