Study for youth centre sought

Press, 29 February 1984, Page 9

Study for youth centre sought

A central-Christchurch youth. centre proposal will be drawn up by the City Council’s community services division and the city’s Youth Council. A recent attempt to set up a youth entertainment centre in the city failed, partly because of problems in finding finance and a suitable building. Youth Council members yesterday told the council’s community services and health committee that a centre, which would include drop-in facilities, was needed. It would be a place where young people could get together and socialise informally. “We have been good at providing active recreation facilities,” said the committee’s chairman, Cr Rex Lester. “Perhaps we have forgotten the need for young people to get togther socially in a • less active way.” The idea of a youth centre needed support, he said. “I think we have got to do something fairly firm and fairly progressive.” Cr M. F. Fahey said it could be “one of the most important challenges” ever presented to the committee. A report on the variety of youth centres in other parts

of New Zealand was presented by the Community Adviser, Mr John Fry. Such a project needed adequate funding and good management from the start, he said. The funding lesson had been learned in youth entertainment centre planning. “There seems to have to be a commitment to a project of this sort before you can really get down to the nitty-gritty of buildings,” he said. Napier’s “pub with no beer” project had opened in November after about 10 years of community research, planning and fundraising. That project also received a substantial government community facilities grant. Youth Council members said they saw the City Council having a large responsibility for funding such a centre. Mr Fry said that a growing section of youth did not fit into traditional services provded for young people. Adult organisers of youth centres had generally seen them as a way to reduce delinquency and youth crime, reduce boredom and channel energies into more productive activities. The young themselves were more likely to see centres “as a place to go,

and a place to be,” said Mr Fry. Such a project needed a good fund raise, said Cr H. A. Clark, and a commitment that would not be backed away from “in the agonising times when people want to close it.” Mr Fry’s report said that conflict was “part and parcel of youth centres.” There would be conflicts over policy and standards, the sponsoring group, staff and users. There would also be conflicts between groups of young people “trying to establish whose centre it is.” Youth centres were likely to change frequently “as clientele, needs and social conditions change,” said Mr Fry’s report. Funding and premises had too often been withdrawn from such centres at the first sign of conflict. The most effective form of management for a youth centre would probably be a structure that allowed participation by adults and the youth users themselves. A youth centre would be geared to. persons between the ages of 14 and 20. Suburban youth centres had been suggested, said Mr Fry, but central city locations were “clearly the hub of social activity, and the meeting places for those currently in greatest need.”