Finding fun in a small town

Press, 23 April 1986, Page 15

Finding fun in a small town

ANDREW MACALISTER

By

in Rangiora

When you’re young and live in a smaller town like Rangiora, without the film theatres, hydroslides, and amusement parlours of Christchurch, what do you do with your spare time? The answer is — plenty, except it is mostly a case of organising it for yourself.

Like most provincial towns, Rangiora does not have the population or finances to support a lot of recreational facilities. So young people create their own fun. The abundance of beaches, rivers and reserves nearby certainly helps. The town also has plenty of sports clubs, and activities organised by students through their schools.

Rangiora High School has run successful dances inspired by the students’ initiative. A new skateboard area has been built at one of the local parks — with primary school children providing the ideas for the plan. They even attended the borough council’s planning hearing when the skateboard area was being considered. The Rangiora Recreation Centre is also largely supported by the local schools and youth groups who use it for a wide variety of activities. A borough councillor and chairperson of the Community Development committee, Devon Cooke, seems “tremendouss advantages” in living in a town like Rangiora, where problems of street kids and drug abuse are not as

prevalent as in cities. When people know each other, and the local children, it is a lot easier to keep an eye on “at risk" young people, she points out.

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These “at risk” people, the ones who are seen hanging around the main street on Friday nights, are th ones who have trouble finding things to occupy their time, according to local policeman,

Detective David Cartwright. “The majority of kids do a lot of good around the place — they are the ones you don’t see," he remarks. “Most of them are so busy in their spare time with sport and clubs they are fully occupied.” He sees the newlyopened recreation centre as a good example of a community facility which is left to the young people to make as much use of as possible. Although only a year old, the centre has proved popular for a lot of young people. It’s become not just a good place for sporting activities, but a “mutual mmeeting ground.” Devon Cartwright believes the recreation centre caters well for

sports-minded people, “but about the rest?” This is where the lack of alternative venues and facilities shows, and it is left to the young people to organise themselves. Youth groups, such as the one run by the local Anglian Church, which does not indulge in “biblebashing” but provides activities and programmes for the kids along Christian lines, fill a real needing.

Such is the demand for organised activities like this that up to 100 people often attend its Friday night gathering and trips into Christchurch.

Its organiser, Lindsay McKerrow, sees the demand arising from the lack of other things for less sports-minded young people to do, and also

because it acts as a meeting place.

“What we need is a place they can call their own, like Arnold’s in “Happy Days,” he says.

“A place they can identify with.” But apart from this, he agrees that towns like Rangiora are good places for young people to live in, and enjoy.

Perhaps the most telling thing about being brought up in a smaller town is the apparent lack of violence, graffitti, and aggression shown by young people, as compared to recent incidents in cities like Christchurch.

Surely the absence of this sort of activity shows relative happiness of the town’s young people.