somewhere

The place I work is a Youth Service for young people 12-24yrs old, it is funded by the state government and belongs to a division of local government that also looks after other community services including, child care, adult care, disability services, town and regional libraries, local amenities, club houses and community/public arts.

The venue in which the Youth service runs from is located in the centre of town and is accessible by all local transport. It is open Tuesday to Friday after school hours and during the day on Saturday. The building is approx 30m by 40m and consists of 2 study/meeting rooms joining a thoroughfare that links the impressive Auditorium to the Drop -In space and Art room, Music room, and Kitchen. The building also hosts a large (the same space the building takes up) forecourt and has external garage access and side security exit doors and pathways. The centre has existed for 15 yrs and was previously an art gallery.

A brief description of some of the spaces within the space will follow but first I must be clear I do not intend to analyse the space in its totality and how it relates to the body, though it may come up, nor do I want to describe the space in its total meaningfulness and give it complexity, though that also may come to the surface. I choose precisely to compile these ramblings, thoughts and intelligent observations as fragments of a greater ensemble. Some fragments will endorse a youth worker's diary type prose and other posts hope to inflate discussion and add thought to interconnected Youth Sociologies, ethnographies, fieldwork and alignments between social work contexts and practices and sociological theory and the practice of writing about culture.

Spaces in the space:

Forecourt - this space is a paved area located at the front of the building. It is surrounded by a curving wall and has access to the street, the park adjacent to the building and the building. From the street directly in front of the centre a set of 12 stairs allows access down into the paved forecourt. 2 skateboard ramps and a purpose built skateboarding fun box are fixed toward the front of the paved forecourt, near to the stairs. In the middle of the forecourt a basketball ring and backboard hangs facing northeast. Directly in front of the stairs across the forecourt, past the basketball ring is the automatic double glass doors that give public access to the centre and are controlled from a switch in the office.

Drop –In Space - has an age restriction 12-18yrs in this room there is table games, 1 table tennis, 1 air hockey, 1 pool table, table soccer, 2 computers with Internet connection, 1 wall mounted and encased flat screen TV and Nintendo Wii console. Also in this room is a large dinning room table some scattered seats and 2 and 3 seater lounge suites. This space is also used as an exhibiting space for young peoples artwork. This space has access to the kitchen, art room, music room, and cleaner’s room and office space.

Auditorium - the right wing of the building this space has a capacity for approx 200 people. There is a stage and a backstage area with access to one of the office/meeting rooms and to the rear of the space there is a bar area used for functions. Generally lighting and sound desks occupy this space, (equipment for performances requiring amplification and lighting) at the back of the room there is access to the garage and kitchen space. The room is equipped with a high quality sound system and amplification accessories, microphones, leads, etc. and stage lighting. The stage stands one metre high and is approx 5m wide and 3m deep, to the left of the stage a platform connects the security access double doors and floor space (2 steps down or sweeping down the ramp toward the back of the space) with the stage area and backstage/green room space.

Art room – fits approx 40 people along the tables and benches used to make art on. A storage room overflowing with paints, brushes and kits made up of art materials for young people to use sits on the northern end of the long room behind a lockable door. There is a sink and taps to the left of the storage space and cupboards line the eastern wall from the storage room down to the southern end of the room where young people store drying art works and works in progress. The art room is used very regularly by young people in structured programs and for unstructured or drop –in activities. Particularly good use of this space comes specifically from the Youth Artist in Residence program. Yearly a few young people are given the chance to develop and hone their artistic skills by being given special access to the art space and it’s materials plus $1000 to spend on their art making in anyway they choose. This successful program connects the artists with other community arts programs in and outside the centre and allows for a peer-mentoring roll to develop if the artist wishes to collaborate with other young people. Most structured art programs and drop – in art activities involve the Artist in Residence at their will. There is much to say about these programs and initiatives, the role they play, who and what benefits, why it seems successful and who gets to make the decisions, etc. I hope to get back to them in future.

Music room - is a soundproof practice room fully equipped with a drum kit and 2 guitar and 1 bass amplifiers and a vocal PA for young bands to practice with. This room is approx 4m². On entry to the music room a storage space holds games, balls and sports equipment along with an impressive variety of musical instruments (e.g. guitars, drums, turn tables, keyboard and percussion instruments) and music spare parts. (e.g. drum skins, guitar strings, guitar pedals and electrical cords)

The centre has 1 coordinator and 1 administration support worker, along with a team of 2 full time Youth Development Workers, 1 Links to Learning Coordinator and 1 full time tutor and a team of 8 casual Youth Workers. Some of the casual workers also fill temporary or contracted positions in the centre and in other external venues the service supports. The centre is always staffed with at least 2 Youth Workers when open for young people.

Through the front doors and into the centre you first notice the glassed in office space. A few lounges sit in the lobby area along with a table of service paraphernalia, info on the wall, fact sheets, and health and lifestyle resources. There is also a coke machine, a water bubbler and a pay telephone in the lobby area and access to 2 meeting rooms (one to the left and one to the right) the main office door. The path extends through the middle of the building, as it leads around there are 2 access doors to the Auditorium (right) and three notice boards (left), another couch/lounge sits along one corner, and access to the Disabled, Young men’s and Young Women’s restroom/toilets. At the end of the hallway is another access point with double safety exit doors leading into the Drop- In space.

The centre is air-conditioned and the only natural light that shines inside is from the front doors or the skylight just inside the front doors, all the lighting is fluorescent/safety lighting. The building has back external exit doors that have restricted access causing the central hall/pathway to have a central bidirectional flow in and out through the front doors. Young people are not given access through any other doors unless supervised.

Doors opened at 3pm and a few young people wondered in and went about the usual way, on to the computers to check-in to facebook, some played games and others got a can of drink from the machine and waited for others to arrive while having a smoke. Smoking is very popular amongst youth that frequent the centre; many young people support each other’s habits and share their cigarettes when they have some and visa-versa.

Yesterday a few refined a can machine scam. Somehow (the way the coins are put in and buttons are held/pushed in relation to the coins dropping) the group manages to get 2 or even 3 cans of drink out of the coke machine for the cost of one. Shouting and chanting how awesome they were they carry away the cans and basking in their glory. And returning a.s.a.p to try again and share out the takings. This technique becomes a resource, one that takes on a similar motivation as paid labour and lives out as cultural capital, the few who own the scam are ensured to get a free can, simply by practicing the trick for other young people (using the ‘others’ money) and not sharing the specifics to how the trick works with ‘others’. The drink is important, essentially they want one, the trick gives value for money but also becomes a tool to utilize when finances are low, and importantly it becomes another way the group can distinguish themselves from the rest (by keeping their secret) and find a sense of fluidity and agency in their world.

The young people with the coke machine trick are regular users of the centre. Most days when the doors are open they can be found either waiting to come in, to jump online, log in to facebook or not too far away, up in the local shopping area or park adjacent to the centre. These guys do not seem to have much in the way of material possessions or access to much money. The group consists of both boys and girls from differing areas of the surrounding suburbs. At a first glance they seem like a very eclectic, even odd, group. The one thing about them that I have learnt is that they all challenge authority and have little to no respect for Police or any form of ‘justice’ worker, such as prison officers, court officials and juvenile justice or youth offender social workers. These guys hang around the streets most days and sit in the local shopping mall; they are loud, highly visual and young, making them an easy target of aggressive ‘move on’ strategies that condemn loitering. Added to this my observations of this group as distant from the rest of the community, a distance perpetuated into a ‘way of being’. Having been told time and time again to leave the shopping mall outside seating or being forced to manage their selves better, integrate, assimilate, and control their emotions – in a world that gives them little nourishment, support or acceptance.

I find myself at times at odds with my work, especially in a ‘who the cap fits’ mentality of service providing. I believe that all young people are conditioned, hardened and referential to their place in the world, and how that place has been managed in reference to the system as a whole and the micro-workings of the world in which they find themselves. The ones around them essentially fuck up all young people: there is no such thing as the right way, the natural or the lucky. We are all products of our social environments, though we can intervene, those who intervene and interpret our social conditions help us in the construction and comprehension of it’s shape. Because I have this view, all young people become not only a reflection of histories, both personal and shared, the context of their situation and the alignment of their needs with the equation of society as a whole, but a depiction of the mechanics of social order, and how it is produced and reproduced.

Youth worker – Ethnographer – observer, facilitator, interpreter, support worker, advocate, activist. Proactive Youth Work theoretically and in practice conceptually interconnects with the discipline and practices of ethnography. Assessing, connecting, voicing and observing to guide a subject, a thought, or a ‘serious’ whim – one of flexibility in interpretation yet backbone in support and structure. Encouraging automaticity, agency and detailed accounts of the discovered next to the yet to discover.

This project is an explorative effort fostering a link between Youth Work and Ethnography, thought and practice, agency and structure, sociological theory and action.