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Dream Depot - safety, security, responsibility | Guest Editorship - Fiona Whelan Amsterdam
2010-10-13
Dream Depot - safety, security, responsibility
While researching for the project in North Amsterdam, I came across a television documentary from 1997 about young people living in the Flora village. A group of young people and the original founder of the youth centre ` the Dijk` talked about the plans for a new bigger and better youth centre that was going to be build in the 1999. In 2010 it is still not built. The young people know themselves what they want from a youth centre but it is not the same as what the local authorities want from a youth centre.
Link to the television documentary (in Dutch) <http://www.nederlandp.nl/omroep/tv-uitzending/beeld-van-de-buurt-floradorp>
Insurance, the safety of the young people as well as many other issues also need to be considered. Since 1997 `fire regulations` have become much stricter. The opening times of the youth centre and how many youth workers that must be present when the youth centre is open have also become more strictly regulated. In 1997 and up until quite recently the youth were allowed to drink beer inside the centre.
During discussions with the young people during the course of the project, it became clear that the young people would like a simple space out of the wet and the cold. They usually hang around in groups of 3 to 12, and they would not want to share this space with another group. The same applied for the groups in Kildare and in Vlaardingen. I ask myself, if the youth centre is closed at times when the youth are most likely to use it, or the regulations keep them away, are they any safer on the streets, than in an unsupervised inclosed shelter? Are they anymore or less likely to get drunk or stoned? Are the girls in more danger? Are these young people really not able to act responsibly if given responsibility?
Does this boil down to the personal responsibility, that individual social workers feel for these young people (at risk), or joint responsibility that a community and local authority feel if the youth are provided with an inclosed space? How does this compare with the responsibility that these individuals or parties feel if the youth are left to hang around on the street. Is the responsibility then, that of their parents?
This of course is one of the larger societal issues connected to (what in the Netherlands is called) social cohesion which nowadays is mostly associated with `security` and security on the streets.
We had of course concerns of our own relating to the project. One of the ideas that the young people proposed was to build a high platform that had a ladder leading up to it. The space underneath the platform could be used if the weather was wet. We did not want to take the risk that someone, maybe even a child, could climb up and fall off.
There was also talk of using a mobile home as a base to build a hangout. But we were not willing to take the risk that this could be a fire hazard for the young people if they light a fire inside in order to keep warm.
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