BROADSTONE YOUTH CENTRE

Oh definitely a cultural oasis! Gone are the days of youth centres just being a place to play ping pong and pool with the occasional residential to experience the great outdoors. Broadstone Youth Centre is part of the Borough of Poole’s Youth Service which provides informal education to young people between 13 and 25. The centre is not only open three evenings a week and but also five days a week for the Learning Support Service. It is a creative and safe space for local young people to take an active part in a supportive environment as well as a wide range of activities. In an art context these includes using many media

• Traditional use of paint, clay etc.
• Digital imaging, music and film
• Music including ‘Band Bashes’ and Discos with young people as the performers
• Carpentry
• Dance

Many of the young people that the centre works with are facing the challenges and pressures of moving to Secondary School, others with the high expectations of GCSEs. Increasingly the i in ages that society sees of young people are aggressive and negative. We experience young people struggling to make sense of a world that they are born into and surely that is the root of art as part of humanity. As Kafka wrote: ‘The melting of the heart....the thawing of cells” in order to experience life in all its vibrancy. Too often the labels that we attach to young people (‘adolescent, nuisance youth’) are because we don’t understand how they are making sense of it all, are attempts at keeping the lid on the explosion of creative thinking that occurs. It’s uncomfortable, challenging and risky. The creative opportunities that the centre provides aim to give an outlet to these pressures in a non judgemental way.

The staff team at Broadstone Youth Centre look forward to tethering our camels, laying down by our cultural oasis and tasting from the cool fresh water of youth!

Colin Phillimore, Youth Worker

Archive Summer 2004 | next

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