Another way to look at Youth

On a former racecourse next to the Thames near Hampton Court is a 1960’s housing estate. Being a flood plain they left a football-pitch width strip of land between the houses and the river and built head high brick walls around the gardens as flood protection. Naturally the grass attracts football and the walls make obvious goals, so obvious you assume anyone moving there would be prepared for the occasional evening of boisterous shouts and stray balls. Clearly not, one by one the owners have persuaded the council to plant bushes and build sloping earth piles on the public side to scupper games, even in front of garages walls where no home owners might be annoyed. The ‘No Ball Games’ signs look petulant and the message is clear, NYIMBY, No Yoof In My Back Yard. In boredom the youth congregate on mopeds in the Tesco mother-and-child parking bays tossing drinks cans and, as my son tells me, distributing certain chemicals to the passing community. Why are the needs of these young so poorly represented? Is our risk culture to blame, if so youth is fighting back.

Another way to look at this ridiculous state of affairs, repeated endlessly across the country, is the conflict of the British ‘me and my castle’ view of home ownership versus ‘we live in groups and are part of a community. It is impossible to argue that houses on an estate are not part of a community that should meet the needs of all its members, the young equally represented. But the local residents association target the home owners who voted them onto the council. Open spaces are safety valves for a community and safe experimentation spaces for the young, so by organising them as discrete ‘rooms’, sets of goals with nets that extend above the crossbar to capture stray balls, bike jumps, huge rope swings, secluded love seats where teenagers can go to learn affection would reduce the likelihood that problems focus in one place. Of course your mind has probably gone on to the safety aspects. Are you thinking ‘too dangerous’, we have to avoid the risk of injury, potential for litigation and any gathering likely to encourage drugs’? Wrong, drugs are everywhere, this doesn’t encourage them any more than Tesco’s car park does. This newly adopted US sensitisation to risk is the thinking that puts ‘this object may be hot’ on an electric kettle or ‘objects may be closer than you think’ on a rear view mirror; we laugh at them and wonder which moron is it aimed at? But if manufacturers absolve themselves of risk with inane labels then why not do the same around our open spaces with a standard notice saying ‘by passing through this gate you accept there could be risk’?

A few years ago my son took up downhill mountain biking. I may have jumped the odd lump but nothing prepared me for the speed, height, distance and overall violence of these races. They descend 300 feet in less than a minute, navigate rock strewn banked turns, clear 15 foot gaps in one jump, the youngest group is 12 and over. Most get down safely. Amidst this apparent anarchy I found myself asking who was in control because no adults were involved, anywhere. Those present were, like me, taxi drivers, oh and a one legged motorcyclist, but what message does he send? Yet when racing started it worked perfectly, policed by common sense and ten year olds politely announcing another rider was due and would I wait before crossing the track? Yet this odd reversal of authority held no irony. They had worked out how to make it work and got on with it.

Actually someone did get hurt. He broke his shin, was scooped up by a St John’s Ambulance driver who had spent the day chatting in the cafe and went on to achieve minor celebrity by posting pictures of his x-ray that afternoon to responses like ‘saw the fall man, it looked wicked, better luck next time’. This is not isolated, then same son took me to the Red Bull Empire of Dirt BMX event in Devon held on a private farm and organised by the energy of the farmer’s son. The Red Bull brand milked the atmosphere of controlled anarchy, self reliance and energy and needless to say there were very few obese youngsters there. It was well organised, well advertised with spectators bussed in from local bike shops and again the eldest there were taxi drivers and wannabees manning the merchandising stalls.

Youth has found ways to circumvent adult world restrictions by simply not involving them and not inviting them.  Adults assume it is regulated, controlled and safety checked but would be surprised. Yet it works. So maybe we should risk attributing responsibility to youth if we want them to act responsibly in return. And one of the first ways is to accept youth as part of society and tear down those NYIBY signs.