For this project, I have spent some time with the Synergy Youth Council which is part of the Synergy Centre (Community Arts Centre). They organise activities for a group of young people who live in South London and are all at the same school : St Micheal and All Angels.
The workshop sessions have been put together to help the youth in becoming, in the long term, active members of the community through team building exercices, management and achievement of their own ideas and projects. Although the group is guided by youth workers, these young people are the ones to lead the topics and activities in the group.
At this time, their number is 6 but with the interest coming from the youth themselves and word of mouth, they are sure it will only grow and welcome others. In the sessions, they talk about life, issues around their area and projects close to their heart.
The Synergy Youth Council members are Clifton, Derek and his brother Daryl, Mahmoud, Josh and Alusine and of course Joseph.
Joseph Duncan is a London lad. He is undertaking an MA in Human Rights and has been part of the youth council for the last year or so. He is inspired by the strength and courage of the youth involved in the project, as he says, “Even when they wrestled me into the stinging nettles.” He organizes the group sessions and the logistics.
Youth workers are around them during each and every session and guide them and present them with a solution to frustration and anger.
Some residents of the community have been very traumatised by the youth around the estate and from the school. The youth in the council estate learns to trust themselves to avoid conflit and danger with the help of these social workers.
The Synergy Youth group receives funding from the government and recently, have applied for more. Some of the children have never been outside of the estate. With the fundings they hope to get in a near future, Joseph, the head of the youth council, will be organising over the summer excursions and camping trips.
My intentions were to show them as what most of the young people living in estates are. The place where one grows up is important in anyones cultural background. A person from the country will know how to climb trees and play in the grass. Inversely, a child from the city will play with cars, skips, post… These children are faced with images of a minority of bad youth which, in consequence, unconciously dictates that they cannot be anything else. There is not only bad coming out of the estates and we should, as outsiders, look in and see more of the goodness in there.
