Helsinki to close several youth clubs
Attendance down, rents up
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The City of Helsinki plans to close down several youth clubs. The city is also planning to set up a network of regional activity centres, each with between 800 and 1,000 square metres of floor space.
The chair of the city’s Youth Affairs Committee, Johanna Sumuvuori (Green), says that the changes will mean more versatuke services.
"It is not enough to have walls and a pool table. We must offer more - cultural services, for instance", Sumuvuori says.
No individual youth clubs were named for the chopping block. However, the first on the list are expected to be medium-sized facilities operating in rented space.
Also being reconsidered is the future of the Gloria Culture Arena in Pieni Roobertinkatu. One possibility is to move the operations to the old power plant buildings in Suvilahti, or to the "Bunker" in Jätkäsaari.
The larger centres would offer more varied activities, and have more personnel.
According to the city’s Youth Department, the present network of youth clubs and the way that they operate mean that available resources are dispersed among fairly small units.
The planned larger units would have more youth workers, and expertise could be better concentrated.
The core of the problem is that 80 per cent of funding for youth work goes into personnel and rents. At the same time, the number of visitors is constantly declining. Authorities believe that the changing needs of today’s youth have not been sufficiently taken into consideration.
There is also more competition from commercial enterprises.
The initiative for the programme came in 2005, when the Youth Affairs Committee asked the Youth Department to draw up a report on the network of regional youth facilities in Helsinki.
The aim of the project is to offer the right kinds of services in the right locations.
The present network with 86 locations, dates back to the boom years of the 1970s, each with between 400 and 500 square metres of space.
The proposal is now for both bigger, and smaller spaces, depending on local needs.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 12.2.2007 - TODAY |
 Helsinki to close several youth clubs
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