"Stop the Scrawling" campaign fails to invite Youth Department to its ten-year anniversary
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Helsinki’s youth affairs people are flabbergasted that no members from either the City of Helsinki Youth Department or the City Council Youth Committee were invited to the ten-year anniversary seminar of the Stop töhryille (Stop the Scrawling) campaign, aimed at weeding out graffiti from the city's walls and public places.
“It beats me! When dealing with graffiti we are the other major player in this city”, said an astonished Lasse Siurala, Director of the Youth Department.
At the Tuesday seminar taking place in Helsinki’s Finlandia Hall, the City of Helsinki Public Works Department will report the results of the Stop the Scrawling campaign to the members of the Helsinki City Administration and the Public Works Committee.
There was apparently no room at the inn for the youth people.
“They are not interested in co-operation. Their starting point is that they want to endorse the graffiti culture. We on the other hand have tried to rid the society of it completely”, reasons the civil servant in charge of the Stop the Scrawling campaign.
For safety reasons the civil servant has asked to remain anonymous. On previous occasions the person in question has received threats and verbal abuse.
The Youth Department and the Public Works Department people have failed to see eye to eye with regard to the subject of graffiti for quite some time now.
What has lately strained the relationship between the two is, among other things, the renting of a Rajasaari building to squatters, as well as councilman Paavo Arhinmäki’s (Left Alliance) suggestion about turning the Vuosaari Harbour noise protection wall into a permissible place for graffiti.
Both the Public Works Department and the Public Works Committee dismissed the suggestion for the graffiti wall. The Youth Department and the Youth Committee, in turn, were in favour of it.
The city's deputy mayors invited both parties to sit around the table already some years ago. This, however, did little to mend the relationship.
Youth Department director Siurala says that he has not spoken with the Stop the Scrawling campaign leader since then.
“We have nothing to say to each other as long as they feel that the word 'graffiti' should not be used. In their view there are only scrawls and illegal defacers of public surfaces”, Siurala says.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 16.9.2008 - TODAY |
 "Stop the Scrawling" campaign fails to invite Youth Department to its ten-year anniversary |
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