How council interventions increased the space for a violent street culture to evolve

This chapter outlines the change from informal resident youth support to several short-term, local authority-commissioned professional interventions. Initially, the text discusses how a group of us turned interacting with young people over the summer into a twice weekly youth club after one parent was concerned about how the young people were starting to behave. The chapter moves on to discuss how the commissioning of a series of gang intervention programmes after the murders of two St Mary’s young people shifted the support away from an informal relationship-based interaction and to professionalized intervention. The analysis considers how the power relationships between the council, intervention providers and residents meant that those of us who had previously interacted with the young people were excluded from future delivery, despite the council aiming for coproductive project delivery.

St Mary’s Estate youth project

In the summer of 2006, Charis asked Elizabeth what they could do to calm the young people down during the holidays. Miche, Charis’ eldest daughter, hung out with the boys from the estate and got pregnant, and the thought of Miche’s younger sister doing something similar was enough for Charis to spring into action. Elizabeth and Charis approached me to see if I wanted to help do something. Throughout that summer, Charis and I, supported in the background by Elizabeth, spent our evenings supervising the children and young people as they played and hung out on the estate.

By the autumn, we had raised £10,000, and with the help of Miche and volunteers from two nearby churches (but not the churches using any of the estate’s buildings), we ran a youth club in Our Place on Tuesdays and Fridays. The under 13s session was from 4:30 to 6:30, and the over 13s from 6:30 to 8:30. Fridays were a bit different in that the older ones came in earlier and stayed until 9:00. Activities ranged from homework support, arts and crafts, music sessions and a Friday movie night using a borrowed projector and illegally downloaded movies.