Youth work occurs in places. Physical places. Public and private places, places where youth can be alone or together with others, shared and separate spaces. Places that shape, violent, friendly, dull, exciting places — houses, parks and street corners. Places of boredom. Places where something might happen. Places where there is a sense of anticipation.

Workers and youth are in these places with one another, enmeshed in the space within, around, and between them, creating safe places, human places grounded in their presence. They try to understand places, their meanings changing as they change. They dance in and out of place, making it different with their presence. They long for place, the place of a youth’s youth, their youth. They are in place with a sense of anticipation, vocation. They move in place and time, become lost in place, absorbed in what they are doing.

In James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man place gives the story meaning (linguistic self-consciousness) and is part of the lead character. Similarly in youth workers’ stories, place shapes, houses, frees, liberates, controls, holds, contains them as they interact. A place is built, altered, shaped, left, entered, remembered, as an important part of the mood, tempo, tone and texture of who they are and what they do.

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Thus, in Moments With Youth place is an important theme just are the themes of time, motion, and silence in our previous stories (see previous columns in CYC-ONLINE). The journey continues next time with a story by Amy Evans.

For more about place read:
Baizerman, M. (1990–present). Musings with Mike. Regular column in Child and Youth Care Forum.
Childress, H. (2000). Landscapes of Betrayal; Landscapes of Joy. Albany New York: State University of New York Press.
Maier, H. (1987). The Space We Create Controls Us. In Developmental Group Care of Children and Youth. New York: Haworth Press.