Coordinator: Alain Lapiower, Belgium

Resource persons : Hugues Bazin, France; Leo Andrescu, Romania; Sandra Vanvreckem, Belgium; Robert Paris, Quebec

Subject: do street cultures really exist ? Which are they? How to work with them?

Robert Paris is an educator working with young prostitutes. He insists on the fact that one should take into account that sexual violence is a form of culture for youngsters. The street worker represents a different culture; it is a culture of listening as opposed to that of the State, which is normative and does not take into account the opinion of young people.

There isn’t one culture in the street but several, and to work with young people of the street, one has to understand their culture..

Hugues Bazin was an educator and is now a researcher. For him, one speaks about the culture of street youth, even if they are in fact not creating a new culture, but rather rejecting a dominant one. Their culture, for example Hip Hop is a response to a hostile environment; because in order to create their own values they try to break the dominant culture.

We are faced with a collective adaptation in resistance to a dominant culture; which is a key to understand our changing society.

For him, the culture of the street is a culture of resistance or subversion; it consists of inventing a new way to manage oneís individual path, the individual is no longer taken charge of by society or by an institution, he takes care of himself.

Leo Andrescu is an educator in Romania. According to him, the culture of the street is a sub-culture; even so it is recognised and respected.

For him, this sub-culture is, just like the dominant culture, a sum of customs, laws and rules. .

Alain Lapiower

According to Mr. Lapiower there can’t be street work if one doesn’t take into account the cultural dimension of young people; certain street workers experience difficulties to accept a different culture from their own.

Culture is either an instrument of communication, a production, or a commercialised distribution i.e. a consumption tool.

Popular culture is not necessarily mass culture.

To make sure it is a subculture one has to ask oneself if it still has creative power? Is one still trying to elude the dominant culture? Is the aim to transmit, to hand over this subculture to the next generation?

The street culture influences the dominant culture, which takes up certain elements, created by the subculture (Hip Hop).

Conclusions

The street is a place that belongs to everybody and at the same time to nobody; one should re-qualify, re-defend this place, this way it would no longer be an insult to be called a street child.

When the subculture has acquired some fame, one shouldn’t try to combat the phenomenon, but rather use it as a driving force for actions among the young people.

Instead, one ought to combat the current trend to focus on security and the type of prevention that goes with it, when one is speaking about street work.

Culture is social, it is an element of integration and prevention but when one takes culture as a whole, one shouldn’t divide it up and take only certain aspects.

Culture is constantly developing, one shouldn’t lock up a young person within a culture as the young person and the culture are separate entities and the danger exists that politicians try to classify, to categorize both the cultures and the young people.