COMHAIRLE CONTAE ÁTHA CLIATH THEAS
SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

MEETING OF SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

Monday, February 14, 2022

MOTION NO. 7

MOTION: Councillor L. O'Toole

This Committee asks that Chief Executive carries out further studies, by way of a survey or similar, around teen play-spaces. A recent article has highlighted were teens spaces are by default designed with equipment for males and its now asked that we look at this further and the examine how we can bring into teens spaces equipment that young females would like to see introduced and resulting in them becoming safer environment.

http://makespaceforgirls.co.uk/?fbclid=IwAR1RrHLTlHkhnQ9iCn7mCe7L9Fr3yLqBkh1c1aWKHEVByN5uXaGRmT5ZB2k

REPORT:

The teenspace programme followed on from SDCC’s successful playspace programme and is committed to inclusive design. When designing the teenspaces the council seeks to ensure the Teenagers wishes and requirements are reflected in the spaces in a way that ensures the teenspace is welcoming to all teenagers. The whole rationale is that they are not exclusive to one particular group of teenagers but that every teenager can and will use them and will feel it is their space. We have outlined the process we have followed below and feel it is robust and has avoided, in the main, the issues highlighted in the article above. However we remain vigilant in this regard and are open to feedback from SDCC teenagers as to how we can improve further. We will continue to actively seek their opinion throughout the delivery of the teenspace programme.

The teenspace programme, from the very outset, engaged in intensive and extensive consultation directly with teenagers. This is seen as an essential component of the programme. The consultation process with teenagers in South Dublin commenced in 2017; led by the Public Realm Section with support from the Communications Section and the Community Department.

The research stage included a study of the facilities for teenagers in South Dublin County and examined both active and passive recreational requirements. Background research was carried out over the period to assess current level of provision for this group. Consultation was held with regard to the existing facilities for teenagers with particular focus on teenagers, facility providers and relevant interest groups. Contact was made with clubs and recreational providers to assess current level of provision and a focus group with teenagers from the Ballycragh / Firhouse area was implemented. In addition the Community Development Team engaged with Comhairle na Nóg in the consultation process.

After the initial research stage; SDCC Communication Unit commenced a social media consultation process with content targeted at the relevant demographic approx. 500 submissions were received and the results informed an interim report.

Further consultations were held with local teenagers and groups who worked with teenager and youth services. SDCC Community Services facilitated a meeting with the senior managers in the three primary service providers DDLETB, Foróige and Crosscare. At the meeting a presentation was made  on the preliminary teenage facility report and the draft proposals.  We received a very positive response and have their support when carrying out site specific consultations with young people if required.  SDCC also consulted with Comhairle Na N’óg and attended a youth festival with Foroige which again gave us further insights into the needs of teenagers. In addition the Council contacted SpunOut.ie to discuss the teenage facilities programme. Spunout.ie is a youth information service for people aged between 16 and 25.  They provide advice on physical and mental health and well-being and are a well-known provider of information to young people.  They were particularly useful in advising on how to make contact with and engage teenagers.

In all of our consultations throughout this initial stage we were focused on presenting the results of the survey and the draft recommendations to gain feedback with regard to the recommendations and robustly querying the conclusions. In general; teenagers told us they wanted a safe space, with hang out / seating areas, informal activity areas, wifi where possible and an area that is theirs to use without being told to move on.

Based on the above we developed the proposed Teenspace Programme which we presented to the full Council in January 2019. The Councillors approved the programme and asked us to continue to engage with teenagers locally during the roll out of the programme.

Prior to design of a specific space, we have engaged directly with teenagers in that area. This involves engaging with local schools, or clubs, or we talk directly to the teenagers already using existing facilities where possible. We have outlined some of the recent processes below and how we ensure we get a balanced response:

At one location; we noticed that our responses to the surveys were skewed to mostly male responses, in order to attempt to get some balance we contacted after-school activities that tend to have a large female teenage attendance to get additional, more balanced input.

In Rathfarnham; we met with teenagers at the Community Centre in Whitechurch. Predominately females attended this event, which gave us an opportunity to see if female teenagers had specific wishes. They told us that they like to hang out: to facilitate this we provide a wide variety of seating. They also enjoy gymnastic activity and callisthenics was something they expressed an interest in as an informal activity: we introduced callisthenics into our teenspace designs. These teenagers also told us they enjoy basketball, and also the availability of wifi and play equipment that can be used to hang around on: we  seek to provide these where possible in teenspaces.

We also consulted with teenagers using the existing Ball Wall in Lucan, this is a highly successful teenspace and is very well used with plenty of seating areas. 3 of the local schools and some local clubs in the teenage demographic (both male, female and mixed) were surveyed to see what they wished to improve in the teenspace, we had an extremely high number of responses and the balance of response based on gender was 191 female / 183 male / 14 other. As a result of this survey, Phase 2 of the teenspace programme in Lucan will include a variety of facilites that will respond to the survey results and what teenagers in the area told us they wanted. The facilities proposed include additional seating, a basket swing, enhanced basketball facilites, callisthenics as well as other facilities.

In general, based on the above intensive public consultations we find:

• Females generally are less likely to exercise in public than males.  That does not mean that they do not use skateparks , ball walls or basketball courts. We have seen in such spaces that teenagers who do not actively use these facilites, still highly value and use these spaces as social hubs.
• From our consultations female teenagers tend to prioritise seating and shelter above equipment. 
• Our teenspaces have purposely included gymnastic type equipment as female teenagers report they have gymnastic experience. They also told us they enjoy basketball.
• Female teenagers tell us they enjoy swings but we also know that swings attract younger children into teenspaces and teenagers also tell us they do not want younger children and their parents taking over their spaces. We are going to incorporate a basket swing into the teenspace at Griffeen Valley Park as a trial and, if successful, we will look to continue this in future sites.

For the design of each teenspace we try to avoid generalisations as we are conscious the above could be considered a stereotype, we consider each site as an individual one and listen to what the teenagers in each area are telling us while ensuring we get a balance of voices in the response; this has the added benefit of ensuring we do not exclude teenagers who do not identify as either male or female.

As we are now some period into our teenspace programme we intend to review and check our progress: we are in the process of drawing up a survey to gather opinions from teenagers who are using the facilites that have been built and to check what other facilities teens might like to be included in any future teen spaces. This will be an online survey and will be publicised on social media and through clubs and schools.. Results of the survey will be conveyed to the members.