Young people in Southampton will be able to try out street sports thanks to a £8,000 cash injection from the city's primary care trust.
The Street Sport programme, run by the city council’s sports development unit, will offer activities to 11-16-year-olds in places they are already gathering.
Activities will be decided upon with the young people but will include BMX-ing, skateboarding, street football, street hockey and table tennis.
The project, to begin in October, will involve two sessions a week lasting up to an hour and a half.
Jayne Ludden, sport and recreation manager at Southampton City Council, said: “We are excited by the prospect of delivering regular street sport sessions to young people across the city.”
Local residents decided they wanted to fund the project out of a pot of £50,000 from the health trust to invest in health and wellbeing.
Street scene skating is both popular with the kids and unpopular with the neighbours. Councils usually choose to establish set-aside areas, away from residences, and, skaters being pure opportunists, use them and thank you very much. But if anyone thinks this will stop them street-scene skating on the way, forget it, mostly. There will be some activities kids want to do that whatever we provide, they will still want to do them. The art of compromise is, alas, not often evident in man y neighbourhoods, and kids will be moved on. One solution may be to bring in a van, say once a week, with skate equipment mand set it up for a fixed period that day, moving on (as will the skaters who are true Pied Piper afficianados). One solution also might be to paint some old benches in a bright colour with a notice 'Please use thbis for skating not other seats' and maybe someone who the kids like talking to them about how cool it is to be reasonable. They are - my 25 years experience. It's the adults I mostly find bloody-minded.
I've thought about this possibility for skateboarders. In the area where I live some streets are just what the skateboarder needs. Householders get upset with the noise they create. What streets might be designated for this kind of sport?
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