Plan to stop youth altercations at Christchurch mall

A lack of public spaces for youth has led to altercations at Northlands shopping centre and the bus hub on Main North Rd, with key groups collaborating to front-foot the issue.

Papanui Youth and Development Trust operations manager Jeremy Adams said it came about after problems late last year involving large crowds of high school students gathering, causing noise and unwanted behaviour.

“We’re not going anywhere, young people aren’t going anywhere, and the Papanui area is growing, we are just trying to front-foot the process,” he said.

There have been other altercations at malls in Christchurch, including at Westfield Riccarton in June and in September last year.

Other key groups involved in addressing the issue include the police, Papanui High School, the Waipapa Papanui-Innes-Central Community Board, the city council and Te Ora Hou Ōtautahi.

Adams said the trust wants to make spaces more youth friendly and, along with the community board, is looking into short and mid-term solutions.

Said Adams: “We had youth workers there last year and other future plans include having the school’s jazz band play in the court and displaying students’ artwork at the mall as well as a space where young people hang out and can feel safe.

“We know not all spaces are youth friendly and we want to see what we could be doing as we would all love to do more,” he said.

Adams said the trust wants to be able to connect to students when they finish school at 2.30pm.

“It has been really good so far, better than I thought. We have been approached by Eastgate mall to discuss this, but the key thing is  the relationships between malls and the surrounding high schools.”

Trust manager Hamish Flynn said bus stops and malls are problematic areas and, even though they cannot completely stop problems, there are things they can put in place to help.

“We were waiting for everything to line up and for funding to be able to start this programme up again as we didn’t want to go in alone,” Flynn said.

“We wanted to go in as a collective as we saw a significant drop last year when we introduced the programme.”

Community board deputy chair Simon Britten said the mall has become the place for youth to go and has been recognised for future conflicts to happen after school.

“The lack of public spaces in the area is a contributing factor and, in my opinion, it is an unmet need in the Papanui area,” he said.

Britten said the board began working collaboratively with other community and youth organisations late last year to help support good behaviour at the shopping centre.

“We had youth workers at the mall during term three and four that helped support positive behaviour as well as support mall staff with interactions with youth.”

He said they have revisited it this year as it is an ongoing initiative on the community board’s radar and it wants to keep growing it.

“There is a need for a space for youth to be youth, so future plans include working on a youth, health and well-being space.”

By Briar Allen