As part of our research we wanted to explore some of the main challenges involved in the pursuit of laagdrempeligheid from the perspective of the organisers. Whilst smaller issues were mentioned, the key challenges identified can be divided into three clear themes: budget, gender and sustainability.
Budgets and Funding
The most commonly mentioned restraint from the perspective of the organisers was budget. Based on what we have heard and observed, it seems that working towards laagdrempeligheid has led to a higher demand for a wider variety of activities. This is of course positive to hear, however, due to budget restraints almost all organisers mentioned that it was becoming increasingly difficult to expand the activities they had on offer as their funds were already being stretched to maximum capacity. As a result, the organisations are finding themselves unable to grow in the way they would like and this is a clear point of frustration for the organisers who are determined to offer their activities to as many young people as possible. In addition, some of the initial activities used to attract young people have been suspended and when asked why Urban Cooking was no longer taking place at Burn for example, the response came; “we couldn’t find cooking ingredients anymore”. Budget restraints also mean that the organisers sometimes find themselves saying yes to things that they do not necessarily want to do in order to raise funds, resulting in them using precious time and resources carrying out activities that do not fit within the scope of the organisations’ goals, activities or laagdrempeligheid.
Whilst being publicly funded was definitely noted to have many positives for the organisations including a level of future stability, according to the organisers the same funding structures place a number of ‘barriers’ in their way. Being funded has in the eyes of some resulted in a lack of autonomy of space. It was noted by Jeroen for example that some of the things that the youth would like to be able to use the Burn space for (such as placing a sofa there) cannot be done as the space must be cleaned and left as it was found every evening. Furthermore, anonymity is also being affected, as young people are being asked to provide their names for insurance purposes which goes, according to the organisers, against the very concept of laagdrempeligheid.
Sustainability - Staying Laagdrempelig
On one occasion, whilst visiting our supporting actor Okan-MijnLeuven, Ken made an interesting point about the nature of being open doors: ‘It’s staying laagdrempelig, that’s difficult’. We thought this was an interesting point and decided to see if the organisers at our central actors shared a similar viewpoint.
Young people come and go at the organisations, sometimes they decide there are no longer any activities that are interesting for them, or sometimes people come and are willing and eager but there is nothing suitable on offer for them. This challenge partly links to budget restraints as mentioned above, but it also links to the nature of laagdrempeligheid itself and the challenges it throws up. The organisers working at Burn continuously emphasised having a relaxed approach to getting young people to attend their activities and getting the ‘through the door’ in the first place and whilst this epitomises the idea of laagdrempeligheid, organisers do admit that sometimes young people do not return. This demonstrates that whilst staying open to all people is positive, alternative measures to ensure that these young people then continue to attend seem needed. The organisers at Quindo for example operate an open door policy but acknowledge a need for multi-pronged strategies to ensure they are reaching a variety of different people. Through an informal conversation with Jeroen from our first visit to Burn, he proudly stated that performing in public places is one of strategies that attracts new young people. Jeroen explained, “the performance is to reach out those who didn’t know about the existence of Burn, some youth often approach and inquire for information”. However, we were informed that this activity is facing an uncertain future due to the aforementioned sorts of budget restraints. Furthermore, there is still a schedule of activities that are no longer taking place on their website, which we consider misleading to potential participants who attend and find the doors closed.
Secondly, some acknowledgement was raised of the difficulty of ensuring that everybody taking part in the activities feels equal and that no one feels excluded on the basis of age, race, gender or ability. It was suggested that whilst the activities are themselves ‘open’, due to the formulation of cliques/groups once some young people have attended a number of times, it can become difficult for new participants to break into already formed groups. An example of this is evident in the hip hop dance group at Burn which has its own Facebook group. When a session has to change time or be cancelled, the organiser of the activity inform the regular attendees via Facebook. As a result it is acknowledged that it is harder for new attendees to stay up to date with when and where the session is happening. Having said that, it was good to see that some organisers had already reflected upon this difficulty in sustaining a welcoming and open feel to established activities and some also reflected ways in which they were trying to prevent this from happening, such as an open evening explaining activities at Quindo.
Finally, during our observations, we noticed two kinds of group compositions. Though Jeroen and Jasper explained that the fact is linked to the nature of the activity, this tendency to view activities as more fitting for certain groups of people potentially poses a threat to the laagdrempeligheid of different activities where some participants would fail to identify themselves in the group and abandon quickly. Moreover, the break dance activity inadvertently restricts involvement of new participants who do not meet the average dance level of the group. As mentioned by Jeroen, participants who are paying for break dance classes at dance schools are not allowed to participate. This restriction is to avoid frustration or blame from dance schools concerned about receiving fewer paying students, due to free opportunities elsewhere. Nevertheless, in interviews with Burn’s organisers, they acknowledged the importance of communication to expand and make their activities known. However, the bigger an activity would be the harder it would be controlled since there would be different small cliques within one activity. These cliques would have their own way of communication (facebook group or whatsapp) and would gain their own autonomy.
Gender Divides and Imbalances
The final challenge evident in the pursuit of laagdrempeligheid relates to gender. As is evident from the profiles of the organisers, all but one featured is male and outside of this central pool of organisers the vast majority of others that we met were also male. In addition to this, the gender imbalance is visible amongst participants, with segregation of genders depending on activity type clearly visible.
During initial conversations with our supporting actor we noticed that being open and accessible and encouraging girls to get involved in activities was clearly a priority, however in practice this has proven not to be so simple. Reasons we were given relate to background, concerns amongst parents about their daughters being guided by all male staff and most commonly a lack of activities that the girls wanted to take part in. We of course then wanted to see if this was considered to be a problem at our central actors, whilst it was touched upon it was not considered to be as much of a challenge amongst the organisers in our central actors as it is at OKAN-MijnLeuven.
At the central actors, it is not getting girls through the door in the first place that is considered to be a main issue by the organisers, it is more to do with the fact that when there is representation of both genders, they tend to segregate off to different activities. Jeroen once told our team for example, “Hip hop is a culture, that is why maybe you find more “non-white” girls”. However, whilst the activity is open to all, at Burn, only girls attend the hip hop dance project. The reasoning for this is not completely clear from the perspective of the organisers but it is worth mentioning that a number of organisers, when discussing the possible causes of the gender divide also made comments about the gendered nature of different activities. By suggesting a certain activity might only be being attended by girls because the ‘type’ of activity is itself ‘for girls’ implies a level of prejudice from the side of the organisers. Whether consciously or not the gendered nature of different activities is, to an extent, being perpetuated by the same people who wish to address it.
It is clear therefore that whilst the work the organisers are doing and their focus on laagdrempeligheid clearly has a positive influence on building a sense of belonging amongst participants, challenges do remain. Therefore a number of recommendations for how to overcome these issues are given in the following section.