Teenagers to redesign pedestrian tunnel on Station Road
For many months HYTC has been pursuing the redecoration of the pedestrian tunnel on Station Road, Harpenden, by the train station. Georgie Thomas, Chair of HYTC 2009-10 said, “The tunnel decoration is outdated and vandalised. We are looking for great designs by young people to replace the current paintings. We are really looking forward to improving our local environment.”
A competition was recently launched based on the prompt ‘What does Harpenden mean to you?’ Open to all teenagers across the area, HYTC wanted lots of entries that would be considered as part of the redesign and redecoration process of the tunnel. After receiving lots of fantastic artwork the Youth Town Council is now considering which designs will feature in the tunnel and which artists invited to take part in the decoration.
Thank you to those of you who took the time to create such fabulous designs and we hope to have the tunnel looking fresh and new very soon.
Big projects for 2011
Not long ago, the youth town council had an 'ideas meeting', where members brought ideas from their schools and presented them to the others. We collected a variety of ideas from the local schools, from more frequent buses to building a crazy golf course, and came out with three main aims.
The first was to build a shelter in Rothamsted Park. At the moment we feel as though there isn't much to do in Harpenden besides sitting in a coffee shop, using the skate park, or generally wandering about. A shelter in the park would give us somewhere to hang around, especially when it's cold, raining, etc. (test)
The second was to set up a cafe for teenagers. We felt that there weren't many places indoors where people could sit down, and that sometimes younger years could be intimidated by sitting in an adult coffee shop. A lot of possibilities were discussed, including a computer area, flatscreen TVs and a fashionable eating area, as well as more serious possibilities such as a counselling service in the building away from the cafe, or a job centre for teenagers.
The final idea is a campaign for more political education in local schools. This would give young people an idea of how politics works in England, as well as what the main parties stand for. We came up with the idea of approaching schools to try and get involved in life skills or citizenship lessons.
We'd like to thank everyone who contributed ideas, and hope that you find our aims for this year exciting and worthwhile.