Place, space and informal education

Mark K Smith

As informal educators, we operate in various settings, often not of our making. Our workplace can be wherever people congregate or spend time. This takes us into shopping malls, people’s homes, the corridors of schools and colleges, clubs, cafés, classrooms – the list goes on. Each has its own characteristics, and these have a direct bearing on the work we can do. Moreover, our identities are wrapped up with the places we inhabit. How we see ourselves as educators, and how those we work with come to understand themselves, are linked to a sense of place.

On spaces, places and identity

If, like me, you live in a city or a town, then encountering wide, open spaces comes as a bit of a shock. It is something outside my everyday experience. I’m used to buildings, the constant sound of trains and cars, and to other people being around. Walking in the hills, where all that is before us is sheep and grass, we may experience a sense of space. The hills probably encourage this – they allow us to draw a line on the scene, a distant boundary. Yet such landscapes are more than spaces – their features have names – and naming things locates them – they become places. We can attach meanings to them. We may feel we belong (we are not ‘out of place’); the absence of clutter and sense of space may bring us closer to God or allow us to ground ourselves (we find our ‘place in the world’ and see the ‘bigger picture’). It is not surprising, then, that many educators try to create opportunities for others to share these experiences and to engage with them.

Part of the attraction of such places is the way they contrast with our daily experiences. Increasingly we have to conduct our interactions with others at a distance. We use the phone to keep in touch with friends and family and to deal with business and personal matters. Many look to the Internet to get information or to shop. Yet the local is still important. Many of us still live much of our lives within a relatively small area. While we may travel to work, we still tend to use local schools, shops and food places, belong to community organisations and so on. Crucially, if we look at things from the point of view of children and young people, then it can be seen that much of their lives are wrapped up around the ‘local’ – home, school, streets, fields and parks.

Particular places have strong meanings for many people. To be attached to one is seen as ‘a fundamental human need and, particularly as home, the foundation of ourselves and our identities’ (Eyles 1989: 109). In this sense, they are ‘profound centres of human existence’. Through growing up in a place, or perhaps by living there for a long time, we can come to name ourselves as Mancunians, Cumbrians, Glaswegians and so on. This attachment is not surprising at one level. The urban experience of children and young people up to the age of 14 or 15 years is largely confined to their immediate neighbourhood (Taylor, Evans and Fraser 1996: 266). As a result, discussion by 13-15-year-olds about their own neighbourhood often involves ‘a quite elaborate and affectionate display of knowledge with respect to local police, local “characters” and so on’ {op. cit.). Through their experience of local schooling, family and social networks, and of making their way around the neighbourhood, they come to know local ways of life and perhaps to develop some sense of belonging. This might be added to by knowledge of places beyond the immediate area. However, such knowledge tends to rely on second-hand sources, fleeting impressions, local stereotypes (e.g. around the roughness of an area) and reports and stories in local media.

In this way place can be understood as space which people in a given area, ‘understand as having a particular history and as arousing emotional identifications, and which is associated with particular groups and activities’ (Watt and Stenson 1998: 253). However, things are not always that cosy. Places ‘can provide not only a sense of well-being but also one of entrapment and drudgery. To be tied to one place may well enmesh a person in the familiar and routine from which no escape seems possible’ (Eyles 1989: 109). Place, then, has to be central to our work as educators. The feelings associated with place, and the impact on identity and opportunity, surface in many of our conversations as educators. We need to explore what people may be experiencing.

Geographies of childhood and youth

To help us in this, I begin by examining the significance and nature of place for children and young people.

For most children territorial range increases with age. The range can also alter suddenly following events such as changing or starting school, moving house or having a new friend (Hill and Tisdall 1997: 107). The activity spaces they inhabit provide a map of their everyday lives – home, school, park, friends’ houses and the paths between them. We can quickly see the impact upon them of weather, landscape, the range of local facilities, and distance from family and friends.

Where do young people spend their time? In the UK, home-based forms of leisure – watching television, reading, using PlayStations and so on — are by far the most common non-work activities that young people engage in (OPCS 1995). The other place in which children and young people spend much of their time is school or college. Since 1974, the school leaving age has been 16 and the proportion of 16- to 18-year-olds in education and training has expanded significantly. For example, in England, around 74 per cent of that age group were in education and training at the end of 1998, having increased from 61 per cent some ten years before (DfEE 1999).

If we then turn to leisure activities outside the home and school for 13-20- year olds, the most popular activities are visiting friends (85 per cent); hanging about with groups of friends on the street (56 per cent); discos (47 per cent); sports clubs (40 per cent); youth clubs or groups (31 per cent); cinemas (31 per cent); and pubs (29 per cent) (Hendry et al. 1993: 42). Again each of these involves particular activity spaces – people’s homes, streets, clubs, etc. Each has its rules and norms which, in turn, are conditioned, in part, by the physical location and what people make of it. An example here might be the street. It can be seen as a place of danger. Traffic threatens the very young; the possibility of attack or unwanted approach may worry the older. However, such ‘hazards’ may attract as well as repel – being in a ‘dangerous’ place can bring status. Such rules, norms and expectations are of fundamental significance to informal educators. They have to attend to them if they are to establish relationships with people in different places.

Geographies of power and exclusion

Relations of power and exclusion are, perhaps, one of the most difficult aspects of place for educators. There is an obvious geography of power as soon as we look at where major economic decisions are made, and who gains and suffers as a result. Large, multinational corporations usually have their headquarters well away from where the bulk of their employees work. Important decisions are made elsewhere and usually look to questions of profitability and political cost/gain rather than the impact on local people. Furthermore, sometimes it is difficult to know exactly where power is.

At a more local level, a geography of power also exists. ‘The human landscape’, David Sibley once wrote, ‘can be read as a landscape of exclusion … power is expressed in the monopolisation of space and the relegation of weaker groups in society to less desirable environments’ (1995: ix). Particular areas may well come to be perceived as being ‘white’, ‘Asian’ or ‘Black’.

Many public spaces are experienced by women as being ‘male-dominated’ and seen as being risky places to be on your own. In this process, those labelled as ‘others’ are placed as outsiders. Their presence in a place can then be seen as threatening the norm (and are therefore in need of exclusion) or as making them ‘fair game’. The experience of children and young people is a good example of this phenomenon.

Parents often try to negotiate or impose rules on children as to where they can or can’t go (especially when they are younger). Rules generally flow from a concern that they stay close to home (so that they can be located and supervised); to avoid ‘dangerous people’ (paedophiles, gangs); and steer clear of dangerous objects and events (traffic, lakes, railway lines). Children can also be put off going to the places they see as defended by custodians like park-keepers, janitors or watching neighbours (Moore 1986, in Hill and Tisdall 1997: 107). We can also see this geography of exclusion appearing in a much more blatant way about children and young people in many North American cities through the use of curfews. In the United States, most curfew regimes apply to those 17 and under and run from 22.30 through to 06.30. A growing number are supplemented with daytime curfews operating during school hours – usually 09.00 to 14.30 (Jeffs and Smith 1995).

The geography of informal education

While we, as educators, can do some work at a distance via telephones and the Internet, mostly we have to be in the same place as those we are working with. Being centred around conversation, informal education entails talking and joining in activities with others (children, young people and adults). Obviously, to do this, we have to be close physically to those we want to work with. This leaves us with two basic strategies – either we go to where people are, or we set up some sort of facility that encourages people to come to us. In youth work this has led to the classic division into club or centre-based work, and detached or outreach work; and previously in community work, the split between community centre and community development work.

As we have already seen, with increased rates of participation in education and training, the development of home-based entertainment and the expansion of commercial leisure opportunities, youth centres and clubs have had a hard time attracting customers. There has been a marked drop in the average age worked with, and a near abandonment in many centres of work with those over 18 years (Fitzpatrick, Hastings and Kintrea 1998). Specialist forms of provision, for example around arts and adventure, have had some success in bringing in older groups, but for the most part, it is the pre- and early-teens who go to youth centres and clubs. Younger people’s leisure ‘career’ appears to take three stages:

organised – youth groups, sports clubs and so on (up to age 14 years);
casual – hanging about (ages 14 to 16 years);
commercial – clubs, pubs, cinema (post-16 years).

Young women are more likely to be involved in ‘casual’ and ‘commercial’ leisure, and young men in ‘organised leisure’ (Hendry et al. 1993: 43). This has had profound implications for the geography of practice. It has forced many agencies concerned with the informal education of young people into working where young people can be found, rather than attempting to draw them initially to centres. If we look simply to where people in the 14–18-year age range spend their time, then our priorities as informal educators would run in the following order:

Developing learning activities within the home.
Working within schools and colleges, both in social situations and in more formal settings.
Streetwork – making contact and developing work with people ‘hanging about’.
Exploring the possibilities of work within commercial settings – pubs, clubs, cinemas, bowling alleys, etc.
Working in ‘youth provision’ such as clubs, centres and cafés.

A very similar set of questions and issues arises with regard to work with adults. Just as the home is the centre for leisure for young people, so it is for adults. For example, there has been a substantial shift away from the use of public houses and bars for the consumption of alcohol to the home. Current government strategies around lifelong learning have similarly turned away from the traditional classroom, towards exploiting the more individualised learning opportunities of television, the Internet and distance education (Smith 1999). However, this trend should not be overstated. A large number of people remain involved in local community groups, voluntary organisations and enthusiast groups. In Britain, around 12 million women and men are currently involved in running some 1.3 million voluntary groups, teams and organisations (over 25 per cent of the adult population). In addition, well over half the adult population belongs to a local voluntary organisation (Elsdon et al. 1995: 47). Voluntarily joining together in companionship or to undertake some task can bring both personal satisfaction and social benefit. Such association can also be a major educational force and the site of intervention by informal educators (Doyle and Smith 1999; the informal education homepage 1999). As Dickie (1999) has concluded with regard to local community organisation, more systematic approaches to the educational aspects of campaigning can consolidate collective learning processes (see also Foley 1999).

Issues for informal educators

All of this poses significant problems for informal educators. First, access to a number of these environments is difficult. We have to satisfy various ‘gatekeepers’ as to our credentials before we can get into many places. In the case of the school, this might be the headteacher, in commercial settings, the manager, and in the home, this could mean young people and parents. Entering local community groups can be especially difficult as we can’t be reliant on individuals who may rather not have us there (seeing our presence as a threat to their position) (Francis and Henderson 1992: 32-4). Many gatekeepers will be suspicious of us. For example, parents or carers may well worry about our intentions or ways of working if we seek to come into their homes.

Second, there are questions of purpose and possibility. Some settings are good for making contact but may not be so good for deeper work. We may well look to commercial settings, for example, for making contact but find that people have other priorities than talking with us. Different environments will open up, and close down, various avenues of work.

Third, and linked to the above, are questions of appropriateness and safety. Certain behaviours will be appropriate to one setting, others will not. If we return to the example of working in people’s homes then simply ‘being around’ – hanging about with people – is likely to be viewed with suspicion, whereas work with a clear focus will generally help people feel more at ease. There are certain situations in which ‘hanging about’ in this setting might well be appropriate – for example, where a person’s home is communal, as is the case in YMCA hostels or children’s homes. Going into private houses requires us to have and declare a clear focus for our visit. For example, we may come into the house because someone wants to talk about a particular issue, or to do some tutoring around literacy, or to work on some project, such as doing the community association accounts. In doing this, we must take care that we do not put ourselves or those we work with at risk. For example, it may not be advisable, as an individual worker, to spend time alone with a lone man or woman in their home. In some situations, it is appropriate, for example, working with a tenants’ association committee member you have known for a time; in others, it is not. We must make a proper assessment of the risk.

Fourth, we need to think carefully about the groups we are targeting. We have already seen how the age range is significant. We can attract significant numbers of children to organised provision such as groups, clubs and centres. Similarly, it is possible to contact many young people in schools and colleges. We can meet a lot of people by simply going door-to-door around a neighbourhood. However, we need to think about who may not be present in those settings – for example, those who have left or those who are no longer attracted to schooling and, thus, try to avoid spending much time there.

Fifth, there are issues around scale. Some settings allow for work with large numbers of people; others are more suitable for individual and small group work. We need to think about the shape and nature of the physical environment. For informal educators concerned with community development, for example, there can be nothing more dispiriting than getting issues of scale wrong with regard to public meetings. Having a small number of people in a large hall is generally far less conducive to conversation and exploration than a large number in a small room. A similar ‘rule’ applies to youth club and project work.

Sixth, there are questions around the relative degree of control people have over the different spaces. Here we come across one of the great misconceptions concerning ‘detached’ or ‘outreach’ work – that it takes place on people’s ‘home ground’. People do not own the pubs they drink in, or the shopping centres they spend time in. They may attempt to colonise areas, to alter their physical appearance (with graffiti, etc.) and to work social relationships to gain influence, but they often have little or no ‘legitimate’ power over the setting.

Last, there is the problem of our attitudes. For example, many of those who see themselves as youth workers have a problem with the idea of working in schools (with the various rules, compulsory attendance and so on); and in contacting people in their homes. The latter, in part, flows from a fear of outreach work, but it can also be linked to the concerns about entering such a private world as the home. Other informal educators have had less of a problem with this. Here we only need to look to the work of those concerned with traditional approaches to community development or with health promotion to see something of the possibilities of work in the home.

Working so that spaces become places

In an earlier book, Local Education (1994), I explored the work of educators who engage with local networks and cultures, and who build ways of working which connect with local understandings. Calling ourselves local educators is not simply to do with our working in a certain area, it is also to say that we belong in some further way. Our identities as educators are wrapped up with the place or type of place in which we work. This can build up from simple things like clothing – in street work we may have to dress in one way, and in another for operating around a college or school.

However, a concern for place goes further than identity and process – it also links to questions of purpose. If, as informal educators, we are concerned with working so that all may share in a common life (Dewey 1916: 7), then it is clear that we need to look to:

questions of identity;
the ways in which people make sense of place;
how people deal with distant systems and bodies; and the impact of exclusion.

Running through all three elements is a concern that informal educators should work so that spaces can become, or can stay, places with particular qualities. We look to create and sustain the conditions for encounter and conversation, so that all may share in a common life.

On the street, in people’s homes, or in the supermarket, our main points of intervention concern the social setting or context and the subject for conversation. There is only so much that we can do about the physical setting. We can work in a way that can influence people’s experience of the space; or, if it seems appropriate, encourage them to move to another place where conversation can happen. In contrast, when working in space that we manage, we can make use of the usual array of tools. There is no shortage of guidance for workers in this area. In youth work, for example, setting out rooms, the use of equipment and the design of settings has long formed part of standard textbooks (e.g. Russell and Rigby 1908: 40-52). As Josephine Macalister Brew rather quaintly put it:

A club is a community engaged in the task of educating itself. It therefore follows that a youth organization can meet anywhere. There are only three necessities – light, preferably the sort that cannot be turned off or blown out by the practical joker – warmth, and if you cater for boys this means a ‘fug’ – and comradeship. (Brew 1943: 67)

We work in physical surroundings and contribute to the interactions that are going on. Teachers, especially those in primary education, have long appreciated that both are necessary – hence the care that is often taken with the organisation of classrooms, the pictures on the walls, the various materials and pieces of equipment that are to hand. Many informal educators also take care with the atmosphere that can be generated in buildings or areas that they have some responsibility for. By working on things like lighting, seating arrangements, music, and dress, we try to create physical environments which communicate warmth, friendliness, and community.

Whatever the setting, our first and obvious step as informal educators is to work our way into being close enough to people to talk or communicate. Our second is to operate in such a way as to move from simply being around in a place and part of the scene, to being present in a more direct way to people. Informal educators tend to use one of four basic moves or tactics to make such openings (Smith 1994: 44-5):

Greeting or speaking to a member or group to whom they are already known or can legitimately speak. This can then be used to gain an introduction to the other people present.
Becoming recognised as someone who is routinely around, who is part of the local scene – basically ‘being around’ (see Jeffs and Smith 1999: 95-7).
Going up to people, saying who they are and what they are doing and then asking questions or offering information. Here, various direct means can be involved, such as giving out leaflets or making a straight introduction (‘Hello, I am a new worker at…’). Other approaches can be more indirect, such as ‘making friends’ with someone’s dog.
Doing some activity that attracts attention or interest. When people come to see what is going on, you can then ‘catch’ them.

These moves may happen within a setting we are responsible for (such as a centre, café or ‘drop-in’) or in a place where we are one amongst others, such as in street work.

Space, place and informal education

Informal education is a practice of place. Our fundamental purpose is to work for forms of living that foster conversation, democracy and learning (Jeffs and Smith 1999). Some of the time we work with a clear objective in mind – perhaps linked to some broader plan, e.g. around the development of reading. At other times, we may go with the flow – adding to the conversation when it seems right or picking up on an interest. For this reason, informal education tends to be unpredictable – we do not know where it might lead. In conversation, we have to catch the moment where we can say or do something to deepen people’s thinking or to put them in touch with their feelings. To do this, we have to connect with place. We need to attend to physical surroundings and how they are experienced and reworked by people.

References

Brew, J.M. (1943). In the Service of Youth. London: Faber and Faber.

Department for Education and Employment (1999) Participation in Education and Training by 16-18 Year Olds in England 1992/93-1996/97 – Release 7/991. London: Department for Education and Employment.

Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and Education. New York: Macmillan.

Dickie, J. (1999). ‘Neighbourhood as classroom’, in J. Crowther, I. Martin and M. Shaw (eds) Popular Education and Social Movements in Scotland Today. Leicester: National Institute of Adult Continuing Education.

Douglas, T. (1991). A Handbook of Common Group Work Problems. London: Routledge.

Doyle, M.E. and Smith, M.K. (1999). Bom and Bred? Leadership, Heart and Informal Education, London: YMCA George Williams College/Rank Foundation.

Elsdon, K.T. with Reynolds, J. and Stewart, S. (1995). Voluntary Organizations. Citizenship, Learning and Change. Leicester: NIACE.

Eyles, D. (1989). ‘The geography of everyday life’, in D. Gregory and R. Walford (eds.) Horizons in Human Geography. London: Macmillan.

Fitzpatrick, A., Hastings, S. and Kintrea, K. (1998). Including Young People in Urban Regeneration: A Lot to Learn? York: The Policy Press.

Foley, G. (1999). Learning in Social Action. A Contribution to Understanding Informal Education. London: Zed Books.

Francis, D. and Henderson, P. (1992). Working with Rural Communities. London: Macmillan.

Goetschius, G. and Tash, J. (1967). Working With Unattached Youth. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Hendry, L.B., Shucksmith, J., Love, J.G. and Glendinning, A. (1993). Young People’s Leisure and Lifestyles. London: Routledge.

Hill, M. and Tisdall, K. (1997). Children and Society. Harlow: Longman.

Jeffs, T. and Smith, M.K. (1995). ‘Getting the dirtbags off the streets’, Youth and Policy, 53, 1-14.

Jeffs, T. and Smith, M.K. (1998). ‘The problem of “youth” for youth work’, Youth and Policy 62.

Jeffs, T. and Smith, M.K. (1999). Informal Education. Conversation, Democracy and Learning. Ticknail: Education Now.

OPCS (1995). General Household Survey 1993. London: The Stationery Office.

Russell, C.E.B. and Rigby, L.M. (1908). Working Lads’ Clubs. London: Macmillan. Sibley, D. (1995). Geographies of Exclusion. London: Routledge.

Skelton, T. and Valentine, G. (eds) (1998). Cool Places. Geographies of Youth Cultures. London: Routledge.

Smith, M. (1994). Local Education. Community, Conversation, Praxis. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Smith, M. K. (1996, 2001). Lifelong learning, The encyclopedia of pedagogy and informal education. [https://infed.org/mobi/lifelong-learning/].

Smith, M. K. (2001) ‘Young people, informal education and association’, the informal education homepage, www.infed.org/youthwork/ypandassoc.htm.

Taylor, I., Evans, K. and Fraser, P. (1996). A Tale of Two Cities. Global Change, Local Feeling and Everyday Life in the North of England. A Study in Manchester and Sheffield. London: Routledge.

Watt, P. and Stenson K. (1998). ‘The street: “It’s a bit dodgy around here”. Safety, danger, ethnicity and young people’s use of public space’ in T. Skelton and G. Valentine (eds) Cool Places. Geographies of Youth Cultures. London: Routledge.

A version of this piece (complete with reflection points etc.) later appeared in Richardson, L. D. and Wolfe, M. (eds.) (2001). Principles and Practice of Informal Education. Learning through life. London: RoutledgeFalmer.

Opening image: tegan-mierle-fDostElVhN8-unsplash