WHAT IS A COMMUNITY CENTRE?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 252, 21 April 1944, Page 20

WHAT IS A

COMMUNITY CENTRE?

INFORMATION WANTED To the Editor, Sir-Would it be possible for you to arrange an article on a Community Centre? Who owns the building? Who controls the building? Who provides the finance tor upkeep, etc? In my local district there is a movement afoot to provide club rooms and a hall for returned servicemen, but with the idea that some form of Community Centre be incorporated. The hope is expressed that the building will be the meeting place for all local organisations. As this is in a suburb, the problems -are somewhat different from a country centre. Is the idea of combining a Community Centre with an R.S.A. Club feasible? This is a purely unofficial request for information, and I would appreciate any assistance you can give.-( MR. SOMERSET REPLIES [Gee in the Community is growing very rapidly. During the past 12 months, I have had letters of inquiry similar to that of your correspondent, at the rate of two a week. They come from all. parts of New Zealand and from Australia. This new interest in Community Centres, not only here but also in England, shows, I believe, Ahat we are beginning to recognise two fundamental needs of man----his need for active membership in the community of his fellows, and secondly, his need to learn, influence of War Both of these are made clearer during a war. The first thing that a war does is to break up the larger community as we know it. Our pre-war society, with its obvious imperfections, was based upon peace-time living; when . war broke out, it was necessary for us to change rapidly to a new wartime order. In many respects a wartime order is simpler than a peace-time one. For the time being the issues are straightforward, and our purpose in living and dying is clear. It is to defeat our enemies; to replace Fascism with democracy and thereby to make a better world. To do this it is first of all

necessary to learn the war game. We play this urgent game according to the rules. We provide the means whereby the soldier learns effectively the science and art of war; men and women learn new parts to play in war industry. Victory depends entirely upon the amazing ability of tens of millions of adults to learn and re-learn. That is the great lesson of the war if we have the wit to make use of it. A Disastrous Fallacy At the ending of a war there is a genuine desire to make a more effective human society. The strange thing is, however, that we act as though the new community will follow the war, as day follows night, without any effort on our part. We seem to think there will. be some special act of creation in our favour. That is the most disastrous fallacy of our time, the fallacy that lost us the peace of 1918. The simple truth is that we lost the peace through our ignorance; we failed to get a new order of peace and plenty, because in the days between the Great War and _ the Greater we did not know how. This time we must know how-not just the experts, but all the men and women who make up our community. As people responsible for our destiny, we must know the direction in which we are moving and our reasons for moving. If democracy is to survive-and it has come within a hair’s breadth of extinc-tion-we must provide the means whereby men and women have the opportunity to think and learn in peace as they had to learn and think in war. So far, we have not provided for these needs, although they have long been understood. The various developments of adult education during the past 30 years have been attempts to meet the need, but the financial support they received was too niggardly to meet the situation in any adequate way. Those concerned with adult education, both here and abroad have come to the conclusion that the Community Centre is the best way of keeping men and women in touch with the intellectual and social life of the day. More Than ca Meeting Place By this time you wil! have guessed that the Community Centre is something more than a mere meeting place

for local organisations, something more than a place for passing the time. It has no essential connection with a Civic Centre, which is often a pretentious array of buildings based upon local government by day, local entertainment by night, and local pride at all times. There is, of course, nothing to prevent the Civic Centre from combining in its make-up many of the features of a Community Centre as well. 4 Your correspondent asks whether it is possible to combine a Community Centre with an R.S.A. club. This raises a very important point. No doubt clubs are very necessary in the larger centres for the use and convenience of returned men until their rehabilitation is complete. In the smaller centres I doubt very much whether the R.S.A. club is the best means of providing for our returned men. A little thought will show that to them rehabilitation means the taking up of their places, as quickly as possible, in the community. They are concerned with the future rather than

with the past; they are anxious to take up the threads of their civilian life. It must be remembered, too, that after the war it is not only the soldier who will need rehabilitation; if we want better days, we must plan for the rehhabilitation of the whole community. In my opinion, a well-equipped Community Centre would be the best thing that any place could offer to its returned men, and the best type of memorial to the fallen. The Feilding Centre I can, perhaps, answer your correspondent’s other queries by giving a short description of the Feilding Centre. The building is.owned by the Education Department, and is controlled by the Department through the Board of Managers of the Feilding Agricultural High School. The building was not designed for the purpose; it is merely what remains of the old Technical School which served Feilding before the present High School was built.

The Feilding Centre was an experiment. It owes its beginning to the energy of L. J. Wild, headmaster of the High School, who long ago realised that the work of education was always incomplete, because the schools dealt with only the immature. He proposed that an experiment in "further education" be conducted in Feilding. The then Minister of Education, the Rt. Hon. P. Fraser, was sympathetic. My wife and I had had experience of this type of work, and had seen similar centres abroad; we were appointed to the staff of the Feilding High School with a mandate to develop the kind of further education suited to New Zealand conditions. The upkeep of the building is provided by part of the capitation allowance of the High School. The total cost of running the Centre is very small, and most of the classes are free of charge. The method of organising future Centres has not yet been determined. I should think that the local people would provide for buildings and upkeep, while some central authority-the Council of Adult Education, the University, or the Education Department-would provide the staff. The question of the training of the staffs of such Centres would naturally arise, but this should not be difficult: Each Centre, would, pf course, use the part-time assistance of local residents willing to help. It remains for me to say something of the work of Feilding Centre. As far as possible we have made it a pleasant place, an adult place, with comfortable chairs and adequate heating. It is open all day and evening. We have two large lecture rooms, a small reading room, and another large room which we have converted into a little theatre. All our available space is used to capacity; we could use a building three times the size. Teaching Comes First We look upon our first function as a teaching function. In this we have tried to meet the needs of Feilding in particular. To-day, our programme falls into the following pattern: 1. The Individual: We help individuals in their reading and studies, and as far as possible assist them in their problems. There are classes in English, how to write, languages, science.

2. The Home: Nursery play-groups for small children with parent education and child study for parents. Home decoration, food and health. How to enjoy pictures. 3. The Community: Recreation, keep-fit classes, dancing "and exercise, The drama, play production, music and poetry. The film and film criticism. Community planning. 4. The World: Open forum on affairs at home and abroad. Open platform at all times for discussion of problems of general interest. : Our second function is that as far as time and space permit, we offer a home and equipment to groups of an educational and recreational nature organised in the community. Through this provision such groups as the British Music Society, the New Education Fellowship, and study courses of the St, John Ambulance all meet at the Centre and make use of our equipment. Thirdly, we act as a local agency for other educational organisations, drawing upon University Colleges, libraries, museums, etc., whenever’ by doing so we can assist our students; Other Places? I am often asked whether similar Centres would succeed in other places. My answer is yes, provided the necessary conditions are carried out. The war was a severe test of the Feilding experiment, as it took away most*of our early students, both men and women; but while the war created new problems, it served to show us the real nature of our task; it‘ altered the direction in which we were going, but it extended our usefulness. The chief condition for success is that in its policy the Centre should meet the deeper intellectual and social needs of the people, even though at first the people are only dimly aware of them. The Centre should make its students more and more aware of the possibilities of human community in practice, not alone in theory. It should constantly reveal new worlds for old in the home and in the community, in art, literature, and science. And it should do this in an informal, sociable atmosphere, for our students are adults with the burden of the world’s work upon them.

A

= WEEK or two back, our mail included the letter

pre Fe -~ — that appears at the head of this article. It |

was written by the secretary of a Returned Services

Club, and instead of answering it ourselves, |}

| we sent it to the nearest of the two men in New Zealand

who could answer it with most authority: i}

| B.C. D. Somerset. of Feilding (the other is

J. BE. Strachan, of Rangiora).

i| Here we give Mr. Somerset’s answer, together

with several pictures from Feilding.