COMMUNITY CENTRES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 258, 2 June 1944, Page 7

COMMUNITY CENTRES

Sir-vYour leading article of April 21 encouraged one to expect much from Mr. Somerset’s article on Community Centres. The result was rather disappointing. Had the introductory matter on the first page been cut to two paragraphs, there might have been space available to expand on the point which Mr. Somerset regards as "very important,"’ and enable him to make it clear why he regards the R.S.A. Club as not the best means of providing for returned men. The reasons he gives are very vague, and suggest a bias. Three more paragraphs, well worded, might have been sufficient for him to explain why a Community Centre has the advantage over other educational activities such as gymnasium classes

run by Y.M.C.A., Y.W.C.A. and other organisations, musical clubs, art societies, kindergartens, municipal libraries, and the large number of correspondence courses available on qa variety of subjects. Does Mr. Somerset suggest that the Community Centre will supplant these? Or is there room for both? Or. is the Community Centre to provide these facilities in localities where the response to individual efforts has not been encouraging? The topic shows high promise, but it requires broader and more definite treatment than Mr. Somerset has given it- "GENUINELY INTERESTED" (Dunedin). Mr. Somerset says in reply: "Let us provide club facilities for returned men by all means, but let us be sure, in the smaller centres, at least, that they will not be dead letters in 10 years’ time. I think we need something more than clubs. The need to solve the problem of education for life in the post-war world is so urgent that I feel we must have centres that are open to the whole community-not merely to returned menand that these centres must provide as well as some of the amenities of a club, facilities for reading, discussion, and learning along the lines indicated in my article. Returned men have much to contribute from their experience; they also have much to gain in classes and discussion groups devoted to social studies, etc. "I do not suggest that Community Centres will supplant other organisations. Wherever a centre is established, I would design its buildings and programme to supply what is in the community. Feilding, for instance, no Y.M.C.A., "drama club, or kindergarten, while its library was too small to meet the needs of the borough. Every new Centre should be planned upon a careful survey of the community. It will be found in practice that the Community Centre can give considerable help to struggling groups of an educational nature. Obviously the greatest need for Centres is to be found in the smaller towns with popula. tions of 2000 to 10,000."