I've spent fifteen years running an organisation that works with young people. Not as a youth worker — as someone who has watched several hundred teenagers walk through a rehearsal room door and quietly noticed which ones nearly didn't.
What I've learned is that we're pretty good at providing for teenagers who fit a particular shape: sporty, joined-up, with an available parent and a car. And we're not good at all for the rest.
01 / What we do wellCredit first.
Organised sport in this region is genuinely strong. Football, netball, cricket, soccer, basketball, surf clubs, athletics — well run, mostly volunteer-driven, and a real source of belonging for thousands of young people. The clubs deserve enormous credit.
Schools do more than they are resourced to do. The libraries are quietly excellent. There are good youth services in the municipality and dedicated people inside them.
None of that is the problem. The problem is what happens if you don't fit through any of those doors.
02 / The five gapsWhat's actually missing.
Figure 01 · The gaps
Five things teenagers in this region don't have.
Somewhere to just be
Free, indoor, warm, unstructured, and open in the evening. Not a program you enrol in — a place you can turn up to with nothing planned. Almost every space available to teenagers requires money, a membership, a booking or a purpose.
Evening opening hours
Libraries and community facilities close around the time teenagers actually become free. A space that shuts at 5pm is a space for people whose day ends at 3pm.
Independent transport
The single biggest structural barrier. Under-18s cannot drive, and a network that thins out in the evening means every activity is gated by a parent's availability. This limits work, training and independence more than anything else on this list.
Non-sporting options at scale
Music, theatre, art, film, coding, making things. These exist, but they are smaller, often fee-based, and much less visible than sport. A teenager who isn't sporty has to actively search; a sporty one has clubs recruiting them.
First-job pathways
Entry-level work locally, reachable without a car, with employers willing to take someone with no experience. Our growth areas add houses far faster than they add walkable local employment.
Being consulted
Facilities for young people are routinely designed by adults who haven't asked them. Youth councils exist and do good work — but consultation needs to reach past the confident kids who already put their hand up.
Every unstructured hour a teenager spends somewhere warm, safe and free is an hour they are not spending somewhere none of those things are true. That is the entire argument.— David Greenwood OAM
03 / The "hanging around" problemWe built it, then complained about it.
Every town in this region has a shopping centre or car park where teenagers congregate, and a steady stream of complaints about it. What's rarely acknowledged is that they are there because it's the only place that is free, sheltered, reachable without a car and open after five.
How it gets framed
"There's a problem with kids hanging around the shops."
What it actually is
A revealed preference. They've found the only free, sheltered, accessible, after-hours space we provided — and it happens to be a retail car park.
You can respond with security patrols and hostile design, or you can respond by providing somewhere better. One of those approaches has worked, repeatedly, in a lot of places.
04 / What council can actually doFour things, cheapest first.
Figure 02 · Realistic levers
Ordered by cost, not ambition.
| Action | Why it's worth doing |
|---|---|
| Extend opening hours at facilities we already own | The cheapest intervention available. A library, hall or pavilion open three evenings a week is a youth space that requires no capital spend at all — only staffing and a decision. |
| Make existing spaces genuinely bookable by young people | Halls and meeting rooms sit empty most evenings. Simple, free or near-free booking for under-25 groups converts idle assets into youth infrastructure overnight. |
| Fix the walking and cycling routes to where things happen | Safe, lit, continuous paths to schools, stations, shops and sports grounds directly expand what a teenager can reach independently. Squarely a council responsibility. |
| Advocate hard on evening and weekend transport | Council doesn't run buses, but it can gather and publish the evidence. Counted, specific demand is what moves a transport department. |
| Ask young people first, and pay for their time | Consultation that reaches beyond the already-engaged. Paying a young person for their time on a design reference group is both fairer and produces better answers. |
Notice that the first four require almost no new capital. Youth provision is mostly a scheduling, access and transport problem, not a building problem.
05 / What I've actually seen workThe rehearsal room lesson.
The thing that has struck me most over fifteen years is how little it takes. Not a purpose-built youth centre with a climbing wall. A room, a regular time, one adult who remembers your name, and something to do that has a point to it.
Young people who arrive shy and disengaged and end up running a crew, teaching a younger kid, or holding a role with real responsibility — that transformation happens over and over, and it costs remarkably little. What it requires is continuity: the same room, the same night, the same person, for years. Which is exactly what short-term project funding is worst at providing.
So if I had one argument to make about youth provision in this region, it wouldn't be for a new facility. It would be for funding the boring, continuous, unglamorous operation of the things that already work.
If you're a young person in Greater Geelong — or the parent of one — tell me what's missing where you live. Specifically: what would you do if there were somewhere to do it, and what stops you now? I'd rather hear it from you than assume it. Email david@centrestage.org.au with "Young people" in the subject.