Autonomous youth center
An autonomous youth center is a self-governing youth center . The sponsors are usually local initiatives or registered associations.
From the point of view of the providers and users of autonomous youth centers, the concept goes beyond youth leisure facilities . The aim of the autonomous youth center is precisely the democratically participatory claim of self-administration, which cannot be achieved by employed professionals.
The oldest self-administered youth center still in existence in Germany is that of Aktion Jugendzentrum Backnang e. V. , founded and entered in the register of associations on April 6, 1971. Also in 1971, the self-administered Aktion Jugendzentrum Neumünster e. V. (AJZ).
Idea of the autonomous youth centers
A free space should be created and the young people should be given the opportunity to shape their free time themselves and fill it with life according to their ideas. Such projects can only survive if enough young people are involved and are regularly involved, since events only take place if they have been organized by the young people themselves. This is intended to encourage the participants to feel responsible at an early stage and to train them to think independently, since all decisions must be made jointly by all young people involved in the youth center. The aim is to make decisions by consensus .
Such concepts aim to ensure that young people have to shed a consumer mentality, since nothing is offered in the centers that the users have not initiated themselves. The profit is a maximum degree of creative freedom for the young people. By eliminating staff, their costs are also eliminated - the funds saved are invested as directly as possible in leisure activities in the centers and used to subsidize prices, for example for drinks.
Well-known autonomous youth centers
- Culture shock cell in Reutlingen (originally founded in 1968 as gallery cell )
- Epple House in Tübingen (since 1972)
- Worker Youth Center Bielefeld (since 1973)
- Autonomous Youth Center Burglengenfeld (since the mid-1970s) ( Anti-WAAhnsinns Festival )
- Georg von Rauch House (since 1971)
- Reithalle in Bern (occupied from 1981 to 1982 and since 1987)
- Red factory in Zurich (since 1980)
- UJZ Glocksee and UJZ Kornstraße in Hanover (both since 1972)
- Ungdomshuset in Copenhagen
- Social center Norderstedt
- Kulturzentrum Gassergasse in Vienna, Austria (from 1981 until it was vacated in 1983)
- SJZ Siegburg (from 1992 to 2016)
- AJZ Denzlingen (since 1972)
See also
Web links
- On the history of youth centers in West Berlin & the FRG 1971-1973 Written summary of a TV documentary
Individual evidence
- ↑ TELEVISION: Dirty feet . In: Der Spiegel . No. 32 , 1971 ( online ).