Hoods

I've been working with teenagers a bit recently, both at a Youth Club and teaching at a Further Education college. Reading the ASBO letters in today's Times made me think:

Teenagers with their hoods up aren't necessarily trying to disguise themselves ready for criminal activity. They are unsure of themselves, afraid of getting things wrong, being put on the spot and stuck for a good answer where ideas of life are concerned. Who are they most convinced by as role models? Their politicians behave like animals, their music heroes are driven by anger, frustration and confusion, where wisdom - which resists fashion - is hard to find.

Gentle people of faith and integrity attempt balanced dialogue in the wings but the shouty tits and farce of tabloids drowns them out, and there is zero tolerance on soul in the Temples of Shopping - our new religious institutions.

If I was a teenager, I'd want to put my hood up while I tried to figure all this out, and if anyone tried to make me take it off I'd probably growl.

These pictures are of some teenagers whose growls I like a lot. They have some good ideas, are socially engaged and make great music. The camera helped us be a bit more honest with each other, so I look at the little contact images of them and wonder what they're telling me, what questions they have and what they want from us.

I'll put more pictures up as I print them with links to another site I'm working on - look out for anything related to 43million.

Until then, my thought for the day would be this: if a hood is a shelter, well, we all need a bit of that don't we?


{today's soundtrack: Leftfield's 'Swords' from Rhythm and Stealth}