Reflecting on discussion in class about what images a Community Centre conjures up in people's minds

Last week we were asked to draw a community centre and a 3rd level institution during our Community Development lecture at college.  For the community centre most people drew a building of some sort.  To me it looked like they had probably drawn their own community centre or one nearest them.   Most of them had a single storey.   Most of the views looked at the front of the building.  Most had the front doors closed.  None of them had any people in them.

I drew a picture that had a love heart in the centre of it.  This was supposed to symbolize life,  people and their children.  The heart was surrounded by an open ended circle, which had hands on either side of it.  I thought this could symbolize the openness or open door policy most of the community centres have.    As an after thought I drew a few simplistic houses on the outskirts of the open circle to symbolise the people living amongst   "community centres".   They were integral to all of the people who used them, for a myriad of different reasons and occasions, but also seemed to me, to be used mainly by the locals of the area.



Rough sketch of what came to mind thinking about community centres...

The image I had in my head was one of togetherness and caring.  It was for me, the "centre" or "hub" of any area that has a community centre and one that stood as a kind of resource centre for the people who live around the locality.

The 3rd Level Buildings were portrayed quite differently.  Most of them were big two or three storey buildings. Many of them had steps up to the door.  They were also mainly drawn from the front view, again with a closed door.   They had loads of windows and some had quite a few extensions or add on buildings.   They were all very formal looking, built in a traditional way, the  way you would expect a formal education building to look.

Again I had a very different looking picture.  I drew a H block.  The H was supposed to represent the division of the educators and the students.  On the top half space of the H, I drew a few ? and a few ! - This to me symbolised the formal educators on the one side  (at the top) and on the bottom half of the H, I drew loads of ????????.  These represented the students at the bottom, questioning the other half.

Rough sketch of what  came to mind thinking about a 3rd level institution...

 

When we started out we had no idea why we were being asked to do this,  but it turned into a very interesting session.  It showed, generally speaking, how we view things to do with  "community" quite differently to how we  represent other more formal aspects of our lives, and how most people saw community centres in quite a negative way, without even realising they did so.