Many of our members are creative artists. Some of them in their exuberance choose to share their work by hanging it on the walls at North Star. Sometimes they decide to liven up a room with stickers. These teens are well-intentioned, but when we told them that we are not in favor of self-directed interior decorating, they asked with some interest, “Is there a rule? How do we get permission to hang things?”
My answers were, “We have very few written rules, and only vague ones that might apply to hanging things on walls. I think you are supposed to ask somebody, but I don’t really know who might be in charge of giving permission for it to be put on a wall. I certainly don’t want to be in charge of such decisions!”
The staff decided the best way to achieve some clarity would be to discuss the topic at our weekly community meeting. We knew that after the time taken for weekly announcements and birthday wishes, we would have about 15 minutes to discuss the topic with the group.
I chose to facilitate this conversation. All of the staff and approximately half of our teens were present. Fortunately, all of the teens involved in the decorating were in attendance.
I began, “I’m wondering what our process and rules are for interior decorating? Some of you are enthusiastically choosing to beautify our walls, but I’m not comfortable with a free-for-all. Some places might be off-limits, some tape and stickers damage the paint, and some of your memes and cartoons aren’t funny to everyone.”
Many teens wanted to share their views. At first, several youth proposed that we designate a particular staff member to be the Wall-Decorating Approval person. None of the staff were particularly eager to take on this responsibility, and we suggested perhaps some teens might want to be part of the decision-making process.
Teens then proposed a number of ideas, such as:
- Designating a specific wall for hanging art.
- Creating a corkboard specifically for displaying art.
- Covering a wall with butcher paper so that the art might be easily changed over time.
- Covering a wall with large white boards for drawing.
- Painting a wall with chalkboard paint for drawing.
One teen wanted to know what would be the rule for drawing on top of others’ work in some of these options, which resulted in the unanimous conclusion of: “No vandalizing the vandalism.”
The perpetrators of the recent art decorating and stickering were mildly apologetic. One offered to bring in a steamer to remove the items without damaging the walls. They cheerfully defended their aesthetic tastes and desire to improve our atmosphere while acknowledging that perhaps we should have some system for deciding who puts what up where inside North Star.
As we were running out of time, perhaps about 6-8 teens and staff expressed a desire to follow up on the conversation and return with some proposals.
A week later, the stickers have been removed, and no new art has been hung on the walls aside from some teen-made posters for our Halloween Party. There is still no clear rule, nor is there any specific person(s) identified to judge what can be put up. So, our artists still don’t really know what to do.
However, the conversation at community meeting achieved much good will with a solid amount of humor. Everyone grasps the main idea that no one is free to just hang up their creations wherever they wish. I expect we will have some follow-up meeting from those who would like to handle requests going forward and that they will identify themselves and their criteria at a future meeting. It didn’t happen at the following week’s community meeting, though, because we were prepping for the Halloween Party that night. The decorations were ready to go.
