Make hydroslides free at certain times, have gender neutral toilets and engage through TikTok are among the ideas from the Invercargill City Council to bring youth to its swimming pool.
Splash Palace identified people between the ages of 14-25 were not well engaged with the facility.
Staff asked the Vodafone Foundation to undertake a project to identify the key issues as to why that age group were not participating in services at Splash Palace and what methods could be utilised to increase their participation.
The report was presented to councillors earlier this week by council aquatic services manager Stephen Cook at a community wellbeing committee meeting.
The research found that among the barriers were the cost, hygiene concerns and the lack of more exciting activities in the pools.
It also stated that LGBTQI teenagers felt unsafe with the current changing room set-up.
Proposed solutions were to promote more targeted events like pool parties for youth, improve engagement in their favourite platforms like TikTok, investigate the viability of having more private/individual changing facilities for general use and study possibilities on the pricing of the tickets which could including making hydroslides free at certain times for youth.
Cr Grant Dermody asked if there was any data about the youth attendance drop. Mr Cook said he did not have any specific numbers for this age group, but it was a trend that had been noticed for a long time.
While he commended the efforts and the reasoning behind the report, he asked if Splash Palace was the place where youth would like to socialise as he feared that if more young people used the facility, that could affect other regular groups like families and elderly users.
Mana whenua representative Evelyn Cook also questioned if it was the right approach.
She said the way people engaged in recreational activities had changed.
"As a person who worked in a pool — can I just say 14 to 23 is the ones that you don’t want around if they’ve got no particular purpose in mind because they are the nuisance."
She believed it was important to have them engaging in activities like swimming lessons and sports, but she questioned if it was the right demographic on which to focus.
Chairman Darren Ludlow and Crs Trish Boyle and Lesley Soper disagreed with her.
They believed the swimming pool was the right place to bond.
"We’ve got here an identified group that is not using it in a way that we might expect and some sensible ideas how we might explore this.
"It is not the answer for everything but it is a good start," Cr Soper said.
