My name is Quinten, I’m 13 years old and I live in a village called Bergambacht. I love to sing, dance and act. I want to become an actor or dancer. I live with my father, mother and my brother called Kylian. I would love to travel the world. One thing that's really important to me is my family and friends.
My name is Jesse I am 12 year old. I live in the Netherlands in a small village called Lopik. I live here together with my sister called Britt, my parents and my dog called Noortje. In my free time I like to play football and do gymnastics. I also like to photograph. My ambition is to get a nice job. I would also like to travel the world. Maybe one day I will come to India too.
My name is Yanique, I am 13 years old and I play football. I live in Haastrecht, I live in 2 houses. I have 2 sisters, Nina and Evi. In one house I have 2 cats and 3 bunnies. In the other house I have 2 cats. I have one cat and 1 bunny for myself. The cat is called Muis and the bunny is called Baas. I like to play on my PS4 and play football. I don’t know yet what my ambition is, if I get a good earning job I think it is perfect. I would like to travel around the world because I would like to learn different languages and cultures.
My name is Yamani, I’m 13 years old and I like playing football. In my free time I like to play outside with my friends. My ambition is to become drôle a doctor or to be a pilot. I live in the Netherlands in a small city called Schoonhoven. I have 3 brothers and 0 sisters. I like to play games on my telephone, I also like to watch YouTube. I have no pets.
We are on the Schoonhovens College. We do TTO, which means we have bilingual education. Vandalism or graffiti Regions Project The map is shown at the top of this page. We are going to do research on this question in a part of Schoonhoven. We chose for a region around the school because we think here is the most vandalism and graffiti found of the city, even though there isn’t a lot of graffiti in Schoonhoven, and vandalism is often fastly fixed (not always). The exact number is a radius of 300 metres around the Schoonhovens College. So we will probably find some vandalism and graffiti. We want to interview a lot of people here and find out more.
Interview outcomes We interviewed random people on the street, so unknown people:
Hans, 45 years old
Ole, 27 years old
Catherina, 41 years old
Sophie, 34 years old
Marcel, 59 years old
Tim, 11 years old
Stijn, 11 years old
Maurits, 12 years old
Noa, 11 years old
Kas, 12 years old
Caretaker Hans, .. years old
Public Authority, Police person: Marianne, 39 years old
We used the answers to the interview questions to answer the questions from the the Student Scenario.
Summarised Answers Do you often see vandalism or graffiti on the streets? Where? Most people said ‘yes’ as an answer to this question. They mostly saw graffiti on walls, electricity boxes, and on public places like where people are skating and along the roads. They did not often see vandalism in the city of Schoonhoven, because Schoonhoven isn’t a big city, but in for example Rotterdam graffiti is more often seen, is what some people mentioned.
What do you think of graffiti? Most people think graffiti is nice if it is sprayed by artists but they also think it is a waste of money. They think the money should better be used for schools and to make public places nicer. Most people don’t like vandalism. They think it is crazy that people destroy other people’s stuff without a reason. Some people don’t mind the vandalism and graffiti, because they wouldn’t have a job without this. So that shows another perspective of how you could look at it.
Have you ever done anything to do with vandalism or graffiti? Or did you saw someone doing it? Yes: What? Do you regret it? No: Would you ever consider to do this? Most of the people said no and some people said ‘yes’. When people said ‘yes’ it was often legal, so they had the right to spray graffiti. We met one person who didn’t want to say what he did, so we think it may be something illegal. When people said ‘no’, they never considered to ever spray graffiti or doing vandalism. This could be for the reasons like: that the person was not a dominant type, or that he/she thought it is crazy to do something like this, or that they aren’t so artistic to spray a nice painting.
Who do you think is the perpetrator of the vandalism and grafitti? Most people think that people between the age of 16-20 spray graffiti and do vandalism. They think that because they think that young people are most fit and for other reasons that are mentioned in the next question. Some people also thought that teenagers do this kind of stuff. Two men thought that the perpetrators were the people with a tinted skin color, which we think is a little racist and naive.
Why do you think people do this? Most people said that people do it for friends to look tough and to be a part of the friend group or to put an autograph . Another person said that the reason could be the kick. The kick that people get if they are not caught by the police for example. But of course not the artists, they do it because they like it and that can be beautiful. ‘ Artist can put their emotions and frustrations in their paintings.
Would you say something to people who are e.g. breaking a bus stop? Most people don’t often see somebody doing vandalism or spraying graffiti. Something special was that almost all the adults immediately said: Yes! Of course! Instead, all of the kids that we interviewed said: No, I wouldn’t. Probably the smaller kids don’t dare to say something, because the vandalists often are older. Some children also think it‘s cool to do vandalism or to spray graffiti, so they would ‘support’ this.
Public authority
What does the police do to prevent vandalism?
The police makes sure that the right people are mobilized. For example schools, municipalities and social workers. They arrest people who damage things, and refer to Halt, who confronts the damagers with what they’ve done.
Who is the cause of vandalism?
Most people who do this are between 10 to 20 years old. There is not a specific kind of race who do such things.
Does the police spend much money to repair the consequences of vandalism?
We don’t spend money to repair the consequences of vandalism, but the government does. We only take the people who are responsible for this.
Plan to stop vandalism and graffiti on our school You could hang up more cameras so you see every part of the school and a big part around it so if people do it somewhere close to the school they are spot on the cameras. And if they get caught by the cameras they get a heavy punishment so they will never do it again and that way less people will do it because they are afraid that they are going to get caught and get a punishment again. Because of that they are not only going to stop with vandalism or graffiti at the school but everywhere, that they quit with it forever because they don’t want to risk getting caught again. That could be a good way for stopping it and it could be tried. Photos We concluded the most graffiti and vandalism is done on public meeting places. Mostly in the centre of Schoonhoven, or for example near the Lidl and Plus. Beneath there are 5 pictures of graffiti and vandalism in Schoonhoven
Graffiti near the shops
Vandalism: Broken window of a shop
Graffiti on a electricity box
Graffiti in a neighbourhood in Schoonhoven
Graffiti in a tunnel
Graffiti on a shop near the school
Vandalism on school On our school vandalism doesn’t happen very often, and when it happens, it’s not too bad. Examples are texts written on the walls of the toillets. We couldn’t photograph this, because the caretaker had cleaned it, which is good. Other recent examples are sealingplates with holes in it, or texts on other places like tables in the school (see pictures below). When people caught while doing something like this, the bill of the damage will be send to the parents. In case of texts on walls or tables, the perpetrator has to clean everything himself. By doing this, vandalism on school is prevented!
Hole in the sealingplat
Conclusion The conclusion is that most people have never done something that relates to graffiti and/or vandalism, but some have done something like that. So we would say that about 2 out of 10 people have ever done something that relates to graffiti and/or vandalism. A lot of people only like graffiti when professional artists have done it. But everyone thinks that graffiti is a waste of money and that vandalism is horrible.
Reflection Jesse: I thought the cooperation went quite well. The dividing of the tasks went very well, we didn’t have problems with that. Something that I went a bit wrong was that we didn’t really dare to ask people for an interview at the beginning. I think we could have saved a lot of time if this had been going more fluently. I have learned a lot, like that most people think graffiti is okey when it is artistic and about what the police does to prevent vandalism.
Quinten: I think the cooperation went okay. It could be better. The division of the tasks went quite well. Something which wasn’t good was the interviewing part. We spent a lot of time walking around because we didn’t dare to ask people the questions. But once we interviewed a few people it went better. I’ve learned a lot during this project, especially that quite some people like graffiti but that they would stop someone from doing vandalism or graffiti.
Yanique: I think the tasks were divided well and we all did something the whole time. We talked together often so the cooperation was good too. But we should have done more interviews in less time because that took a long time which we could have invested better. But the last few interviews went fast because we talked to everyone who we saw. I didn’t really learn a lot during the project but I think it was a nice project.
Yamani: I think our cooperation went really well and the tasks were also divided well. But I think it took a lot of time for us to interview people, so a lot of time was lost. I learned that people do not like vandalism and that they only like graffiti if it is sprayed by a professional or else they think it is a waste of money and that people could better use the money for something useful. I think that this was a nice project to make.