Santa Cruz and La Laguna resorted yesterday to artistic and cultural activities to enhance the International Youth Day, with hundreds of young people who enjoyed singing, dancing, to the rhythm of percussion with video game tournaments, with body painting or even made a large mural, as happened in Aguere.
In the capital of Tenerife, the leisure offer was polarized in two centers of youth attraction. In the morning, at Casa Siliuto, in the neighborhood of El Toscal, in the afternoon, at the Centro Cívico Nuevo Obrero, in Ofra, with the addition of the offer that the sixth district of Santa Cruz of Tenerife, the Young District. With the presence of the Councilor for Youth, Claudia Monzón, the events began at Casa Siliuto from the middle of the morning, an offer that allows the promotion of luxury facilities that were put into operation on July 22, 2021.
Almost a hundred young people, between the ages of 14 and 35, joined the Blue Joven presentation yesterday morning, which took place in the multipurpose room located on the ground floor of this facility, which is located in the neighborhood of El Toscal. Karaoke, zumba, black stories, the Got Talent championship, a water party and DJ performances continued until around nine at night.
Claudia Monzón took advantage of the celebration of the International Youth Day to brag about the offer that is launched by the Department in the Siliuto House, to highlight the welcome among the youngest: in June half a thousand users passed through here, tells a of those in charge of programming, which specifies: «Precisely today –August 12– we commemorate one year of the presence of Casa Siliuto in social networks», the best allied support in the search for new participants in this enclave.
In the Siluto House
Around noon, Fifty young people dance Zumba while listening to the lyrics of the song: «Go to the Canary Islands without luggage and without anything in return». Among the participants, yesterday the call was supported by a group from Morocco, as well as from Ukraine and the Ivory Coast, together with the residents of the capital.
The Casa Siliuto staff presumes that in this enclave it is International Youth Day from Monday to Sunday, from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. “We even have a Ponos program point, from the Cabildo de Tenerife, from which an itinerary for joining the labor market is provided,” explains the Santa Cruz Councilor for Youth.
Although all the Youth Day activity is held in the multipurpose room of Casa Siliuto, Claudia Reverón presents one of the rooms that is the jewel of this facility in the El Toscal neighbourhood: the recording room where any group that requests it You can make use of these dependencies for free, with the only requirement that those who request it must have a sound technician. “Here we have a mixing table like the one the singer has Alejandro Sanz in his house”, boasts the mayor. From there, she takes the opportunity to show the meeting room, another with a dozen computers and even a table tennis room. “I thought that this sport no longer had so many followers but it is very popular in El Toscal,” says the councilor, who specifies that this space also alternates as an area for computer games.
Mascareno House
The success of the Casa Siliuto model is now being exported by Casa Mascareño, on Venezuela Avenue, where the bidding documents for the commissioning are in the drafting phase. «I trust that it can be launched before the end of this year», explains Claudia Reverón.
Among the regulars at Casa Siliuto, who did not want to miss Youth Day, Leyre, a 17-year-old girl. Although she is a neighbor of La Gallega, her academic life has been linked to the Colegio de Las Salesianas, where she begins high school in September.
The first contact with Casa Siliuto was through Instagram, in April. «I began to follow her and they sent me notifications of her acts, and I even ended up going with my boyfriend to an exhibition. I also participated in a virtual reality activity.”
María, who celebrates her fifteenth birthday next week, is a fourth-year ESO student at the Bernabé Rodríguez Institute. A resident of Barranco Grande, she found out about Casa Siliuto because “we had to do a job and didn’t know where to go; a friend told me that her brother used to come here». This was the beginning of a bond that began last May and has given way to her participation in the activities of Casa Siliuto.
In the afternoon, from five to nine at night, the offer for the International Youth Day was extended to the New Worker Citizen Center, in Ofra, where the participants managed to combine up to seven activities at the same time: escape room, sport games tournament, body painting, stencil graffiti, 3D Hammas, Origami, bag customization, percussion, urban dance and free style, with raffles included.
Urban art in La Laguna
On the occasion of the celebration of International Youth Day, the headquarters of the General Directorate in Tenerife –the Atlantic Center for Youth–, in The lagoon, hosted an event in which the winners of the first and second graffiti prizes of the 2021-2022 Youth and Culture Contest painted their mural live. “At the same time, another group of young people participate in the realization of a collaborative mural through a workshop that the TrashLab collective is teaching,” they detailed from the Government of the Canary Islands.
Miguel Vera and Daniela Vásquez are the winners of the aforementioned contest and who yesterday they made their works, entitled Fluctation and We will never shut up again, respectively. «The sketch picks up the environmental theme, which was what the event was about. I mixed it with the themes of urban art, ”explained the first, 25 years old and in the graffiti world since he was twelve. «In the contest there were several topics and I chose gender equality. This mural tries to raise the voice of women so that we do not remain silent in the face of violence and mistreatment. We want to represent different bodies, races… and that all women feel identified, “said Vásquez, also, like Vera, a resident of the island of Gran Canaria.
A symbolic award
«From the General Directorate of Youth we have considered creating a space where the kids who won the contest could make their mural a reality; that it was not just a symbolic or economic prize, ”said the general director of Youth of the Government of the Canary Islands, Laura Fuentes, who this Friday went to the place of the initiative. “We have made another space, which is a collaborative graffiti workshop”, she highlighted about the action, and completed that everything was framed within the European Year of Youth.
The enclosure also had a food and rest area with picnic tables with benches and a lawn. There, at mid-morning, the participants regained their strength and prepared for the rest of the day, which was scheduled to end with a concert by Elena la Cangreja at 6:00 p.m.
