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Paul Johnson: Creative artist and passionate youth worker and advocate

March 9th, 2012
By David Armstrong

If you think that our youth are a lost cause and need straightening out, Paul Johnson would like you to consider an alternative scenario - that properly channeled, young people have a huge contribution to make to our community.

Paul is a specialist youth worker at Get Safe Motueka, tasked with working one-on-one with problematic teenaged lads to refocus them on getting into work and generally reconnecting them with the community.

Born in Gore, Southland 35 years ago, Paul went to high school in Invercargill, studied at art school in Dunedin and Christchurch on the way to his chosen first career in art and sculpture. He was also very much into sport, especially basketball.

In his early 20s he set off on his OE, initially to the UK and Europe for two years and then Australia. Doing a variety of short-term jobs enabled him to travel about and experience life in Central America and Africa.

When he returned to New Zealand in 2002 he got a job at Awaroa as a kitchen hand, four days on and four off. This began his continuing love affair with the park and the towns of Tasman, so he decided to move here permanently.

After that he got a house in Ngatimoti, moved around several places in the Motueka Valley, and became a self-employed artist for about three years, working out of Arts Unique in Marahau. He mounted exhibitions in Nelson and the Tasman district, including the Riverside Cafe.

Paul's sculpturing included work in stone, wood, driftwood furniture, jewellery. "Art and sculpture comes naturally, and it's almost therapeutic to me," he says. "It's a way for me to tap that soul part of me, get closer to the spirit, and it sort of flows through me.

Painting, sculpture and drawing were skills he enjoyed using from his earliest years. "I was always into art. I must've been an easy kid because they would just give me a pen and paper and I would be entertained. Now as an adult it's more three-dimensional stuff."

While living in Ngatimoti, he met his partner of seven years, who had two sons already, and together they now have also a three-year-old daughter.

About six years ago Paul began a new focus on community work in Motueka with young people, complementing his art activities. His first job was with the Motu Weka Neighbourhood Centre beside the Recreation Centre, supervising and coordinating after-school and holiday programmes for primary-aged kids on a casual basis.

During this period he received training for the Rec Centre's OSCAR programme, through the Open Polytech, as well as lots of professional development work. "But it's not rocket science," he says. "It's just a matter of listening to [the young people] and having empathy, and being well connected with the community is great because you can open up opportunities for the young people through the networks."

Three years ago he moved to working two part-time jobs with teenagers. One was at ATET running the Youth Transition Service which helps young people into training or work opportunities - "stuff like helping them with CVs or looking for jobs, working with WINZ and so on".

The other was working for Get Safe with responsibility mainly for 14- to 16-year-old boys on "a one-to-one outreach service", plus some group work, depending on what funding contracts are available.

One group which Paul took a special interest in worked around music. Paul is a musician himself, mainly with percussion instruments like African drums and marimba, and also does quite a bit of DJ work under the name "Taxi".

He says he would like to drive youth work in this direction, if he was able to find funding to do it. Two years ago he worked with some young people to create and record a song called "Boogie Everyday" under the banner of the newly formed Motueka Independent Youth Trust. (View the video and words of the song.)

Last year he worked with some Parklands pupils to write and record the song "We Are Da Kings". Paul says part of his work with them was to guide them to rephrase their words into the affirmative, rather than the usual negative words of rap songs. "Instead of them talking about stopping violence we rephrased it into what it is that we want."

"I have a vision for the music thing. There are so many musicians in this town want to support something like this and are really happy to offer their skills in a mentoring kind of way where you peer-match the kids with musicians with the skills they want to learn, such as matching a kid interested in drumming matched with a drummer."

He set up the trust with this in mind, and would like to establish a permanent course. "To young people, music is a really powerful way for them to express themselves, get their opinions across," he says. "I'm not in the business of telling young people what to do, especially with music.

"What works is just allowing them to jam, and they pick out of that what they wanted to make the song from. The only part where I want to guide the direction somewhat is the lyrics because I want the lyrics to be positive. Some of the music young people listen to these days is full of inflammatory stuff."

Another local activity Paul has helped organise is 'tree walking', in which a group walk across the district planting trees and telling people, especially children, about the importance of looking after the environment. He has done four multi-day tree walks now, the most recent being a 123-kilometre journey taking two weeks in 2010. Music plays a role in these events also.

"I'm really passionate about nature, trees, children and music, and we would get the children in and make up or rewrite the lyrics of popular songs to be about trees.

So far Paul has not tried to introduce his own artistic interests into programmes for young people. He says it's more a personal interest, and he's had to cut it back a little at present. "It's something I do for my own spiritual health.

"But I'd love to be doing more art and music with the kids because both allow the children the creative spirit and to vent or channel certain frustrations and struggles in life. The thing I've seen working best with kids and young people is music and nature. Nature-based activities - taking them out into nature, challenging them physically and mentally. The government's got different ideas about where they want to spend money on young people.

"Teenagers are wanting to take risks, it's a natural part of being a teenager, and the risks they often take are unfacilitated - fast cars, drugs and alcohol and so on which are really dangerous. I'm a great believer in facilitating risk." He cites the work of Whenua Iti and groups such as TRACKS, which provide "rite of passage" camps for teenaged boys and matched men.

Paul is a facilitator at TRACKS events, which aim to allow the different ages to share the stories of the older men and the dreams of the younger men. "Often there is a disconnect between the very young and the very old, and yet when you see them together there's something about it that fits really well," he says.

Paul says his desire to "make the world a better place" has been formed and inspired through travel and seeing how others live, particularly in Africa and some European cities. "And I come back to New Zealand and realise how lucky we are and how good it is here.

"But I do have some frustration around the level of apathy in this country, that 'ignorance is bliss' kind of thing. We could be doing a whole bunch more for the world, like really leading the way. We did it with nuclear free, and we could be doing it on a whole host of issues, but yet there doesn't seem to be much impetus for that.

"But one of the things that I love about this area is that there is heaps of open-minded people to have these conversations with. There is the weather and the scenery, but that is the main reason I live here. There are positive actions happening at the ground level.

"I do have high aspirations for the world," he laughs, "but working with young people is an obvious place to start because they are the future. They have heaps of great ideas. We need to work with them, not against them."

Looking ahead five years, Paul would like to see a youth centre in town with facilitated activities in place, not just a drop-in centre for kids to hang out without guidance. Young people would go there to learn new skills such as cooking, music, art or sculpture workshops.

 
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