THE UNDERGROUND IS DENOTES AN INSTITUTIONAL IDEA OF REBELLION.THE TERM 'ALTERNATIVE MAINSTREAM' HOLDS THE KEY TO A DEMOCRATIC FUTURE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE.

Teenagers in the city have limited control and access to publically funded venues. Gig spaces, cafes, bars, shopping precincts; even schools after hours are out of bounds to certain age groups. Where is there to hang out outside of your bedroom? In order to explore their artistic ideas and political views, with other young people, it has been necessary for young people to create an 'alternative mainstream' for poltiking, and alternative settings or spaces which may be turned into venues. These innovations stem from friendship groups; from the schoolyard, from open air conventions (like at the dawn of hip-hop in New York),from up late-at-night musicmaking. Freelancers annaugurate their rebel's view of the future.

This alternative mainstream is nothing like the romantic and radical chic ideal of an Underground. With the internet, there is no longer a time difference between events being born locally and internationally. In everyday terms, the arts cannot be separated from commerce or pop culture as it exists in the consumer/commuter's domain. Alternative mainstreamers are not identified members of one club (suburban black-youth; indiephiles; punks; nu-mettlers, careerists); they will dip in and out of many different worlds with skill.

The creation of new public spaces by young people centres around a new ideal of politics and the shifting 'space' in which work takes place. Self-esteem is no more derived from a daytime job than working in the often cited fast-food industry would be. Uniforms; intricate company hierarchies; employees replaced like machine componants both have come to represent facelessness. Such career paths are viewed like a game of Blackboard Jungle; the winner or the maverick who excels too much in his job is over the cliff in seconds. In this world of the 'mainstream', individuality equals instability or, at least, a dissatisfaction of perching on the edge of failure. So, how do the new politics and 'work' take place in this new social arena?

Clearly, with the decline in youth voting, parliamentary process is not addressing the lifestyle of young people. The reassertion of a 'job for life' and the one-stop career are at odds with the ambitions of the new freelancer. Corporations and institutions built up as international fortresses - this includes our present museum system - are pitted against the idea of the multi-tasking individual, left to spot a niche in popular culture and marketing their own particular products, or even to propose themselves as idea-men for hire. On the back of the changeover about five years ago from cassette promos for record companies to CDR promos, Ben Woolley created his whole multi-million pound company, 10th Planet, by coming up with a marketable freelancer's alternative to the mainstream. He experimented with using CDs as quick turnaround single promos for record companies, rather than the less realiable cassette format. This was an instant success and changed the whole industry.

Social spaces, especially those focused around music, allow for 'idea building/ exchange of imaginative ideas' through interaction and participation in performances. Historically, trade unions striking, or rioting (like the Brixton riots in 1981), or the LA riots after the beating of Rodney King by the police, defined the ritual of rebellion.

'LAPD [Los Angelos Police Department] We Treat You Like a King.'

Alternative venues give containment to rebellion and innovation like the sub-bass hike-ups at U.K.Garage clubs like the Pineapple; dance-offs at skate parks like Westbourne Park; speakers before/ during shows at the Swan in Tottenham; the Lord Cecil Pub and all ages all dayers at the Astoria; 48 hour techno warehouse parties and trance weekenders shifting to gypsy camps; leisure centre Welsh b-boys on acid.

I like Whitehouse but the sound of sadism is not the sound of the future.

The 2003 white paper in education, which has just been released will cause a huge overhaul in the way higher education in the arts is structured. With arts institutions at the bottom of the table for admittance of ethnic-origin or working-class students, they must change admissions policies or see government permitted top-up fees capped. The most striking flaw in the application process has been the language with which young people have been forced to define themselves, the language of art/music history or the language of a prescribed culture. Who is able to express themselves in a climate that recognises acts of rebellion only if they present themselves as inverted acts of conformity?

I like to imagine queen Elizabeth I at court with her breasts on show in a cut-out bodice receiving the French ambassador*7. She was deliberately confusing the boundaries between politics,sexuality and style and at the highest level of culture. It is not just that music has broken down boundaries through bootlegging, cross fertilisation of genres and orchestras, or the sound of volcanoes on hand in your bedroom. The roles of artist and audience are far more interactive. Music cannot be viewed as some fundamental form of communication; this is too simple. It functions in live environments as heightened, group self-expression. Crowds also invoke and shape the individual's inner world of thoughts. With the breakdown of categories will come the blurring between mediums. Music, dance, lyrics, recitation, plus collapse and excitement, will all influence the makeup of future spaces. The move from bedroom to workshop before entry into higher education will trigger a demand for Higher Education Institutes to broaden their perceptions of acceptability. Courses will include cross-fertilisation: designing houses becomes designing communal spaces, becomes designing arts spaces and political contexts. For every avenue of global expansion in industry and prescibed culture there will be disruption and reordering at local level.