Story 1: youths
Is Portsmouth’s heritage and public history open to threat? A recent survey carried out on a range of outside visitors to the city, found that many people are put off from visiting certain attractions and exploring certain places in the city by anti social behaviour. The problem, according to the comments and opinions expressed by the randomly selected group, is mainly confined to Southsea and inner city areas of Portsmouth. Some attractions that people named as being particularly affected are Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, Southsea Waterfront (later in the day), the Gunwharf complex, Commercial road and the Charles Dickens birth pace museum. A high level of ‘uneasiness’ was felt by some of the visitors to these locations with one woman saying that she ‘ felt angry and scared’ by people ‘ruining her visit’.
Adam Jenkins (visitor manager at the D-Day Museum, Southsea) said that he has seen evidence of visitors encountering some groups near the entrance to the museum and said that the problem is ‘heightened’ during the summer when many youth groups use nearby Southsea common for parties involving alcohol. He said that ‘it Is a real shame that people would ruin some of Portsmouth’s main selling points’ which in turn would most probably lead to the financial suffering of these cultural locations in the city.
