Paper short abstract:

The author will present ethnography of youth/music centres in Slovenia. He will discuss egalitarian nature of non-governmental alternative centres. They are spaces of creativity and radical art production, relevant socially and politically, places of confrontation and defence of freedom.

Paper long abstract:

In January 2015, after 25 years of renting the building by the Society of the Admirers of Moderate Progress, the mayor of the town of Koper decided to terminate the contract for the use of the building of the Youth, Cultural, Social, Multimedia, Intergenerational and Museum Centre (MKSMC). This intent caused tremendous revolt among the members of the centre, as well as other activists in similar "grass-roots" youth and music centres in Slovenia.

Non-governmental centres are among the rare places at the present where egalitarian social relations are practiced. Despite the declaratively egalitarian constitutional basis of modern societies, they are, not only in terms of property inequality, hierarchical societies. Profit-making private and non-profit public organizations, including youth centres, are mostly organized hierarchically. Only some organizations of civil society, including youth non-governmental organizations, are organised non-hierarchical.

Based on his recent collaborative ethnographies of youth and music centres in Slovenia, the author will discuss utopic and dystopic elements in everyday activities in those centres. The author will as well address music creativity in these centres.