A MINORITY may call it urban art, but to most people graffiti is an ugly scar in areas that would benefit from beautifying, not defacing.

In Christchurch, the Grange Pact (Partners and Communities Together) has been working with young people and spreading the gospel that graffiti is far from cool.

After hearing "tags" were beginning to appear around the town, Christchurch safe schools and communities officer Gary Evans set up a pair of meetings at the Grange School.

The first was to invite members of the Somerford community in and talk to Year Nine pupils about their concerns.

At the second meeting local beat bobby PC Andrew Morton explained about graffiti and the law and John Hazeldine, a borough council environmental officer, explained the high cost of cleaning up the daubings.

"Individually, the tags can cost anything between £30 to £60 to clean," said SSCO Evans.

"The first part of this programme is about making the young people aware of how graffiti effects members of the community, particularly in terms of making them feel unsafe.

"The students engaged well with the visitors and appeared to really value and understand the issues they had with graffiti."

Now the youngsters are working on a presentation which they will use to campaign against graffiti and try to influence others to think twice before defacing property and committing an act of criminal damage.

SSCO Evans said graffiti was not a major problem in Christchurch.

GrangeWard councillor Denise Jones agreed it was at a low level, but recently a group calling themselves the Somerford Boys had been leaving their tags around the town.

"I'm very much in favour of the students of the Grange being involved and seeing how much damage is done and how much it can alter the appearance of an area that can be very pleasant," said Cllr Jones.

"I think the more they can get involved in that sort of thing, the better."