Offering free workshops and training, The Street University is all about connecting with young people who would not normally engage with mainstream education.

Manager of The Street University Canberra Lachlan Dean said the centre is about creating community.

"For young people with drug and alcohol issues and homelessness and all of those things, most interventions are really short and sharp, and work really well with people if they have a functional community around them, but most of these young people don't," he said.

"They're not connected to a community, they might not have responsible adults around, or they might not have peers that are actually useful for them. So this space is about getting the young people to build their own communities and form their own ideas."

"If there's more social cohesion they're less likely to turn to drug use, they're less likely to turn to crime, they're less likely to have poor mental health, they're less likely to just not be engaged in school or work."

The project was first launched in Sydney in 2007 by Matt Noffs from the Ted Noffs Foundation, which provides services for at-risk youth.

The Canberra Street University first set up in the space above The Phoenix in the bus interchange late last year after it was repaired following the Sydney Building fire.

As well as providing outreach programs for young people with drug and alcohol issues, the space houses a dance floor, recording studio, computers, rehearsal space, computers and editing equipment. They run workshops on dance, music production, graffiti and hip hop, with plans for hair art and make-up in the future.

The free workshops and facilities are open to all young people, typically from 12 to 25, from all walks of life.

"We get young people from really, really privileged backgrounds, that come from very elite private schools in Canberra that come in to use the space to do creative stuff but they're working side by side with young people that haven't been to school since they were in year 6, and have limited literacy skills, very heavy drug and alcohol dependence, high involvement in crime," Dean said.

"But they'll sit in a group in a workshop and actually share their ideas and thoughts and that's the idea of the community that we're trying to build."

The Canberra Street University has been slowly building up resources, and while they're still more than a week out from officially launching, the centre has seen more than 1000 people pass through since the end of 2015.

Some teens, who had previously been skipping school, are already using the space to work on projects that are counting towards their school qualifications, and the team hopes to eventually partner up with higher education providers to create education pathways.

For information on the workshops, visit facebook.com/streetunicanberra.