1st Edition
Youth Voice and Participatory Arts in Global Development
Youth Voice and Participatory Arts in Global Development looks at how arts-based methods can promote youth voice and engagement in global development.
This book argues that engaging young people’s diverse voices, ideas and knowledges in matters that affect them is vital in enabling young people to become – and be recognised as – active citizens, developing more inclusive societies and ensuring that development programmes remain accountable to the young people they aim to benefit. We draw on youth-led participatory research projects from across Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America, which used a range of art forms and engagement mechanisms, including participatory filmmaking, street art and the intersection of formal and non-formal education. Through this process, we develop the conceptualisation of transrational voice for epistemic justice and demonstrate the unique role that arts-based methods play in enabling this broad conceptualisation of voice that accounts for the multiple dimensions of young people's knowledges and experiences.
This book will be of interest to researchers within international development, arts and youth studies, as well as to development practitioners, and anyone interested in promoting epistemic justice with and for young people.
Preface
The May Group
Chapter One: Youth Voice, Epistemic Justice and Arts-Based Development
Chapter Two: Young People in the Context of Global Challenges and Development Policy
Chapter Three: Theorising (Youth) Voice, ‘Sayability’ and the Transrational
Chapter Four: The Transrational Art of Youth Development
Chapter Five: Socio-Economic Justice through Participatory Processes
Chapter Six: The Transrational, Education and Social Change
Chapter Seven: Moving the Conversation On
Appendix: Summary of the Main Commissioned Changing the Story Projects
Biography
The May Group consists of:
Alyson Brody is an established gender and social inclusion researcher and consultant, with a background in social anthropology. She is the Former Head of BRIDGE, a gender and development research and policy programme at the Institute of Development Studies.
Paul Cooke is Centenary Professor of World Cinemas, University of Leeds, UK. The films he has produced have been shown at over 100 film festivals and have won over 50 awards.
Lou Harvey is Associate Professor in Education at University of Leeds, UK. Their research has focused on various educational settings, including higher education, informal arts-based education, adult migrant language education and social circus.
Katie Hodgkinson is a Lecturer in Education in Global Development at the University of Leeds, UK. Her research primarily examines youth engagement in formal and non-formal education for social justice and peacebuilding in conflict-affected contexts.
Faith Mkwananzi is a research fellow at the Centre for Development Support at the University of the Free State, South Africa. Her work is interdisciplinary and located at the intersection of (higher) education and global development.
Inés Soria-Donlan is Research Manager: Creativity, Partnerships & Impact at the Horizons Institute, an interdisciplinary research incubator to address complex challenges at the University of Leeds, UK. She has worked with participatory arts approaches across the cultural and research sectors since 2013.
"This volume provides an important reflection on youth engagement through participatory arts processes and projects in order to explore the wider connotations of epistemic justice and epistemic freedom within systems and networks. It introduces a range of case studies to better understand how interrelationships between young people, civil society organisations, NGOs/INGOs, cultural organisations and wider government bodies generate and reflect questions of power. It is an essential read for any individuals or organisations who seek to work with and for children and young people."
Ananda Breed, Professor of Theatre and Director of Research in the School of Creative Arts, University of Lincoln, UK.
"This original and thought-provoking book is organised around reflections arising from the many and varied projects incubated under the umbrella of Changing the Story. Central to these is the notion that ‘Transrational voice … has the potential to support … ecologies of action’. Through the concept of the transrational the book sets out examples of how young people – always an asset, never a problem – can use arts-based processes and products to make interventions into the often unjust and oppressive status quo which has historically limited their capacity to ‘name their own world’. The book ends by asking: ‘… how can we build ecologies of action that enable transrational voice to contribute to epistemic justice and transformative change?’ I suggest that the insights offered by the ground-breaking research described in these pages will only change the story when policy-makers take it down from the shelf and turn them into action."
Tim Prentki, Emeritus Professor of Theate for Development, University of Winchester, UK.
