Exercising ‘the right to research’: Youth‐based community media production as transformative action

Abstract

This article explores the participatory media practices used by the Center for Urban Pedagogy, a non-profit community-based media organisation in New York City. Taking as her point of departure a digital media investigation into bodegas in the south Bronx (neighbourhood grocery stores), the author explores how CUP uses the power of art and design to cultivate civic engagement among youth, in part by strengthening participants' public speaking, digital media and research skills. In interviews with participants, the author finds that this work mitigates participants' expressed fears of being dismissed as boring when speaking with public officials, a fear taken seriously through a reading of the work of child psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott. Winnicott worried that the person who felt boring too often retreated from participating in civic life. If, argues the author, youth are to claim what Appadurai describes as the fundamental 'human right to research' in the public realm, then the civic as well as the psychological dimensions that enable participants to engage in transformative action must be strengthened.

Facilitating Creative Media Production through the Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: A Case Study with Vulnerable Young People

“…First, since youth is a phase of life during which people reflect on their identities in particular, the vulnerable young people were naturally interested in identity processing and thus in the tasks (Cope and Kalantzis 2010). Second, as many young people had a negative self-image, these tasks opened an opportunity to process their identity and potentially to start looking at themselves in a more positive light, which desirably affected their motivation (Salvio 2013). Third, the identity-related tasks provided the youth a chance to explore and discover their interests and strengths.…”

Participação infantil, imaginação e infância: contribuições para a divulgação científica

“…O Centro de Pedagogia Urbana (CUP, uma organização sem fins lucrativos de Nova Iorque/Estados Unidos da América) propôs uma investigação em torno de um problema comum no Bronx: os desertos alimentares. A partir dessa questão foi montado um grupo formado por jovens locais, educadores e profissionais de diversas áreas para a produção de um curtametragem 16 que abordasse esse tema (SALVIO, 2013). O autor analisa o movimento proposto pelo CUP em relação à autenticidade da participação dos jovens.…”