Young people’s experiences and meaning-making at a multicultural festival in Norway

Abstract

This article explores young people's experiences and meaning-making at a multicultural festival. Multicultural festivals aim to promote inclusion and challenge problem-oriented discourses in current debates on diversity and migration. Listening to youth voices from such a festival gives a sense of how young participants perceive representations of cultural difference, and how they relate these representations to their own identity and sense of belonging. The participants in our study are 86 young people from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds between the ages of 12 and 20. They recorded answers to our questions about what they did at the festival as well as the memories that participation evokes using a specially developed app. Interpreting the broad spectrum of their reflections in the light of theories about intercultural learning and citizenship, we found that the young people were eager to learn about the Other by experiencing cultural differences and engaging with traditions different to their own. In addition, they experienced the festival as an inclusive space, open for transnational identities, and evoking a sense of safety and belonging. We conclude by arguing that the young participants take with them experiences and memories of diversity as the norm rather than the exception.

Listening to young people’s voices: Attempts at developing context- and participant-sensitive approaches

“…My Memory App was designed to allow the young festival participants to speak freely on site, that is, without adult supervision and presence, as they were experiencing the festival here-and-now. We first analyzed these interviews for an article (see Dewilde et al, 2021) about young people’s experiences and meaning-making. In this process, we experienced that some responses became more central to our analysis than others.…”

“…As noted in the introduction, we first analyzed the data in line with the central concepts in our fields related to intercultural learning and citizenship (Dewilde et al, 2021). Returning to the data now anew, we made a conscious effort to listen openly to the recordings by prolonging the listening phase and delaying categorization.…”

“…1 The app provided interview prompts in many languages that could be answered in a private space in the respondent's chosen language at the multicultural festival. The result was a rich and interesting dataset that we have previously analyzed in Dewilde et al (2021). Our next step was to write about My Memory App from a methodological perspective; in doing so, we reanalyzed the data.…”

“…In this article, we contribute to the discussion of children’s voices in research by emphasizing the significance of listening in the phase of analyzing data. The voices we have listened to belong to young people in a research project in which we explored what characterized their experiences and meaning-making while attending multicultural school and community events (Dewilde et al, 2021). Aspiring to develop a context- and participant-sensitive approach to multicultural events, our research team has aimed to utilize the adaptability of qualitative methods to adjust to age groups, activities, and geographical contexts.…”

Exploring special events' potential to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion: a study of salient factors in a local festival during COVID-19

“…The correlation between variables will be determined by a series of statistical analyses. Prior research has indicated that attending to attendees' opinions, attitudes, and experiences of a festival can help identify how they perceive the festival as it relates to their own identity and sense of inclusion (Dewilde, et al, 2021). As a result of the aforementioned attributes of the True/False Film Fest, the research deemed attendees of this festival event to be the appropriate target population to explore personal experiences of diversity, equity, and inclusion within a festival setting.…”