Recognizing Young People’s Civic Engagement Practices: Rethinking Literacy Ontologies through Co-Production

Abstract

In this article I argue that it is important to find a language to describe youth engagement practices in informal settings. I argue that many young people do not have the resources to be heard on visible platforms, but their work, and meaning making practices might provide important information about their ideas and relay key concepts about how communicational practices are constructed. Drawing on embedded, ethnographic and artistically informed projects with young people in communities, I argue for a deeper kind of listening. Artistic forms such as poetry, visual art, dance and music are important modes of engagement. I draw on cultural practice theory together with theory from new literacy studies and media studies to explore four questions: How do you craft what you know? How do you speak/make what you feel? How do you transform practice? How do you articulate action? I see these as components of the process of producing relationally oriented modes of address that others can also engage with. Taken together, they suggest a language of description for the mode that is civic engagement communicational practice, that is, oriented beyond individual experience but drawing from experience to make change happen in relational ways.