The Third Face of Organizing: An Ecological Framework for Youth-Led Cultural Organizing

• In Event: Roundtable Session 17
  In Roundtable Session: Youth Organizing: Intersections of Justice, Art, and Caring

Abstract

As young people organize to address injustice in their schools and communities, their activism is intertwined with music, dance, visual art, ceremony, performance, and the creative use of mass media. At this intersection of youth organizing and cultural work, a new field is emerging: youth cultural organizing. This paper offers a comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding youth cultural organizing. Based on an ethnographic study of the Boston-based youth organization Project HIP-HOP, this paper shows how youth cultural organizing can serve as a way for young people to develop as artistic cultural leaders while supporting social justice movements and counteracting the detrimental effects of dominant discourses that frame young people of color and their communities as problems rather than solutions.

Author

• Paul Kuttner, University of Utah