Global Youth Arts Collaborative: Participatory Theater for Racial Justice and Health Equity Education

• In Event: Youth Media as Method and Message: Participatory Approaches Toward Educational Equity

Abstract

Objectives:
The Global Youth Arts Collaborative was designed to insert youth voices into media discourses on health disparities and police violence at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic through theatre with young people in Africa and North America. Short dramas were filmed and screened to reach Black communities during the dual pandemics of racial and health injustices.

Theoretical Perspectives:
This project foregrounds collective visions of civic engagement as a driver of improved well-being for communities of color. In social and ecological contexts marked by inequity, arts-based approaches to civic education can “offer counternarratives and images that can build bridges between communities often stuck in singular narratives and political positions” (Rubin, et al., 2021, p. 262). Even in informal education spaces, youth organizing is often de-politicized through adults’ managerialism (Clay & Turner, 2021). Youth’s perspectives on civic education are often informed by and reflective of broader community needs, thus parents and community members are necessary participants in co-creating equitable education experiences (Kendall, 2007), motivating their inclusion throughout the creation and feedback process.

Methods:
We used multimodal invention, which invites interlocutors into sensorial ethnographic practice, to resist the dominance of the researcher’s gaze in favor of co-creating new ways of thinking and doing (Dattatreyan & Marrero-Guillamón, 2019). Drama-based research requires researchers and participants to face inequitable histories together to work towards a shared goal (Gallagher, Yaman Ntelioglou, & Wessels, 2013). Performances were collectively devised based on community surveys, ethnographically filmed, and discussed in public digital spaces. We invited feedback from communities centered in the performed research (Jones, 2002).

Data sources:
Along with youth-produced films of their theatrical performances, we generated ethnographic fieldnotes (Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw, 2011) from observations of workshops, rehearsals, performances and watch parties. Data also included surveys about the social determinants of health in communities of color.

Findings:
The eight youth-produced films highlighted three major themes in civic dialogues on public health: 1) mistrust & misinformation, 2) community-centered messaging, 3) community engagement, trust & awareness. Survey data of youth’s communities in response to their performances showed how community members perceived race-based inequities experienced during the pandemic. The dramas demonstrated how COVID-19 put a spotlight on the interconnected factors that impact health in communities of color spanning education and employment. Many of these core social determinants of health show parallels between the North America and Africa around the theme of how anti-Blackness undergirds inequities in health and health education.

Significance:
Participatory arts projects are valuable research approaches for gaining more nuanced understandings of the ways in which civic engagement drives shared values of health and well-being for Black youth. This project asserts participatory theatre as a corrective to the "interventioning" (Author, 2021) of Black youth around issues of health education. Participants in this project created shared values around health by their own lived experiences and community perspectives on what it means to live a healthy life. Health interventions for Black youth populations can advance visions of equity by centering multimodal inventions such as drama and film as critical texts to inform educational interventions.

Author

• Jasmine L. Blanks Jones, Johns Hopkins University