Listening to Community (Hi)Stories: Examining Child-DJs’ Speculative Civic Literacies Evidenced Through Be(ing) Loud

• In Event: Amplifying Youth Voices in Hip-Hop Literacies and Sonic Storytelling

Abstract

Drawing on data generated during a multi-year research-practice partnership, the author illustrates how child-led radio offers new possibilities for young people to network meaningfully with local communities. By foregrounding child-led questions generated during “Hot Seat” conversations with adult leaders in their local community, the author traces how child-DJs’ used questions alongside follow-up conversations as a chance to contemplate–and speculate–more preferable and just social futures while sustaining cultural connections to diverse community (hi)stories. Ultimately, the author notes how child-DJs’ interviews with community elders provided “fertile ground to disrupt dominant narratives” (Greene, 2021, p. 41) about children’s interest in discussing community (hi)stories by re-positioning them as an “integral part of the community-as people worth talking to” (Hadley, 2019, p. 39).

Authors

• Cassie J. Brownell, University of Toronto

• Melissa Arasin, University of Toronto