Building River Futures Through Art and Advocacy

• In Event: United We Stand: Interdisciplinarity and Progressive Politics in Pre-K–12 Classrooms, Communities, and Curriculum

Abstract

Purpose
As hundreds of millions of dollars flow into the Los Angeles River Ecosystem Restoration Project, the work of urban greening is driving speculative real estate development and gentrification in the primarily Black and Latinx neighborhoods through which the River flows (Kocisky, 2022). To combat this, it is imperative to center riverfront communities in urban planning initiatives to ensure that decision–making is responsive to those with the most to lose or gain. To this end, we explore how engagement in arts–based advocacy and related opportunities for civic engagement supports young people in articulating politically attuned visions for river futures.

Theoretical Framework
Theories of sociopolitical becoming (Nzinga, 2023) provide the conceptual and analytical lens to understand how young people locate themselves as sociopolitical agents in building more just and relational river futures. Specifically, we draw attention to the sociopolitical dimensions of learning to understand the relationships between education and social change–making, in which political clarity can be seen as an anchor for projects of educational justice (McKinney de Royson & Sengupta–Irving, 2019).

Methods and Data Sources
We partnered with a summer youth fellowship hosted by a nonprofit arts organization in Los Angeles. Twelve secondary students from riverfront neighborhoods engaged in a five–week program centered on public space advocacy, natural history, and art–making. We used participatory design research (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016) as our methodological paradigm for engaging in this work: we co–designed the nonprofit's curricular structure and offerings and simultaneously documented student learning via semi–structured interviews and youth–produced artifacts (i.e., maps, journals). We then engaged in thematic coding and cross–comparative analyses to identify if and how youth engaged in political learning toward transformative change.

Findings
Our results highlight how youth participants took up many strategies around historical inquiry, in–the–moment exploration, and future–oriented advocacy around the Los Angeles River. For example, they actively grappled with the tension of desiring more green space around the Los Angeles River while also being concerned about the impacts of green gentrification on their communities. Already politically astute, youth engaged this tension head–on by leveraging a variety of tools and resources (e.g., public art) assembled throughout the program in which engagement was transformed from a mere pedagogical exercise to a fundamentally ethical and consequential endeavor. Ultimately, youth took action toward building river futures that simultaneously revitalize the complex ecologies of Northeast Los Angeles and are also answerable to the enduring legacies of settler colonialism and white supremacy in urban neighborhoods.

Significance
This paper highlights possibilities of when educational environments allow young people to engage seriously with issues of local relevance in historically responsive and culturally relevant ways. Providing youth with interdisciplinary opportunities to pursue their interest–driven inquiries can support them in deepening that astuteness and taking up change–making projects. Designing for learning that is consequential – where the consequences of pedagogical designs extend beyond young people's development toward broader ripples of sociopolitical change – can ultimately contribute to supporting progressive change in and through education (Curnow & Jurow, 2021).

Authors

• Christopher Jadallah, University of California - Los Angeles

• Jackson Gzehoviak, University of California - Los Angeles

• Ayasha Guerin, University of California - Los Angeles