Potential Factors of Youth Art Activism: An Overview

• In Event: Cultural Arts, Identity, and Employability Skills: Exploring Youth Development in Diverse Educational Spaces

Proposal

With the proliferation of virtual spaces for engagement and the emergence of globalization-related phenomena including increased interconnectedness and global movements for change, youth activism has become increasingly significant over the past decades. There is an ongoing discourse on the necessity of studying, encouraging, and comprehending this form of activism, as it appears to possess distinct characteristics compared to activism among older individuals. Young activists might face more challenges than adult activists due to their age, lack of experience and resources and, on the whole, it is harder for young activists to influence policy-making process because there may be poor adult support of their participation (McMellon & Tisdall, 2020) as well as inefficient sustainability and accountability (Tisdall & Cuevas-Parra, 2022). On the other hand, young people might find it easier to harness digital technologies and possess more available free time and energy compared to adults. As posited by Wilson and Hill (2023), activities directed towards the alterations within societal, structural, or political domains can be considered as activism. Chang and Gamez (2022) assert that youth activism encompasses the proactive engagement of the younger generation in identifying and questioning instances of inequities, reshaping societal perspectives, and orchestrating bottom-up initiatives aimed at effecting tangible alterations. According to Taft and O’Kane (2023), children’s activism refers to a collaborative approach adopted by groups of children who unite to pursue a common perspective. These scholars state that subsequent to the extensive integration of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the involvement of children and young individuals in diverse manifestations of political endeavors has been categorized as encompassing youth mobilization, active involvement, proactive citizenship, and the role of children as advocates for human rights (Taft & O’Kane, 2023). However, Kitanova (2020) contends that youth engagement in politics has been experiencing a state of crisis. Still, the future of political leadership hinges on the youth, and any disengagement among young individuals can significantly constrict the potential pool of future leaders. Responding to a crisis of “youth disengagement” from formal politics, scholars often suggest a need for education systems to condition young people to become active, responsible citizens by using schools as agents of socialisation.
One of the forms of youth activism can be youth artivism. For Aladro-Vico et al. (2018), artivism represents a fusion of art and activism, employing artistic expression as a tool for facilitating change and driving social transformation. Similar interpretation is provided by Roig-Palmer and Pedneault (2019). However, these scholars call artivism a ‘movement’ (Ibid., p. 91). Rodríguez-Labajos and Ray (2021) add that one of its means can be modification of existing pieces of art to serve activist purposes. Sriskandarajah (2022) emphasizes that artivism constitutes a political act through which young people redefine their understanding of social justice and their sense of belonging. So, it can be concluded that artivism is a combination of art and activism aimed at a certain form of social change.
This paper addresses the following research questions: 1. How can youth art activism be conceptualized? 2. What shapes youth art activism? The findings of a scoping review of the literature on youth art activism conducted in 2024 are presented in the paper. This study includes relevant papers in English from peer-reviewed journals, except medical journals, published between 2003 and 2023 and stored in three indexes of Web of Science Core Collection and two EBSCO databases (Academic Search Complete and ERIC). Search included all possible combinations of the key words from the following three groups. Group 1: youth, young, student, teen, and pupil. Group 2: art, artistic, performative, creative, graffiti, and museum. Group 3: activism, activist, artivism, art-activism, advocacy, protest, campaign, resistance, and grassroot. Studies focused on youth participatory action research and pedagogy were excluded from the analysis.
Scholars write about such types of youth artivism as street art (Jmal & Ladisch, 2022; Kurze, 2016; Sanz & Rodriguez-Labajos, 2021); theatre performances (Douxami, 2019; Tyszka, 2010); circus (Odria, 2017) and flow art (Mulari, 2022); exhibitions (Hartmann, 2022; Younan & Jenkins, 2020); dancing (Sanz & Rodriguez-Labajos, 2021; Sriskandarajah, 2023); music (Wright & Morales, 2017) and songs (Jay, 2023); films and videos (Ruiz et al., 2020); literary form (Yeom et al., 2020; Muftee & Rosales, 2022); photography (Cin et al., 2023); graphic design (Sanz & Rodriguez-Labajos, 2021); painting and drawing (Wright & Morales, 2021, etc.); body art (Sriskandarajah, 2023); production of clothes and accessories (Springgay, Hatza, & O’Donald, 2011; Suleymanova, 2018), etc.
The initial findings suggest that the causes of youth artivism can be categorized into social, political, economic, and cultural factors. Social drivers of youth artivism include the need to advocate for human rights (Mulari, 2022), address educational inequalities (Martins & Campos, 2024), promote peace and resolve post-conflict issues (Bräuchler, 2019), tackle migration challenges (Muftee & Rosales, 2022; Oliviero, 2021), and confront gender-related problems (Sriskandarajah, 2023). Other social causes include sexual injustices (Gonick et al., 2021), health-related concerns (Motta, 2016), racism (Jmal & Ladisch, 2022), ethnicity-related issues (Green, 2010), religious injustices (Sriskandarajah, 2023) as well as environmental and climate issues (Sanz & Rodriguez-Labajos, 2021). Political factors are primarily associated with the dissent against political regime (Miladi, 2015), opposition to political corruption (Wright & Morales, 2021), protests against presidential elections (Fredericks, 2014), etc. Economic causes include poor economic conditions and policies (Jaramillo, 2015) as well as discontent with capitalism (Martins & Campos, 2024). Cultural motivations for youth artivism may stem from the need to promote art (Odria, 2017).
The results will contribute to the identification of possible strategies for addressing youth artivism within educational institutions and will also guide future research endeavors in this particular domain.

Author

• Alla Stremovskaya, Reichman University