Amplifying the voices of care-experienced youth through participatory arts: building capacity and connections for international youth-led, arts-based advocacy

• Background and purpose;

Out-of-home care can result in separation from family and community with implications for care-experienced young people’s sense of social inclusion. A strong body of research indicates that fractured social connections, and cumulative experiences of trauma and loss, can impact on care leavers’ mental wellbeing, employment opportunities and relationships, often resulting in social exclusion and economic inequality. This presentation describes a process of participatory engagement with care-leavers in the United Kingdom (UK) and South Africa (SA) that aimed to build capacity for arts-based youth-led advocacy, equipping care-experienced youth to make their priorities and perspectives visible and audible and challenge social injustices.
The project linked care-experienced young people and their support organisations with arts and social work academics. It facilitated in-person and online international dialogue and promoted care leavers’ visibility and voice through shared participatory filmmaking in both countries. The presentation considers the process of authentic engagement from these diverse multi-stakeholder, cross-disciplinary perspectives. It outlines the challenges and benefits of collaboration based on core principles of co-production: common goals, reciprocity, relationship and shared power.

• A summary of the main points;
The presentation will outline:
• Project rationale and objectives
o Collaborative intercultural enquiry and filmmaking to enable new opportunities for influence among care-leaver communities in SA and UK.
• Process of engagement
o Insight into the planning, practicalities, and relational considerations for effective online meetings, in-person exchange visits, and participatory filmmaking.
• Challenges and highlights
o The perspectives of care-leavers, advocacy organisations, arts and social work academics.
• Analysis of power dynamics
o How activities aligned with commitments to: i) ensuring the visibility and voice of care experienced youth, locating ownership of the creative process with young people; ii) collaborative partnership based on shared goals, equality of status and reciprocity; and iii) inclusivity, with activities accessible to as wide a group of care-experienced youth as possible.
• Conclusion
o A summary of key learning to promote further arts-based, advocacy-focused social work research with care-leavers and their allies.

• How the presentation will address one or more of the conference's aims and themes;
This international project recognised a global community of youth united by experiences of out-of-home care, but different in their cultural context. Participatory filmmaking enabled them to tell their geographically situated stories, counteracting a deficit mindset based on a stereotyped ‘care’ identity, and challenging disempowering narratives by foregrounding youth perspectives that are often marginalised. Ongoing youth-led advocacy, using the co-produced film and aligned to their common priorities, will support their aspiration to have their perspectives seen and heard by local and international audiences.

• Conclusions and implications for practice, policy, or further research.

This project aimed to build a global partnership between care-experienced youth and arts and social work academics and practitioners, combining arts and advocacy practices. It was international, inter-disciplinary and intersectoral. At each of these intersections there was scope for miscommunication, misinterpretation and misaligned priorities. For such partnerships to be greater than the sum of their parts, a genuinely collaborative way of working must be established that recognises the different but equal expertise and skills that each partner brings. The learning presented will benefit others who aspire to co-production and participatory arts for social work research and advocacy.