Teen Program Symposium: Walker Art Center

Last month I was lucky enough to travel to Minneapolis to attend the Museum Teen Programs Symposium and launch of the Walker Art Center’s Teen Programs How-To Kit, that I was a contributor for.

This professional development opportunity was made possible with support from Create NSW through a quick response grant (the recognition of the value of these kinds of opportunities for individuals is honestly huge.)

SYMPOSIUM OPENING NIGHT:

The first night at the Walker featured an energising, provocative, brilliant in conversation that was moderated by the Walker’s Youth Programs Manager Simona Zappas. We heard from cultural anthropologist and learning scientist Dr Mimi Ito, Professor Julio Cammarato from the University of Arizona, whose research focuses on participatory action research with Latinx students; and Stephen Kwok, the curator of public engagement at Dia Art Foundation in New York.

They reflected on their own practices and questions including:

How can staff working wiht teens in out-of-school settings respond to the complex needs of youth with empowering programming?
What does this look like in institutions with colonial histories?

They were all very clear that they were speaking in their capacities as researchers, academics, museum workers and educators and not FOR young people. This assertion and clarity around ideas of authorship, co-creation, agency and transparency were a recurring conversation point across the whole weekend.

Some of the many, many things I took away from their reflections and insights included:

The idea of cultivating not just young creatives by civic participants
The importance of opacity and the right not to be understood (in direct contrast to the expectation of transparency)
Ideas of connected learning that centre young people’s ideas, community and cultural wealth
Recognising ‘funds of knowledge’ and assets within communities, including cultural practices which can challege existing or dominant ways of doing or understanding
The importance of ‘creative resistance’ in visioning and dreaming of a new future in the face of current systems of oppression
The idea of creating environments, not programs (or pipelines) with different spaces for different exchanges and space to take risks
The importance of young people being able to bring their whole selves to space (which can mean free time, snacks, intergenerational friendships - the HOMAGO model of hanging out, messing around, geeking out)
Using the poetics of longer-term looking at art: the importance of slowing down, encouraging longer and more sustained engagement and re-looking
The idea of relational infrastructure and the flow or exchange of power: what does it look like for power to be expressed through a youth program?

Acknowledging that power does not flow equitably between young people and museums but what do we dismiss as interruption or distraction within a program or space that is actually an expression of power?

The power of young people and youth participatory research - the importance of that critical perception and different perceptions (itself another form of power)
That adults are usually the problem, not the young people…
The ways mobile phones and technology have revolutionised young people’s power, with their communication not as surveilled - that as other public spaces for communing are closed off to them, gaming, texting, social media are alternate spaces for gathering
The idea of the educator as translator
Building shared purpose is key to changing structures
The value of space, unknowing, opacity and not having to constantly prove or demonstrate impact
The importance of the question (for programs, institutions, young people) - working towards understanding, solutions, transformation
The fact that adults need to be educated before you engage young people!

WORKSHOPS & SITE VISITS:

On the Saturday, we spent the day interrogating ideas of invisible power and the role and impact of group dynamics through a workshop facilitated by Stephen Kwok.

It was fascinating to really observe how even simple changes to a space through things like lighting and furniture rearrangement could radically change the group dynamics and the embodied experience of being in these spaces - safe, exposed, invisible, comfortable, playful.

In the afternoon we went to the Minneapolis Institute of Art to see the extraordinary exhibition, In Our Hands: Native Photography, 1890 to Now

And then on the Sunday, we all hopped on an iconic yellow school bus for a series of visits to Spark'd Studios, Juxtaposition Arts, and the Saint Paul Neighborhood Network.

These site visits and conversations brought back so many memories of my Churchill Fellowship experience but it was so valuable to do them this time as part of a group of educators from across North America.