4. Incentives to Participation

Summary:

  • Youth are more engaged when there is a cause, or activities that tap into their passions.
  • Meeting with peers is very important–both spending time with existing friends and making new ones.
  • Gaining educational experience is an incentive to engagement activities, especially for youth-at-risk.
  • Gaining career-building experience is a benefit to youth as well as the sectors they are engaged in.

4.1 Being Engaged with a Cause

Youth engagement, particularly in youth-led organizations, is often related to issues of importance that youth care about (e.g., the environment, social justice, and media awareness). Youth engagement itself can be a form of social action, by contesting stereotypes and reframing youth in the media as social change agents by presenting positive images of youth accomplishing things and making valuable contributions.

“Allowing us to be expressive is an asset as our true colours come out. Most important is the initiation of passion and educating us on the factors that contribute to our modern society. This helps us to be more diverse and accepting of change, but also creating change that is positive.” EWC Participant

Youth organizations may also use the arts as a form of community engagement (e.g., community art projects like murals in transit stations). In addition, some organizations may engage by using arts to respond to tragedy (e.g., shooting, loss of life) as a healing exercise.

4.2 Meeting with Peers

Youth engagement can provide social support for all youth, but is an especially powerful tool for empowering marginalized groups (e.g., arts organizations for Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgendered and Queer youth). This was a universal theme among young people, and young people from rural and remote regions expressed the importance of engagement activities as opportunities to meet new people. All young people who shared this were in attendance at the Encounters With Canada forum, which had national representation, and highlighted how significant it was to be meeting people from different cultures and regions. Youth engagement also provides intergenerational dialogue opportunities, which is of particular cultural significance in Aboriginal communities. One roundtable participant suggested that youth engagement is essential because traditional institutions (e.g., the Church in Quebec) are no longer builders of community for a majority of youth.

“It’s great that the government is giving youth this amazing shot at further education [Encounters]! I appreciate it very much for I am a student looking for more than a classroom education. Hands-on learning is something that should be further supported.” – EWC Participant

4.3 Gaining Educational Experience

Schools have been identified as gateways to reaching youth, and were often cited as the simplest way to reach the majority of youth. Teachers were mentioned as a main link between arts, heritage, and culture organizations or institutions and young people. Participants also noted that arts, heritage, and culture perspectives can be excellent lenses through which to explore the curriculum, and that community, arts, heritage, and culture organizations have a role to play in supporting schools to engage youth in new and creative ways. According to some participants, the most successful school programs also take the curriculum very seriously, and work to support the outcomes outlined in it, supporting, rather than competing with, the school’s agenda. Museums often do this very well, communicating with schools years in advance to ensure that their exhibits fit within the curriculum for the coming years.

Youth organizations feel passionately that engagement activities help young people who are alienated or disconnected from the mainstream education system find ways to connect. Engagement activities that provide alternative credits (i.e., towards high school or university) give value to the experience of participating in arts, culture, and heritage activities. Organizations suggested this as a great way to connect to those “back row” youth who may not be engaged in mainstream education. One participant even suggested that many “at-risk” young people display entrepreneurial tendencies in the at-risk behaviour they exhibit (e.g., graffiti art). Engagement practices are seen to harness that energy in productive ways and help turn things around for the better.

At the same time, participants recognized that schools are struggling in youth engagement; there are very high rates of student disengagement. Recruitment solely by teachers and school counsellors was warned against by young people themselves as this method can result in selection bias towards kids who are already engaged; “from the front row, not the back.”

“...do not allow everything to go through teachers and grade counsellors as they often do not do anything with the opportunities or don’t allow more unsuccessful students to attend.” – EWC Participant

4.4 Gaining Career-Building Experience

Engagement activities provide youth with professional development not only for working in the areas they engage in, but by helping them acquire the transferrable skills of communication, teamwork, critical thinking, entrepreneurial spirit, etc. There was a perceived need by arts and culture participants to show the outside world (educational institutions, potential employers, and even parents) that arts and culture activities are valuable for developing skills.

Participants also noted that youth often first engage in their communities to develop skills and build their résumés. At the same time, arts, heritage, and culture organizations hope to groom the next generation of employees for their sector.

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