• Youth Participatory Action Research (YPA) is a research framework that centers the voices, experiences and cultural wealth of young people using various methodologies from surveys, focus groups, interviews as well as arts-based activities such as collaging, photography, and more!

 

• YPAR positions youth as researchers, scholars & policy makers. 

 

• YPAR is rooted on the tenet that if an issue affects youth, youth should be at the table alongside lawmakers and city agencies, creating policies and programs that solve the issues that affect them and their community’s. 

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From September through December of

2023, the youth research team focused on learning qualitative and quantitative participatory methodologies such as survey design, focus groups as well as experimenting with arts-based ways to collect data in ways that closely reflect youth culture. Since January of 2024, they have engaged over 350+ NYC youth people that
include youth as young as 11 and as old as 21 through an anonymous survey (263
responses as of 4/25) and during 5 in-person events where 130+ youth partook in arts-based YPAR methodologies such as:

● Focus group podcasts: youth researchers interviewed participants on their lived
experiences as well as aspirations for safety and belonging based on prompts such as:
“What does a healthy school culture look like” and “what do you wish your school had
that would make you feel safer?”
● Vision boarding collaging: participants created vision boards using stickers,
magazines, markers and crayons based on prompts such as “what is your vision for a
school where you belong and feel safe?”
● Freedom dreaming art walls: participants created collaborative murals based on Robin
D Kelly’s concept of visualizing new ways so that we know what to build towards”.
● Photovoice: participants created images (selfies and group photos) based on our
research questions
● Button/pins/friendship bracelet circles: participants created wearables that represent
the conversations they took part in on our research questions