Empowering Youth to Co-Create Diverse Digital Futures
Young people are the largest group online, with 45% of global internet users below the age of 25. However, avenues, methods and narratives to centre youth perspectives from non-western contexts in conversations on digital environments remain limited. The Youth Digital Cultures Lab seeks to bring together diverse young people from India to meaningfully engage with their experiences of diversity, joy and meaningful inclusion in digital environments. Our earlier work with INCLUDE+ has shown that diversity remains a key element and factors such as language, location, culture, profession, education and social groups impact how young people interact, subvert, and imagine digital environments in their individual and collective lives. By co-developing speculative and participatory design methodologies with young people,the lab will deepen and foster non-western understandings and reimaginations of digital environments. These will result in new methods and strategies for youth work.
The lab will identify five Youth Fellows from diverse communities through an open call. They will be part of a 2-month incubation program which will focus on:
- Participatory and co-creation methods for youth-led research
- Speculative and participatory design methods
- Grounding in non-western digital futures
- Immersive experiences with youth organisations to gain insights and foster collaborative practices
- Futures-thinking with diverse communities
Fellows will have access to resources on participatory methods and youth engagement in digital spaces, informed by the learnings from our previously conducted extensive work on youth and digitalisation. Fellows will conduct workshops with their respective communities to capture youth experiences and perspectives on meaningful inclusion and joy in digital environments while keeping diversity at the centre. The final output will be brainstormed with the youth fellows, and be responsive to the learnings from the project.
‘Youth and Digitalisation’ is a key focus and we have co-created multiple interactive resources and toolkits to empower young people to better manage their relationship with technology. Our experience in designing accessible, open-source modules for youth through participatory design methodologies equips us to effectively implement this project. This project aligns with INCLUDE+ by advancing digital equity and fostering inclusive online spaces. By engaging diverse youth across India, it centres underrepresented voices in shaping digital futures.
Team
Shyam Krishnakumar – Co-Founder, The Pranava Institute
Titiksha Vashist – Co-Founder, The Pranava Institute