Remix this method: a creative approach to young people’s everyday lives as political arenas

Bowman, B ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2866-1612 (2022) Remix this method: a creative approach to young people’s everyday lives as political arenas. Journal of Youth Studies, 25 (1). pp. 17-33. ISSN 1367-6261

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Abstract

© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Young people’s everyday lives are not just social and cultural environments, but also political arenas (Kallio and Häkli. 2011. ‘Are there politics in childhood?’ (Space & Polity 15 (1): 21–34, 2). A methodological approach is proposed that emphasizes young people’s knowledge, while accepting the power and privilege of the researcher. By way of illustration, this paper demonstrates how an approach to co-creation of the method, inspired by the idea of a remix or a bricolage, can provide creative tasks as stimuli for the discussion of politics but also legitimizing mechanisms for young expertise and co-creation in the research site itself as a political arena. Specifically, this paper examines how young participants responded to a digital photography task by subverting the task itself, a process which allowed them to remix the model, making them simultaneously in control of the task and dependent upon it. This complex outcome was constructive as a way to stimulate participants as they explored their everyday lives as political arenas.