PArtY: Participatory Arts practices and Young people's personal and social development

Artistic (self-)expression is often identified as a means to develop and grow as a person. Existing
research on youth’s arts participation often (implicitly) focuses on how arts participation can be an
instrument for young people’s qualification or socialization into capable adults and/or uses an adultcentred
perspective on legitimate arts. The lack of agency implicitly attributed to young people in the
existing literature contrasts with how young people are already appropriating free spaces for youth
participatory arts practices, where – in Biesta’s perspective – subjectification processes may take
place. Via the development of a mapping framework of existing participatory art practices for young
people and a case study in three selected practices, the PArtY project innovatively contributes to the
scientific understanding of these free spaces for participatory arts practices, thus allowing to
understand the characteristics and functioning of these settings, how young people can develop
personally and socially in these settings, what kind of citizenship practices these free spaces for
participatory arts practices make possible, and how this can be facilitated (rather then led) by adult
professionals, such as social workers, youth workers or local policy makers.