Participatory art for navigating political capabilities and aspirations among rural youth in Zimbabwe

Wadzanai Faith Mkwananzi,Firdevs Melis Cin,Tendayi Marovah

doi:10.1080/01436597.2021.1977620

Wadzanai Faith Mkwananzi, Firdevs Melis Cin + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2021.1977620

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Abstract

While exploring the everyday experiences of Tonga youth, this paper draws on a participatory graffiti-on-board project in Binga, a rural community in Zimbabwe. Focus is placed on what shapes and drives youth aspirations in precarious contexts marked by unemployment and poverty. Using graffiti to create participatory and artistic engagements, the research aims to stretch the limited boundaries of social and political space available to the youth for discussing issues that concern their development pathways and livelihoods. The article presents everyday narratives that impact on Tonga youths’ aspirations, endeavouring to create a space where they can visualise their prospective futures. Additionally, exhibition spaces are seen as sites for the construction of a collective voice and political capabilities for the youth. We argue that aspirations among disadvantaged youth evidence the broader geopolitical conflict that exists in marginalised communities in Southern Africa. A lack of spaces to construct political voice among the youth curtails their capabilities and agency to choose from existing development opportunities in an uncertain future. We discuss the potential role of participatory art in relation to this in providing spaces for political voice, unsettling established power dynamics and developing a collective, unified voice that might influence governance processes in fragile contexts.

Highlights

Introduction lyYoung people represent over a fifth of the world’s population but are often marginalised in decision-making and planning processes in economies and societies whose outcomes significantly affect them (Cuervo and Miranda, 2019)
We argue that aspirations among disadvantaged youth evidence the broader geopolitical conflict that exists in marginalised communities in Southern Africa
We explored ways in which participatory art-based methodology may foster the political voice of these youths

Summary

Introduction

Introduction lyYoung people represent over a fifth of the world’s population but are often marginalised in decision-making and planning processes in economies and societies whose outcomes significantly affect them (Cuervo and Miranda, 2019). Focusing on the Global South, this paper makes theoretical and empirical contributions to youth studies, a research gap having been demonstrated by the abundance of studies skewed towards the Global North (Cooper, Swartz and Mahali, 2018). It builds on the agenda and need for “a conceptual and empirical space of invention and experimentation in youth studies that moves the research agenda beyond the universal conceptualisations from the Global North” to integrate viewpoints and narratives both about and from young people in the Global South (Cuervo and Miranda, 2019: 1). District in Zimbabwe, the paper highlights the complexities of disadvantage that are a direct result of exclusion.

Objectives

Conclusion