Youth4Sea and marine debris: An arts-based, site-specific, youth-framed inquiry

Abstract

This arts-based project engaged youth (between 18 and 24 years of age) living in Byron Bay to co-design an inquiry addressing the increased pollution created during the period of Schoolies. Through a youth-framed participatory research design, the project team engaged local youth in researching young people’s marine pollution understandings, attitudes and behaviours. It then supported their ideas as they created, instigated and assessed an intervention campaign, targeted at Schoolies tourists, to reduce the amount of beach litter (). The young people conducted video interviews with their peers, created visual diaries, took photographs, and designed and implemented an intervention plan. Seeking a feasible action and realizing the enormity of the issue of marine pollution, they decided to target the beach as a specific site for intervention, and in particular, the issue of cigarette butt litter. The young people then engaged in a suite of arts-based analyses, including photographs of the intervention in-process, a documentary film, visual diaries () and a collaborative, large-scale canvas painting (; ) as an analytical riposte.