Sarah Switzer and Rubén Gaztambide-Fernandez from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto discuss the dissemination of youth knowledge in youth participatory action research (YPAR). They discuss the opportunities and tensions around knowledge dissemination; honouring youth voices while navigating the politics of dissemination within academic spaces; the importance of relevant and meaningful products; and building collective capacity in youth and adult researchers through YPAR.
Sarah Switzer is a Toronto-based popular educator and community-based participatory researcher. Inspired by fifteen years of working at the intersections of community arts, peer/youth programming, and HIV and Harm Reduction, her larger program of research and teaching explores how to creatively and meaningfully engage communities who experience marginalization in programs, policy change, and collaborative knowledge translation efforts.  Her research interests include critical approaches to participation and engagement (including youth engagement), pedagogy in community-based settings and participatory visual methods.
Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández‘s research and scholarship are concerned with symbolic boundaries and the dynamics of cultural production and processes of identification in educational contexts. He is the Director of the Youth Research Lab at the Centre for Urban Schooling of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, where he is Principal Investigator of the Youth Solidarities Across Boundaries Project, a participatory action research project with Latinx and Indigenous youth in the city of Toronto. His theoretical work focuses on the relationship between creativity, decolonization, and solidarity.
Special acknowledgements: This podcast acknowledges  "A Seat At The Table"  - an artistic installation led by Lydia Hernandez, Tumaini Lyraruu, Mimi Duong and Chris. It also acknowledges the work of many others, including - but not limited to - those involved in the picturing participation project.
This episode was hosted and directed by Naima Raza, produced by Ruben Gaztambide-Fernandez and Sarah Switzer, and supported by Youth Research Lab Research Assistants, Andrea Vela Alarcon and Madeleine Ross.