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In this chapter we examine cross-cultural mentorship within Alberta’s Future Leaders (AFL) program, an initiative in which mainly non-Aboriginal youth workers and arts mentors mentor Aboriginal youth in Aboriginal communities in Alberta through the use of sport, recreation, and arts for development.

We use an exploratory case study methodology in concert with semi-structured interviews, focus groups, participant observation, and archival research. We use Foucauldian discourse analysis to analyze our results.

We identified two dominant discourses that shape AFL: first, mentorship can help Aboriginal youth to avoid negative life trajectories and, second, youth leadership development is universal. We argue that sport, recreation, and arts for youth development that does not prioritize cultural relevancy and does not attend to issues pertaining to colonialism’s legacy risks, in a Foucauldian sense, disciplining Aboriginal youths in ways that reaffirm colonial relations of power between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people.

This chapter focuses on sport, recreation, and arts for youth development within a marginalized segment of the Canadian population: Aboriginal youth.

Purpose – In this chapter we examine the creation and implementation processes of an arts-based recreation programme for Aboriginal youth development in Canada called Outside Looking In (OLI) to determine if and how OLI’s staff and Board members perceive the programme to be influenced by Eurocentric ideas of programming and the impact this may in turn have on achieving Aboriginal self-determination.

Design/methodology/approach – Informed by postcolonial theory, we employed a case study design and collected data using semi-structured interviews, fieldnotes and a review of archival documents.

Findings – We contend that while OLI reproduces some aspects of Eurocentric programming, it also provides avenues to contribute to Aboriginal self-determination.

Research limitations – A limitation to this research is the absence of interviews with OLI’s programme participants; nevertheless, this research provides a starting point upon which future research can build.

Originality/value – Our research provides an insight into how youth development through recreation programmes for Aboriginal peoples are created and implemented. Most importantly, it provides evidence of the need to further reflect upon the ways in which such programmes can enable Aboriginal self-determination.

The early childhood education classroom space is intrinsic to developing localized youth culture. Through a four-month-long qualitative research project in a space that focused on meeting the most rudimentary child needs due to staffing and fund restrictions, young children’s creativity through the arts was stunted. In a classroom setting focused on structure and strict routine at the forefront, children’s creative expression was observed through independent action and creative twists on order, instead of through activities deliberately designed to nurture creativity and expression. Since the children at the site did not seem to regularly participate in any kind of art making, or unstructured creative expression, my focus instead became the fundamentals of creativity and how young children in the classroom demonstrated choice making and agency. The objective of this study was how to understand the space from a child-centered approach to better project how to include art making, creative education, and creative expression within early childhood education sites that do not currently employ it in their curriculum. This chapter aims to situate how young children created a culture of creative expression within the boundaries of a structured early education classroom when top-down teacher interaction was at a minimum, and open-ended, non-directive materials were provided.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insight into the processes that produce the effects found in studies of participation by young people in martial arts.

A review of published studies.

Studies of the developmental outcomes of young people participating in martial arts produce conflicting results. While some studies refer to increased antisocial behaviour, others indicate positive developmental outcomes. This is due to a tendency to treat martial arts as a unitary phenomenon and focus on outcomes without considering mediating factors, notably the type of martial art, the type of guidance and the social background and characteristics of participants.

The paper shows that taking into account these and other possible influencing factors will contribute to a better understanding of the true nature of outcomes of martial arts practice. It will also enable a more thought-out and accurate approach when considering these outcomes.

The purpose this paper is to consider festivals as sites for inquiry and learning.

The research employed a pluralistic approach to the inquiry drawing on critical African-centred pedagogy, participatory action research, and performance as research inquiry. These arts-based research methods allowed insights to be gained in ways that were congruent to the arts and participants who enacted them. In total, 12 young people and six elders of diverse African heritage as well as two artists were participants in the research.

The research revealed that the festival as a research methodology was both dialogic and performative and a rich site for the exploration of identity negotiation. Through these arts-based approaches the aesthetic elements often missed by traditional social science methods were highlighted as key in exploring acculturation socialistaion experiences and deconstructing exclusionist discourses emanating from the dominant culture.

The research affirmed the power of multi-modal approaches to research and the importance of evocative discourses in identity exploration and development.

This research is the first known attempt to theorise an arts-based festival as a research approach in reference to enculturation and cultural memory.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the social turn in contemporary capitalism and contemporary art through the lens of art-based social enterprises (ASEs) that aim to create positive social benefits for young people experiencing forms of marginalisation, and which trade creative products or services to help fulfil that mission. A growth in ASEs demonstrates a growing interest in how the arts can support social and economic development, and the ways new economic models can generate employment for individuals excluded from the labour market; extend opportunities for more people to participate in art markets; and challenge dominant market models of cultural production and consumption.

This paper considers a number of challenges and complexities faced by ASEs that embrace a co-dependence of three goals, which are often in tension and competition – artistic practice, social purpose and economic activity. It does so by analysing interviews from staff working with 12 ASE organisation’s across Australia.

While the external forces that shape ASEs – including government policy, markets, investors and philanthropy – are interested in the “self-sufficient” economic potential of ASEs, those working in ASEs tend to prioritise social values and ethical business over large financial returns and are often ambivalent about their roles as entrepreneurs. This ambivalence is symptomatic of a position that is simultaneously critical and affirmative, of the conditions of contemporary capitalism and neoliberalism.

This paper addresses a gap in social enterprise literature presenting empirical research focussing on the lived experience of those managing and leading ASEs in Australia.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how critical literacy practices within a community youth program opened spaces for restoration for youth. In turn, youth created civic conversations about race, juvenile justice and school discipline inequities to enact change within their community.

This qualitative study used ethnographic methods such as interviews and observation to collect data from youth, community members and adults who run the youth center. Data were analyzed using constant comparative analysis.

Youth created spaces of restoration by reclaiming historicized narratives about themselves, their families and their community. Youth engaged critical literacy practices to explore their own identity, critique inequality in their community and work as community organizers to lead adults in conversations for change.

This paper explores how critical literacy practices have restorative value when youth use them in authentic ways to research community problems and work for change.

There has been a reduction of arts funding the United States educational system, even though research has identified the need for socioemotional learning policy/guidelines/requirements in the US Ed. and more school teachers and counselors. In Texas, geopolitical issues and natural disasters impact learners in the state and corporal punishment is still allowed in some districts, such as Pampa Independent School District (ISD). A study of six art teachers across a large urban school district was conducted to better understand this conundrum vis-a-vis semi-structured interviews with art teachers working in public Middle and High Schools. This chapter investigates the impact of art practices and art teachers on socioemotional self-regulation of students, as we consider the impact on teacher retention using the Heuristic model of child self-regulation and reactivity and school outcomes (Liew, Erbeli, Nyanamba, & Li, 2020). Finally, the ironic finding that teaching art classes is financially emotionally draining for teachers to the point of decreasing retention, yet some are still impassioned to teach art classes, is juxtaposed with attachment theory. Recommendations for art education policy and pedagogy are made using the lens of socioemotional learning, art therapy, empathy, and emotional self-regulation.

This study aims to explore the motivations and business ideation processes of 776 entrepreneurs from three diverse cohorts of technology, youth and arts entrepreneurs.

Using an inductive approach inspired by grounded theory, observations resultant from the use of a Web-based digital test environment are openly coded, in which 776 individual entrepreneurs have stated their objectives for engaging in entrepreneurship and performed a business ideation process.

The study inductively derives a typology of objectives types – “GET GIVE MAKE LIVE” – and finds that beyond the pursuit of profitable opportunities, there is considerable variation, complexity and combinations to the reasons why individuals engage in entrepreneurship. A total of 76 percent of the population in this study have more than one objective, with 48% having more than one type of objective. While the arts entrepreneurs tended to engage in entrepreneurship to “LIVE” and the tech entrepreneurs were more inclined to “GET,” the most frequently observed objective type in all cohorts was to “MAKE.” A total of 74 percent of the entrepreneurs took an effectual approach and began defining their business idea with their core competency, yet technology entrepreneurs were the most likely to start by defining their key market.

Entrepreneurship educators, trainers and helpers should refrain from a standardized approach which assumes that entrepreneurs share the same set of singular motivations. Interventions might benefit from a student-centered program which promotes reflection and articulation of the entrepreneurs’ objectives and their diversity.

This study answers the call for research to embrace entrepreneurial diversity and compliment previous explorations of entrepreneurs’ motivations through an empirically grounded study of three diverse cohorts of entrepreneurs.

This chapter summarizes a therapeutic art-based education project in Houston and two United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees resettlement camps in Burkina Faso, a small landlocked country in West Africa. The project, which was developed and led by the authors, Be the Peace – Be the Hope, was born from a spirit of hope and concern for the plight of children; particularly, for the mounting numbers of children displaced by war and conflict. Many of these children now live in resettlement camps. The ages of the participating students ranged from 8 to 22 in the camps. Many participating Houston middle and high school students had arrived recently in the United States and several had been refugees themselves.