“It’s What We’re About”: Youth Epistemologies in the Design of Social and Educational Futures

ABSTRACT This article discusses how activist-oriented BIPOC youth designed an annual conference rooted in youth culture and social justice. As a participant-observer, I analyze how these youth co-constructed a teaching and learning curriculum centered on young people’s identities, epistemologies, and radical imaginings. The process of the youth leaders developing criteria for evaluating proposal submissions for this conference reveals how young people understand and co-construct pedagogical ideas that are socially, culturally, and critically relevant for their daily lives and futures. By examining youth-developed approaches to community-based learning, this study expands on theories of youth voice and youth civic literacies by revealing how young people engage in and disrupt educational practices and how authentic, critical approaches to youth-centered learning are developed in a collective third space.