NORC (national outdoor recreation conference)

This presentation will cover outcomes and implications from a series of workshops during which youth assessed local outdoor public spaces and completed a variety of arts-based and collaborative exercises to identify opportunities and barriers in their community environments. Guided by an affordance-capability approach and a Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) framework, these workshops utilized creative, arts-based methodologies during visioning and communication workshops to determine priorities and generate designs to develop an understanding of what constitutes a 'youth-enabling environment'.

This presentation will show how youth collectively reflected on their individual and community needs, and generated insights on how to evaluate and improve environments to truly welcome youth, enhance well-being, and create more responsive community spaces through iterative cycles of conventional environmental assessments and collaborative design workshops.

The presentation will highlight key preferences and priorities that youth have in public outdoor spaces, along with the successes and challenges of participatory methods with youth.

1. Explain the procedures and benefits of a youth participatory action research project.
2. Describe the advantages of affordance-based environmental assessments that include socio-cultural factors for the design of community spaces.
3. Distinguish between prescriptive, utility-based designs and inclusive, youth-enabling designs in community spaces.
4. Identify opportunities and barriers to equitable utilization of community green spaces.
5. Design and implement research practices that meaningfully engage and center the voices of those most affected by the research topic.