KOM Seminar: Capturing liveability, creativity and vitality in gender diverse young people’s lives

Creativity Community & Resilience (CCR) is the first UK research project that adopts a youth and community-led co-creative approach to investigating how community belonging can improve liveability, build collective resilience, and support trans and gender diverse (TGD) young people’s wellbeing. The liveability of TGD young people, ie, to exist beyond survival and thrive (Butler 2004, Browne et al. 2021) is under pressure in the UK, due to an increasingly hostile political climate and attacks on their human rights (United Nations, 2023). However, there is little research on TGD young people’s collective resilience and the resources they draw on to face these challenges. In response, CCR proposes a strength-based approach that recognises TGD youth’s creativity, vitality, and resilience. The presentation introduces the project, and raises questions about methodological opportunities and ethical challenges, and it would be very useful to learn from KOM colleagues’ experiences from across the fields of childhood and youth studies; researching everyday life; digital cultures and online communities, and making space for youth voices in a highly polarised media landscape.

Olu Jenzen, professor of Media and Digital culture from the University of Southampton, UK, is a visiting professor at the Department of Communication and Media.