This article discusses the role of play and imagination in three urban settings: an ELA classroom, a community organization grounded in civic participation, and a digital learning lab in a library setting. We draw on sociocultural theories of imagination to show that all of the affordances and constraints of the settings contribute to what could…

Youth participation in sport is associated with positive developmental outcomes. The development of life skills is especially important for urban youth of color who are often underserved and face poor long-term outcomes. To service the needs of underserved youth, community youth sport programs have begun to utilize sport-based positive youth…

Urban youth participation in agricultural activities has been linked to positive educational outcomes. This article explores the gender and racial differences in perceived knowledge gain and intended behavior change among youths participating in a youth urban agriculture workshop in 2015. Participants were students from underserved areas in…

Notions of place-making assume that individuals and groups of people have legitimate 'rights to the city.' This paper unsettles these notions to incorporate the politically and legally tenuous relationships African-American and Immigrant youth have to their cities. We describe a community-based digital STEAM curriculum called Mobile City Science…

Driven by social and environmental criticism of the neoliberalization of agro-food systems, urban agriculture today enjoys renewed interest throughout the United States as a primary space to engage the politics of food. Using Brooklyn, New York as a case study, I employ mixed qualitative methods to investigate the contradictions that arise in…

Research suggests that adolescents can benefit from participating in youth programs; however, recruitment and retention are challenging for many programs, and youth living in low-income, urban areas can be the hardest to reach. We investigated motivation to attend a neighborhood-based program for urban adolescents. Participants completed…

This article discusses how biographical materials may be used in youth arts education projects to develop new methodologies and approaches that can stimulate artistic and social intervention in contemporary urban communities, thus changing the field of arts education policy at the community level. Through their creation of Artistic Society…

Long-term impacts of an urban farming youth internship were evaluated in Brooklyn, New York. Alumni surveyed 1 to 9 years after program completion were enrolled in college or graduate school at higher rates than their peers and reported connections to the environment and healthy eating. Participants reported learning job skills through the…

In this paper, we aim to contribute to ongoing work to uncover the ways in which settler colonialism is entrenched and reified in educational environments and explore lessons learned from an urban Indigenous land-based education project. In this project, we worked to re-center our perceptual habits in Indigenous cosmologies, or land-based…

Young people in the U.S. are falling behind their peers in the rest of the developed world in science, technology, engineering, and math. The Program for International Student Assessment study, conducted every three years, ranked the U.S. 24th in math and science out of 29 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development…

The limited number of organized sport and exercise programs available in urban areas in comparison with more affluent communities, as well as the limited resources, the low pay of service providers who offer the programs (especially in youth work), and the besieged mentality of many professionals require our attention and assistance. Our field…

To make the transition to adulthood, youth must learn to function in the complex and unpredictable "real world" of adult life. This is an intensive case study of an urban arts program that sought to provide youth with experiences that prepared them for the real world of arts careers. We conducted 75 interviews with 12 youth and their adult leader…

This book is about the Computer Clubhouse--the idea and the place--that inspires youth to think about themselves as competent, creative, and critical learners. So much of the social life of young people has moved online and participation in the digital public has become an essential part of youth identities. The Computer Clubhouse makes an…

The Community Change for Youth Development (CCYD) demonstration is an attempt by Public/Private Ventures to create youth programming that can improve young people's present lives and future prospects in a wide range of communities. The core concepts of CCYD are: (1) increasing the number of caring and competent adults in youthUs lives; (2)…

This is the third in a series of reports summarizing the investment of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation in community-based health programming. It addresses the health issues confronting young people in U.S. society by profiling eight different community-based approaches to adolescent health. The programs described, all sponsored by the Kellogg…