Country: Canada

Organization: The Plan Institute For Citizenship and Disability (Philia Dialogue)

Idea: This youth-driven arts-based dialogue seeks to use arts as the medium to encourage and foster dialogue on issues that effect young people. A crucial component that continues to make this initiative a success is that we are being deliberate about the inclusion of youth who are otherwise systemicly absent from public discourse. The fact is that youth who live with disabilities are typically not invited to dialogue on issues that they care about. This program initiative purposefully encourages youth with disabilities to engage with youth who may or may not have disabilities, in arts. The use of arts allows for people to express themselves without having to be verbally articulate nor physically able to dialogue in the traditional way.

How do you do it: Through a process of ongoing planning, issues exploration and public forums, youth and youth-centered adults are brought together to discover their commonness, their differences and the possibilities for addressing issues together. At every stage of this program youth and youth with disbailities are encouraged to participate. At each of the public forums youth-centered, adult artists are employed as facilitators to encourage the youth participants in the use of their particular art medium. In the first year of this initiative youth insisted on addressing the very issue of inclusion, or in many cases exclusion, as citizens. The second year saw the dialogue revolve around the purposefully provocative title, "Democracy: Our Second Choice".

Innovation: The innovation of the approach employed here lies in the inclusive process. Bringing young people who have disbilities into the fray of public discourse on issues such as citizenship and democracy has led to extraordinary, yet unexpected outcomes. Believing that young people including those living with disabilities have a contribution to make, a gift to share is in itself an innovation. The vast majority of adults do not look at youth with developmental disabilities with any anticipation nor, in many cases even hope, of a contribution to society. This initiative is innovative in its trust in youth, in its belief in the contributions from people with disabilities and in its use of arts as a medium of dialogue and citizen engagement.

Impact: The use of arts such as rap, painting, song-writing, comic-booking, dance, film and theatre ensure that youth with a broad spectrum of articulation abilities are accomodated to make a valuable contribution to public discourse. In turn, the contributions of youth and people with disbailities are daylighted as inspirational and reciprocated with support from more adults and more youth. The barriers that youth with disabilities face to participation are systemic, so the revelation of their contributions is the first step toward having a systemic impact. Youth with disabilities have the potential to change the world, we just need to recognize that they can.

Ethical Action: A local, yet well known, Rap/Spoken Word artist was emplyed at the first public forum in March 2004. She worked with a group of 9 teens going through the theory of musical composition, the rhythmic potential of the human voice and the connection between heart and art. The group then went on to write a rap song using the dialogue on inclusion as fodder for lyrics. The rhythmic element was challenging for those who had developmental disabilities. Nevertheless, the group perservered and the song that they produced and later performed was a hit of the forum. The youth participants and the adult artist-mentors left cherishing the opportunity. What is more, both the youth and the adults continue to be involved.

Replication: The activities of this program are continually evolving and replicating through the support of and partnership with a number of organizations in this region. The Plan Institute, through its Philia Dialogue initiative, is continuouly engaged in collaborations with organizations that work with youth, arts and people with disabilities. There are both arts-based organizations that are including youth with disabilities and youth organizations that are including arts-based activities as methods for dialogue. Furthermore, the National Film Board of Canada has been a genrous supporter and as a reslut much of the activities have been captured on film.

Sustainability: Self-sustainability of this program initiative - at least at a funding level - will occur through ongoing collaborations and partnerships with like-valued organizations such as the National Film Board of Canada, the British Columbia Co-operative Association, the City of Vancouver and the Roundhouse Community Centre. Sustainability at the human capacity level, will be dependant on the vitality and inclusiveness of the process and dialogues. As long as young people continue to want to have a say and our iniative continues to want to hear what they want to say, commitment to, and sustainabilty of, youth-driven arts-based dialogue for action will carry on.

Position in the Ethics Mosaic of Solutions:

Factor: Otherness

Principle: Revealing common ideals, principles, and language