Reclaiming Narratives: Using Blackout Poetry as a Tool in YPAR for Emotional Processing and Disrupting Adultism

This paper offers practical guidance about the use of blackout poetry as an arts-based method in Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) to support emotional processing and challenge adultism. We ground our guidance in examples from a YPAR project where young people reflected on their experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, demonstrating how blackout poetry helped youth process their grief, frustration, and resilience while rejecting deficit-based narratives. Overall, the paper aims to showcase the utility of using blackout poetry as a means of integrating social-emotional learning into YPAR to support young people’s wellbeing during critical reflection on systemic inequities.