Taking a cubist approach: the importance of youth-produced knowledge in multigenerational communities

The perspectives of youth are crucial in building learning spaces that are welcoming, equitable, and productive. While youth voice is often included in feedback about educational and organizational spaces, there is much variability in the ways they are included and the weight that is given to youth perspectives and ideas. Furthermore, the inclusion of youth is often seen as largely beneficial only to youth themselves. The multigenerational authors of this paper argue that youth voice is beneficial not just to youth, but to the personal growth of adults as well, and should be valued as such. We introduce Cubism as a conceptual framing for viewing multigenerational knowledge spaces; based on the characteristics of the Cubist genre of portraying multiple perspectives at once on the same canvas. Framing multigenerational knowledge from this perspective can help us reframe the way youth knowledge is valued in relation to adult knowledge in learning spaces.