Pockets of Resilience – the Digital Responses of Youth Collectives in Contemporary Art Museums During Lockdown

When museums across the world closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and staff struggled to rethink their new roles in a challenging and unprecedented context, youth collectives – long-term programs for teens and young adults, aged 15–24 – reinvented themselves. The focus of my research is the digital projects developed during lockdown by youth collectives in three metropolitan contemporary art museums. These include MOCA Teens, the MCA Youth Committee and Duchamp & Sons, based, respectively, at LA MOCA (U.S.A.), MCA Australia, and Whitechapel Gallery (U.K.). They adjusted quickly to the new digital pace and devised creative communication and mediation strategies that allowed their collaborative work to continue online. For this research, I combined the analysis of the digital content they produced – websites, social media and podcasts – with interviews I did with the museum educators leading each program. The success of these projects is grounded on a shared trust between museums, educators, and participants.