A Pedagogy for a Creatively Destructive City

Abstract

This chapter describes, interprets, and theorizes a central contradiction facing youth arts and humanities programs in postindustrial cities, which can experience rapid economic, cultural, and spatial reconfigurations by adopting the conventional creative city script. These programs can provide rewarding and meaningful creative learning for young people (often of color) from working‐class and low‐income backgrounds (aged 14–18) while at the same time imbricating these young people in revitalizing cities at their expense. To illustrate this contradiction, this chapter provides a case study from a critical ethnographic research project informed by cultural studies that the author conducted in Providence, Rhode Island, USA. The chapter then pinpoints possible pedagogic strategies that do not claim to resolve this contradiction or redress its negative outcomes but instead provide avenues for youth arts and humanities programs to repurpose the social and material realities of urban renewal for the benefit of young people's affirmation, joy, and possibility.