ABSTRACT
Lost Childhoods: Voices of Santa Cruz County Foster Youth and the Foster Youth Museum was the first ‘issue-driven’ exhibition developed through collaboration and a participatory design process at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH) in California. The exhibition was the result of a dialogue between the MAH and Foster Youth Museum (FYM) in late 2015 and early 2016. Lost Childhoods began with the forging of a strong partnership and set of shared aims between MAH and the FYM. With the basic plan and structure in place, the route to ensuring that the exhibition was locally situated and relevant would be provided by C3, the MAH’s Creative Community Committee, which in 2017 and with the collaboration with FYM in mind, was formed to comprise 128 local foster youth, artists, advocates, social workers and community members. Importantly, the young people were paid for their involvement.
