ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we explore how Olga, her partner educators and researchers, and youth re-imagined their science museum through a research-practice partnership (RPP) initiated in 2015. Initially formed to design a maker space, over time, the RPP enacted these imaginaries, which altered both the space of the science museum and how we related to the space. We share how our RPP team co-produced new and more just spatial imaginaries in/for the science museum through both transforming discourses (i.e., how we talked about what science is, who can do science, and where science happens in relation to our lives as it is taken up and represented in the Center) and transforming practices (i.e., the practices we collectively took up to enact these discourses toward altering the spaces of the Center). These transforming discourses and practices helped to make visible the histories and present of youths’ lived lives and created foundations upon which the RPP could organize for justice-oriented action. We share three vignettes to explore the co-production of spatial imaginaries for reclaiming the Center. Across these vignettes, we illustrate how youth took up familiar spaces in new and multimodal ways through their discourses and practices.
