ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses the relationship between youth participatory action research (YPAR) and improvisational filmmaking as a pedagogical approach to increasing public voice among youth experiencing social, economic, and educational disparities by offering them a unique means of engaging different publics with their research and lived experience. Anthropologists and critical educators have described transformational approaches to education of young people designed to address justice and equity at the individual, group, and social levels. YPAR as practiced by the Institute for Community Research (ICR) is a transformational approach to education in and out of school. Critical performance ethnography engages actors in the performance of ethnographic interpretation to illustrate cultural processes or disseminate the results of research to broader audiences. This project was ICR's first attempt to introduce YPAR as a means of increasing youth voice and organizing around drug violence.
