By Any Media Necessary: Mapping Youth and Participatory Politics

Create a Civic Holiday By Any Media Necessary

During the first civic imagination cycle that took place between December 2014 and January 2015, the goal was to bring a small group of individuals together to collaboratively design one new civic holiday. There were four participants from a diverse set of backgrounds all drawn from the personal networks of MAPP team members:Participants were asked to participate in four phases of activities:
  1. Initial Meeting: A Google + Hangout with all participants moderated by Program Specialist Alexandra Margolin during the first week of December to discuss parameters and brainstorm holiday ideas.
  2. Nomination Phase: A six-week period where all participants conceptualize and nominate a holiday of their choice in the medium of their choice (a song, a dance, picture, video, voice recording, etc). Nominations were sent to Alexandra who posted them to a private Wordpress site.
  3. Discussion Phase: A week-long period where participants view each other’s nominations on the private Wordpress site, comment, and discuss.
  4. Consensus:  A second Google + Hangout where, as a group, participants decide on one holiday (or hybrid of holidays) to “celebrate” and brainstorm what such a celebration might look like. 
As this was an experimental convening, the MAPP team was not entirely sure what the outcome would be. What was particularly exciting was the commitment to the creative by each of the participants and the range of holidays that were proposed.  There were some unexpected results. The first was in the responses themselves. While submissions could be submitted in the medium of each participant’s choice, all but one of the submissions were written descriptions.
 
 

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