Safe space as praxis: creating (affective) conditions for world-building, care and futures for young people in the creative arts

This praxis-informed research project examines how youth arts organisations create what I term ‘creative safe spaces’, which are sites of world-building, care, and imagining the future. This dissertation argues that to create a safe space of this kind is to engage in an ongoing praxis that understands safe spaces as dynamic and responsive, and creates the capacity for young people to reimagine change in an embodied and collective way. This project aims to transform conventional understandings of safe space from a concept to a form of praxis that acknowledges and embraces the processual, embodied and temporal qualities of these spaces. As this project asserts, there is not one method or framework to design a creative safe space. Rather, effective safe spaces are the result of an ongoing process and praxis, requiring engagement in theory, critical reflection and applied action. Using a combination of qualitative methods (interviews) and reflections on praxis discoveries, this project examines how these creative safe spaces create the conditions for artistic development and cultural production by young people, especially those experiencing the impacts of marginalisation. It presents a theoretical exploration of creative safe spaces through analysis of two case studies, youth-focused music organisation Girls Rock! Canberra and Melbourne-based performing arts company Outer Urban Projects (dissertation). This theoretical part of the project analysis is informed by, and in turns informs, the praxis component of the project; that is, critical reflections on the lived experience of running an arts organisation (Girls Rock! Canberra) that aims to facilitate this kind of safe space (praxis). As I argue, Girls Rock! Canberra and Outer Urban Projects are creating spaces where young people can recognise themselves as creative agents and begin to imagine themselves as having a future in the arts. At the centre of my argument is the recognition that creative safe spaces are sites of world building, care and imagining futures. Understanding safe space as a form of praxis is a tool that other arts organisations and community arts workers can adapt into their own practices: offering a framework to design intentional spaces that create conditions for young people to succeed, build relationships, practice care, and see futures for themselves in the arts.