Post-its, postcards, and dream clouds: exploring participatory design methods as avenues to capture rural youth voices

This paper reports on a participatory workshop with a group of rural youths exploring ways of engaging them to capture their voices, examining whether design-based participatory methods could support them in raising their voices and making their perspective visible to a broader public. With the frame of a one-day workshop, three different participatory design methods were tested. The empirical findings show that participatory workshops with rural youth using visual design-based methods can support the sharing of valuable knowledge about being young in rural areas from the perspective of young people. The study displays that a participatory workshop setup using design-based methods prompt young people to articulate valuable insights about their local community; and thus, potentially building up agency among the young people participating, as well as having processual values as the participatory workshop using design methods offer learning and development opportunities to young people where the young people among others gain valuable insights about their community. Thus, this study inscribes itself into the field of rural participatory research by testing participatory design methods to enable young people to express their ideas, perspectives and opinion.