About the Lab

Young people are the largest group online, with 45% of global internet users below the age of 25. However, avenues, methods and narratives to centre youth perspectives from non-western contexts in conversations on digital environments remain limited. 
 
The Youth Digital Cultures Lab seeks to bring together diverse young people from India to meaningfully engage with their experiences of diversity, joy and meaningful inclusion in digital environments. Our earlier work with Include+ has shown that diversity remains a key element and factors such as language, location, culture, profession, education and social groups impact how young people interact, subvert, and imagine digital environments in their individual and collective lives. By co-developing speculative and participatory design methodologies with young people,the lab will deepen and foster non-western understandings and reimaginations of digital environments. These will result in new methods and strategies for youth work. 

The lab will identify Youth Fellows from diverse communities through an open call. They will be part of a 2-month incubation program which will focus on:

1. Participatory and co-creation methods for youth-led research 

2. Speculative and participatory design methods 

3. Grounding in non-western digital futures 

4. Immersive experiences with youth organisations to gain insights and foster collaborative practices

5. Futures-thinking with diverse communities 
   
   

Fellows will have access to resources on participatory methods and youth engagement in digital spaces, informed by the learnings from our previously conducted extensive work on youth and digitalisation. They will conduct ​​workshops with their respective communities to capture youth experiences and perspectives on meaningful inclusion and joy in digital environments while keeping diversity at the centre. 
The final output will be brainstormed with the youth fellows, and be responsive to the learnings from the project. 

Our project focuses on digital equity, a core theme of INCLUDE+ by creating a lab-environment where young people in India can be brought together to co-create the future of online spaces through capacity building, speculative design methods training, and participatory workshops. The central aim of the project is to study youth perspectives on digital inclusion, diversity and wellbeing in the context of digital spaces they inhabit, aligning with several Include+ principles. We also aim to co-develop open-source resources for youth organisations, collectives and civil society containing methods, training modules and workshop plans for future use- thereby contributing to enduring digital forms of civic action. 

The project focusses on not just understanding digitalisation in its infrastructural impact, but seeks to investigate how diverse factors including language, region, gender, media, and access shape young people’s digital experiences qualitatively. Diversity, therefore, will remain a central anchor across the project, as we engage with young people across India, and aim to capture their imaginaries of non-western digital futures.

 YDCL requires new ways of engaging with youth, and developing research and methods with, and for them. Through the incubation program, youth fellows gain exposure to key topics such as tech policy, non-western technological futures, and participatory methodologies, building their capacity to contribute meaningfully to inclusive digital design. By involving youth as co-creators, the project promotes inclusion, belonging, and agency in digital spaces. The co-created outputs, rooted in youth insights will certainly contribute to INCLUDE+’s vision of a more inclusive, diverse and equitable digital future.