Impact: Key Insights & Emergent Themes
“Y-PLAN curriculum is a starting point – it’s an intention. It’s always been open to different ways of getting at that intent.”
– Mai Ryuno, Instructor and Project Coordinator for TOMODACHI
Creativity as Critical Thinking
Creativity manifests in a variety of ways across the range of global partnerships. At its core, the Y-PLAN process asks participants to reimagine the hierarchies of civic decision planning, which is an act of creative imagining. Additionally, the Y-PLAN curriculum is flexible – it can be altered to adapt to the needs and desires of the participants. This adaptability is illustrated clearly by the inclusion of greater creative expression activities for the students in the TOMODACHI program, as a means for them to process their trauma and hopes for the future. Y-PLAN enables students and staff to pursue goals that they care about, expanding the boundaries of both traditional urban planning and popular conception of leadership.
Further, creative expression can bridge language and cultural barriers, allowing students to communicate complicated solutions they might not be able to share otherwise. For example, students from the Youth Leadership Program with Sub-Saharan Africa, most of whom spoke French, were tasked with making the guidebooks for their program using scissors, glue, recycled materials, and accordion bookmaking blanks. Even though they had very limited experience using these materials, the adult allies remarked that “Their talents and capabilities came out right away… We saw things we hadn’t seen before: how gifted, artistic and creative they were.” A group of these students went on to represent Telegraph Avenue as a camel in their final presentations to the Mayor of Berkeley, using a metaphor familiar to them to emphasize the stubborn challenges that plagued the street.
