Digital Salvage: Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) and the Integration of Formal and Informal Learning for Community Creative Entrepreneurship and Technological Innovation
Digital Salvage is structured intentionally as an inclusive and interdisciplinary Arts-based Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) initiative, bringing together youth from northern regions and diverse creative communities in active co-creation of a powerful new technological resource. Rooted within a critical paradigm that views young people not merely as recipients of knowledge but as empowered co-researchers and collaborators, this initiative consciously positions youth as participants who define research questions, frame practical challenges, explore innovative solutions, and implement meaningful actions in their communities. The project’s guiding principles thus explicitly value youth expertise and lived experiences, empowering them to shape organizational capacity, cultural practices, creative entrepreneurship opportunities, research outcomes, and processes directly enabled by Digital Salvage technology.
To execute a robust YPAR initiative, this project will employ multiple mixed methodologies suitable for collaborative, community-based research. It will integrate qualitative research techniques such as community storytelling circles, participatory workshops, co-design sessions, and reflective journaling, as well as quantitative approaches including surveys and structured analysis of conversational engagement analytics generated by the chatbot. These mixed methods converge to create a detailed, multidimensional understanding of youth experiences, challenges and capabilities, organizational barriers, and the effectiveness of creative entrepreneurial processes. Participatory co-design workshops, for example, enable youth to actively prototype, test, and iterate chatbot functionalities, conversational flows, and graphic interfaces, providing valuable insights into effective AI design, communication clarity, and accessibility.
Critically, Digital Salvage will place balanced emphasis on both formal and informal learning pathways, ensuring meaningful accessibility for early-career participants possessing diverse skill sets, educational backgrounds, and lived experiences. Formal learning elements in the project will encompass structured training sessions, detailed documentation, instructional workshops focusing on technical skills such as chatbot programming, conversational design, proposal development methodologies, database management, digital storyboarding, graphic design and layout, and rigorous project assessment methods (such as CO-STARS)—all encapsulated clearly within the OpenAI integration to foster digital literacy and technological fluency.
In parallel, equally valuable informal learning will occur through peer-to-peer mentorship, open-ended collaborative sessions, group reflective activities, facilitated community conversations, and experiential learning by direct engagement with organizations and multi-sectoral stakeholders. These informal modalities intentionally leverage the rich diversity and creativity inherent in arts and design cultures. Young artists and entrepreneurs will not only refine technological and professional skills—but also organically develop competencies around teamwork, resilience, creative problem-solving, self-confidence, adaptability, and leadership capacity by freely exploring and reinterpreting Digital Salvage’s functionality within engaged and supportive group contexts.
Furthermore, two interconnected thematic streams—Artistic Practices and Technological Innovation—are intentionally integrated under the broader umbrella of creative entrepreneurship within this initiative. The Artistic Practices stream engages youth creatively to design user experiences, aesthetic interfaces, accessible chatbot graphics, animations, and substantiative conversational content aligned explicitly with artistic and cultural ways of communicating. Participants develop robust critical thinking, visual storytelling, design-thinking capabilities, contextual creativity, marketing awareness, and the ability to translate art-sector practices effectively into conversational AI.
The Technological Innovation stream addresses equally substantial skill development, equipping young participants with structured technological proficiencies such as scriptwriting for conversational AI, basic coding and software integration preparedness (JavaScript, PHP, SQL), database management, UX/UI prototyping, security awareness, and analytics-driven insights. Participants build practical capability through real-world technological experiments, direct use of industry-standard frameworks, and software development practices deeply embedded within the WordPress ecosystem and OpenAI’s researcher access protocols.
Of particular note, Digital Salvage actively engages youth participants from underrepresented or resource-constrained northern communities. These communities frequently face structural challenges of limited technical infrastructure, scarce mentorship resources, inadequate professional network access, and complex funding application processes. Digital Salvage directly addresses these capacity barriers, building specific capabilities related to preparing and assessing compelling proposals for agencies like the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Manitoba Arts Council. By empowering youth to participate meaningfully in designing better proposal-writing tools and conversational frameworks—integrating proven methodologies like the CO-STARS assessment process—this project significantly enhances organizational and individual artistic and entrepreneurial capacity at a grassroots level.
Emphasizing mindset development and resilience is also integral to the YPAR framework envisioned in Digital Salvage. Youth collaborators will explore, articulate, and critically reflect on challenges commonly found in creative entrepreneurship journeys: navigating funding complexity, overcoming project setbacks, interpreting policy guidelines, adapting rapidly shifting creative or technological landscapes, and persistently maintaining clarity of vision and motivation. This celebratory, honest, reflective attitude ensures participants build more than professional skills—they gain the social-emotional resilience, reflective discernment, adaptability, and entrepreneurial self-awareness essential to career-long success.
Finally, framing Digital Salvage explicitly as a formal YPAR research initiative integrates seamlessly with established research support and incubation activities successfully piloted and tested through organizations such as Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD), the Canada Council for the Arts, Manitoba Arts Council, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Manitoba Agriculture, the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership and the OpenAI Researcher Access Program.
In this regard, youth will have clear opportunities to contribute to formal research documentation, scholarly reflection, and publication of insights, narratives, outcomes, and methodologies. Working alongside experienced mentors and educators, youth participants not only engage meaningfully with technology and arts organizations but also gain experiences in presenting formal research reports, structured case studies, and community presentations. Such public knowledge mobilization and dissemination activities extend the project’s impacts beyond immediate participants, benefiting broader communities, arts organizations, academic researchers, policy leaders, and creative entrepreneurial ecosystems.
In summation, Digital Salvage, framed proactively as an intentional, thoughtful, and deeply integrated Arts-Based Youth Participatory Action Research initiative, represents a model consolidation of technological innovation, artistic practices, formal and informal learning approaches, creative entrepreneurial experiences, and knowledge-to-action implementation. It equips youth collaborators with tangible market skills, profoundly meaningful artistic entrepreneurial experiences, structured pathways to policy impact and funding success, and personal leadership and communication capacities needed for career sustainability and community success.
