[New Project] Launching the Youth Digital Cultures Lab!

We’re thrilled to announce the launch of the Youth Digital Cultures Lab (YDCL) - a new initiative that brings together diverse young people from India to meaningfully engage with their experiences of diversity, joy and meaningful inclusion in digital environments.

Hosted at The Pranava Institute and supported by the Include+ Network at the University of Leeds, YDCL is a space to co-create inclusive and diverse digital futures, rooted in non-western paradigms.

YDCL aims to use participatory design and futures methodologies with youth to deepen and foster non-western understandings and reimaginations of digital environments.

Over the coming months, we’re excited to:

• Launch a Youth Fellowship Program that offers grounding in tech policy, participatory methods, speculative design, and non-western perspectives

• Support fellows to conduct community-based workshops across India

• Co-create open-source resources, toolkits, and frameworks for youth-led research

• Produce research outputs - blogs, reports, publications, and policy recommendations from our work on youth and digital cultures

• Build sustainable, youth-led communities working toward equitable digital futures

Our Focus Principles:

1. Enable Meaningful Digital Inclusion: We aim to explore what does meaningful digital inclusion look like for youth across India, and the world. Do technologies help us bridge unadressed gaps, if yes, how can they do it, or do they widen this gap further?

2. Co-create Non-Western, Diverse Digital Futures : We believe diversity is not just a checkbox, it is a framework. We work with youth to reimagine digital futures rooted in diverse, non-Western perspectives.

3. Explore and Enhance Digital Joys: Young people experience joy online in ways often overlooked. We study these moments along with particpatory methods involving youth to design more human centered, flourishing digital spaces.

Follow our journey, explore the lab, and stay tuned for updates, insights, and the upcoming Call for Youth Fellows!

Let us build digital futures that are inclusive, joyful, and rooted in non-western paradigms with young individuals!

Explore the Youth Digital Cultures Lab : https://www.youthdigitalcultureslab.com/