I-participate: Culture and identity in enabling meaningful opportunities

This paper extends the narrative around participation by focusing on self-identity, personhood and the culture adults and children create for engagement. It demands a more complete foundation for engendering participation through the creation of a culture that values the need to establish and amplify the child’s voice as part of a journey to create shared communities of practice. The use of ‘voice’ as a concept is extended through a consideration of children as advocates as we examine personhood and identity within participative opportunities. With reference to a recent ethnographic PhD study and practice-based examples, this paper explores the practical ways children might assume the role of participant. Offering a series of steps and reflections from practice the paper explores the culture that is created around everyday participation, with implications for generational relationships, policy and practice. This paper examines a view of the child participant that is not determined solely by what they know but by who they are.