Issue 3 brings together creativity researchers, creative youth development practitioners, youth development researchers, policy experts, and young people themselves. Below, in their own words, are the contributors whose ideas, programs, and poetry shape this double issue of Extensions.
"Creative Youth Development is a holistic approach to deeply engaging young people through creativity to support them in thriving in all aspects of their lives."
"Creativity is not peripheral to learning, but central to it all the time."
"Extended education is not the margins of young people's learning lives, but potentially its most transformative terrain."
"Young people learn best when they are engaged emotionally, socially, culturally, and imaginatively."
"To truly empower the next generation, we must equip them with the resilience, creativity, and empathy inherent in design thinking."
"…young people's creative development depends on how well we tend the individual and community emotional landscape."
"As a teaching artist, I aimed at bringing wonder and curiosity to the room and to activate the students' body-mind as an entity."
"Real STEM, the kind that drives actual breakthroughs, runs on a disciplined creativity that generates ideas that are original, useful, and elegant."
"Many rangatahi (young people) move through systems that were not built for how they learn or express themselves. Creative Māori spaces meet them differently."
"As a form of creative public pedagogy, Forest of Imagination generates a wider societal conversation about the role of creativity and imagination in everyday life."
"Creative youth development is not solely about preparing future artists or innovators. It is about preparing citizens capable of imagining alternatives and contributing to their realisation."
"In an era when entire generations risk being marginalized by the AI transformation, we need to come closer than ever to the reference points that shape their lives."
"We ask students to think of their poems as a way for us to continue to get to know one another. The more we know, the better we can connect and build alongside one another."
"El querido Bronx / La mezcla del Caribe, Latinoamérica with a hint of Europe and Asia / Accents from across oceans meeting on one street."
"Cultural assets are mental health assets. And youth-serving organizations are uniquely positioned to activate those assets: ethically, rigorously, and aligned with what young people actually want."
"The essence of my work revolves around promoting youth creative expression for civic engagement."
"The future of CYD depends on more than compelling programs. It depends on our ability to generate evidence that reflects our values, honors youth expertise, and advances social justice."
"…disengagement is not an option, because every space where youth are absent is a space where decisions are made without them."
"Girls who initially seemed unsure gradually became more engaged, sharing ideas that were often more imaginative than I had expected."
"CYD functions as upstream civic infrastructure. It prepares young people to engage institutions before they enter formal decision-making spaces, while modeling the very behaviors — listening, co-creation, iteration — that institutions themselves seek to embed."
