Musicians, Artists & Players: Leisure Education as a Source for Job Opportunities in the AMCs
SAHWA Policy Paper nº. 2
ISSN: 2564-9167
The aim of this Policy Paper is to draw policy recommendations from the analyses of the SAHWA Project’s ethnographic and survey data sets focused on young people’s cultural practices and leisure education. The interest in youth cultural practices reflects two main, distinct approaches: the first conceives of youth as a potential danger to social order, the second looks at young people as social agents who are potentially involved in processes of social and cultural innovation as producers and distributors (Furlong, Woodman and Wyn; 2011). Our starting point is the conception of young people as active agents who contribute to the production, reproduction and innovation of cultural trends in the society in which they live. Therefore, it shows specific interest in the practices of cultural consumption and production enacted by young people as sources of job opportunities for the youth in Arab Mediterranean countries.
The paper is organised into four sections. First, we focus on the role of young people as relevant cultural agents in the creation, production, distribution and consumption of cultural products. Second, we discuss the main youth leisure activity trends in Arab Mediterranean countries, as expressed by young people in the ethnographic fieldwork and the survey. Third, we analyse youth policies related to non-formal education in order to draw some conclusions and make recommendations, especially in terms of EU policies, which is the main objective of the final section.