| This study examines the ways that mexicana/o youth in an after school arts program used the cultural resources made available from multiple artistic communities of practice and cultural media streams, to fashion identities and opportunities to learn. Using ethnographic methods, data were collected over a two-year period by means of participant observations, interviews, questionnaires, video recordings, and collection of student artifacts. The analysis focuses on internal and boundary processes that linked members' identities of participation to collective development and to the social practices of external communities including Chicano poet-activists, hip hop poet-educators, a professional dance company, local mexicana families, and university student volunteers. My findings suggest that the program created a space where identities of competence could be developed through mentoring relationships that allowed for risk-taking, authentic self-expression, and movement into more public domains of performance and media production. The definitions of competence were sufficiently textured to allow youth to negotiate identities that were both locally differentiated and broadly connected. Centripetal participation was supported by long term, caring relationships; the program's willingness to embrace youths' membership in multiple communities; the sensual, social, and aesthetic pleasures of the group activities; and collective engagement with popular culture that allowed youth members to work through issues of sexuality, gender, ethnicity, nationality, and social position. Identification with the community and ownership of meaning were achieved through the partial overlap, or articulation, of youth practices and meanings with those of the learning design. |
