School of the Arts & Media
Participating in youth arts helps build more inclusive, resilient and empowered communities
Published on the 26 February 2026
The research project builds capacity with Shopfront youth co-authoring and co-communicating its findings. Photo: Joshua Morris Photography.
Co-designed research explores how Shopfront Arts helps young people develop transferable life skills.
A research partnership between UNSW and Shopfront Arts Co-op is exploring how the youth arts organisation helps foster leadership, confidence and creative resilience in young people.
Shopfront is Sydney’s only cross-artform organisation led by and dedicated to young people in the arts. It has supported emerging artists from 8-27 years old to devise and deliver creative work for almost 50 years.
Shopfront engages in collaborative art making projects in response to its young members’ needs. The co-operative empowers young people, cultivating transferable life skills through its creative practice and artistic communities. “Shopfront exists to create better humans,” says Shopfront Creative Director and CEO, Natalie Rose.
“Shopfront is a place for young people to explore the arts, anything from film, theatre, performance art, installation, singing and visual art. We’re an inclusive community driven to create ambitious new work.”
The organisation works with schools, youth and migrant resource centres, disability support services, community organisations and local councils. It promotes more equitable access to the arts, Ms Rose says.
“Everyone is welcome, every voice is valued. For many young people, Shopfront becomes a second home. Our young people consider and challenge their place in the world, developing critical and creative thinking and laying the foundation for a lifelong love of the arts.
“We facilitate the discovery of new imaginative possibilities to drive social change and provide a platform so they can share what matters to them.”
The research partnership engages with young people at Shopfront using co-design methods to explore how they understand, experience and develop a sense of empowerment through its artistic methods, opportunities and community. The project is funded by the Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation with in-kind support from UNSW Arts Design & Architecture (ADA).
The impacts of youth arts are evident sector wide, says project lead Associate Professor Bryoni Trezise from UNSW’s School of the Arts & Media. “Youth arts organisations, such as Shopfront, demonstrate an ongoing commitment to creating safe spaces, vibrant atmospheres and approaches which allow young people to discover and experiment,” the theatre and performance studies scholar says.
“Shopfront provides artistic resources, guidance and a space for young people to realise their creative work. But more than that, in the process of developing creative practices, in producing creative outputs, Shopfront fosters skills that reach beyond artistic careers and abilities.”
Additionally, Shopfront is novel as Australia’s only youth theatre company owned by its members, she says. Young members of the organisation fundraised the capital, together with funding from the NSW Ministry for the Arts, to purchase their current site in 1979.
“Its co-operative governance model means all Shopfront members are collaborators and decision-makers that drive the future of Shopfront. Access is a priority with teaching artists supporting Shopfront members with inclusive and pioneering practices.”
Small-medium arts organisations face significant funding pressures; the rise of metrics-driven reporting does not do justice to their cumulative socio-cultural impact, A/Prof. Trezise says.
“‘Our research to date demonstrates that Shopfront makes an invaluable contribution to its members, to Australia’s arts ecosystem and to the wider community, amplifying young voices and developing independence and agency through artistic thinking and creative methodologies.”
Engaging in the arts promotes independence and resilience
The research examines and articulates the nuanced ways Shopfront programs help to develop proficiencies and skills that assist young people in their lives more broadly, A/Prof Trezise says.
“We’re interested in understanding more about the relationship between the artistic process and how young people conceive and practice empowerment.”
The project will build capacity with Shopfront youth co-authoring and co-communicating its findings. “It builds on Shopfront’s existing model fostering youth leadership and empowerment.
“Through co-design and co-authorship, we’re ensuring the research is meaningful and accessible to members of Shopfront, as well as to the broader community, arts industry, academic and government audiences.”
The project marks a “full circle moment” for A/Prof Trezise; it builds on her early career experience as a performance maker, writer and dramaturg in youth arts with PACT Centre for Emerging Artists and as a research officer with Regional Arts NSW examining data sets on arts participation and regional economies.
Her research engages with processes of creative thinking (what she calls ‘creative literacies’ in her new co-authored book and podcast) and championing creative pedagogies for wide-ranging careers. “The health and educational benefits of the arts have been well observed. Research has shown how artistic practices enable young people to become resilient thinkers, makers and community-builders,” she says.
“Engaging in youth arts boosts civic engagement, provides socio-emotional benefits and protects against mental illness. It helps increase educational outcomes and improve motivation and engagement.
“Our research will explore how young people develop through their engagement with Shopfront’s adaptable, member-led creative systems and processes. These experiences can be transformational for young people.”
Exploring sensory spheres of experience as empowerment
Shopfront has a team of teaching artists, a board of directors and five advisory panels: Young People, LGBTQIA+ people, People with disability and/or who are d/Deaf, culturally and linguistically diverse people and Blak people.
Shopfront describes the advisory panels’ role as keeping the organisation “honest, accountable, youth-led and accessible”.
A/Prof Trezise, together with UNSW research associate Dr Nitin Vengurlekar, conducted co-design workshops with advisory panel members to shape the research design. “These forums were used to inform the nature of the data that we would collect, the methodologies we would use throughout the process as well as ways the findings could be delivered and communicated,” she says.
The process is iterative and emergent – “we are all on a learning continuum” – working with novel creative provocations and research methods designed by the young people themselves. “The emphasis is on playful approaches highlighting standout memories, knowledges and experiences.
“There were some really rich ideas and insights offered by panel members which we distilled together into key themes that articulate what makes learning and creating at Shopfront a unique experience.
“Our project is focussing on sensory, embodied and cognitive creative literacies that support self, knowing and belonging.”
The research team will explore these literacies with Shopfront youth through a series of creative activities in the studio.
“Long-term, we’re interested in exploring whether and how they translate creative leadership into other parts of their lives, whether they can track connections between their growing creative confidence and their ability to initiate, imagine and take bold steps in their life more broadly.”
Exploring creative outputs for ongoing research translation
The project will culminate in an impact study as well as a co-designed creative resource that explores Shopfront’s contribution to young people’s sense of self.
“We are building a composite understanding of the Shopfront experience embedded in the specifics of its site, praxis and community. This moves beyond generic, clichéd understandings of impact,” A/Prof Trezise says.
The research team are investigating how a creative digital platform might communicate Shopfront’s positive impact on empowerment. One of the ideas put forward by Shopfront members was to showcase the findings through filmed mini-sodes.
This will be defined during workshops through creative improvisations that explore diverse sensorial and personal narratives.
“This project positions young people at the centre of the conversation about why creative educations are so important.
“They have an opportunity to drive the methods and languages that communicate what they experience when they are learning and making creatively, and they’re so insightful, the learning travels in both directions.”
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Associate Professor Bryoni Trezise
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