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This article discusses the intersections between flow art, critical play, and wellbeing in urban contexts in Finland. Flow art as an art form sits at the intersection of several movement-based creative disciplines, including contemporary circus, dance, and the underground electronic music scene. It is based on DIY in terms of making one's own props and choreographies and peer teaching/learning. The flow artists make use of several props familiar to the circus arts, including contact sticks, poi, hula hoops, diabolos, dragon staffs, and fans. The article explores how urban artistic take-overs can be understood as critical play, including the potential for political subversion and changing the meanings of urban spaces. Further, the article discusses how wellbeing is understood holistically, relationally, and interconnected to the concept of flow. The article is a result of ethnographic research conducted with flow art communities in 2021–2023. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The steady decline of youth participation in society has been a concern for social scientists since the 1970s. Recent research has sought to move beyond concluding this signifies a 'crisis of democracy' or explaining the phenomenon by distinguishing between formal and extra-institutional types of participation by redirecting attention towards everyday life. Through a similar focus on the 'everyday', we seek to enrich our understanding of how youth participation manifests today, by drawing on the rich vein of (post)subcultural theory and the study of everyday youth practices. Specifically, we consider the meaning and role of space in the everyday lives and activism of youth in conflict with social institutions. The article draws on cross-national ethnographic data, from research with stigmatised groups of youth in Croatia, Finland, Spain and Slovakia, collected within the framework of the project. The findings affirm that space is a socially, politically and economically determined category that reflects existing social inequalities and power relations between social groups. At the same time, space is used by the young research participants, often through subcultural practices, for: self-integration; empowerment through the appropriation of public and private space; broadening the spectrum of their capabilities; and active participation aimed at achieving social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the way in which a Helsinki-based flow art community negotiates resistance in terms of hippie culture, shared and embodied conventions and reclaiming the urban space. Flow art is a form of youth culture, urban creativity, community-building and spatial occupation. It is an umbrella term for different movement-based disciplines, such as juggling, dance, object manipulation (doing tricks with props such as poi, hula hoops, contact balls and dragon staffs), acrobatics, and fire-spinning. In terms of theory, the article revisits the concepts of hippie culture and resistance in youth cultural studies and discusses them in a Finnish context. In the flow art community, resistance was actualised primarily as socially shared, fluid and embodied conventions such as peer learning and teaching as well as physical closeness and hugging. The article is informed by ethnographic fieldwork done together with flow artists in Helsinki, Finland in 2017–2018. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I discuss girls' and non-binary young people's experiences of unwelcome intergenerational encounters in the Helsinki metro underground transport network. I foreground a theoretical conception of the metro as an urban space in which the material is deeply intertwined with the political and as a space with its own racialized, gendered, and age-based hierarchies. Calling on the work of Sara Ahmed, I investigate how girls and non-binary young people make meaning of unwanted emotional encounters in the metro space and how they use and adopt certain material and digital strategies that Helena Saarikoski calls young feminine choreographies, to cope in these situations. This article is based on interviews with girls and non-binary young people who were then between 16 and 17 years of age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the chapter 9 of the book series "Studies on Popular Culture." It analyzes and interprets the Swedish youth films "Vingar av glas" (Wings of Glass) directed by Reza Bagher and "Bäst i Sverige" (We Can Be Heroes!) directed by Ulf Malmros. It also explores the comparison of the Swedish films with the British youth film "Bend It Like Beckham," directed by Gurinder Chadha.