Youth and the Future of Culture

Five young people pose in a V-formation on lowrider bicycles with tall handlebars in a city street.

Four young people in long evening gowns stand on stage, each with an open book and a microphone placed in front of them.

A young woman wearing a hard hat, safety glasses, yellow safety vest, and tan jacket uses a metal tool on a white stone of a building.

Six young musicians pose with their instruments: keyboard, fiddles, banjo, and acoustic guitar.

Youth and the Future of Culture

July 2–7, 2025

In 2025, Youth and the Future of Culture explores creativity, vitality, resilience, and intergenerational learning and exchange through the contributions and experiences of youth. The program underscores how young people influence and engage with culture, and how they create, innovate, and sustain cultural practices and traditions.

Drawing from diverse communities and perspectives, Youth and the Future of Culture features youth-centered—and often youth-led—projects and organizations, and individuals who are generating new ideas, transforming their communities, and confronting contemporary challenges. By bringing people together in conversation, the program fosters intergenerational connections and explore how young people engage with tradition, influence future generations, and agitate for change.

Youth have participated in many Festival programs since 1967, but this is the first time the entire Festival is dedicated to their unique experiences. In 2025, the National Mall became a “third space” where young musicians and entrepreneurs, skaters and artists, activists and craftspeople, and a host of others collaborated, shared, demonstrated, and discussed how they are shaping the future on their own terms.

As the Festival looks forward to the U.S. semiquincentennial in 2026, our aims are simple: to engage and support the next generation of practitioners, and to create another space where youth voices are part of the national dialogue.

Themes

Students from the Sacramento Academic and Vocational Academy are converting a 1964 Impala to EV technology.
Photo by Andri Tambunan
Here Are Our Worlds
How do youth create community and foster a sense of identity?
“I believe youth culture is a real thing, but it’s not one culture. We express ourselves in many different ways.”
—Andrea (age twenty-one), student and photographer
Youth culture is diverse, dynamic, and always becoming, and young people make important contributions to the cultural landscape. Forward-thinking and resilient, they make place and create a sense of belonging by embracing creativity. Through dance, fashion, media, music, writing, and other creative expressions, young people engage in storytelling that explores and demonstrates who they are in the present, with an eye toward a future where everyone can thrive.

Mariachi Tesoro de San Fernando showcases the talents of advanced students from the city of San Fernando, California’s Mariachi Master Apprentice Program.
Photo courtesy of the San Fernando Mariachi Master Apprentice Program
Engaging Tradition
How are youth engaging with and innovating traditions?
“I’m shaping and setting stones with skills passed down through generations. The magnitude of it all constantly inspires me.”
—Brianna (age twenty-four), journeyman stone carver and mason
Whether they are learning in their homes, at school, in training programs, or on their own, youth recognize the value of cultural traditions and are committed to preserving them. From heritage trades such as blacksmithing and stone carving to traditional music apprenticeship programs and Native language reclamation, there is a growing interest among today’s youth in the transmission of knowledge between generations. They understand that tradition is a powerful tool that can connect them to their origins and that intergenerational exchanges are important forms of community building.

John Wood, an activist with Earth Conservation Corps, demonstrates falconry at the 2022 Folklife Festival.
Photo by Sonya Pencheva, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives
The World We Want
How are youth reimagining the future and responding to contemporary challenges?
“I can’t vote yet, but some of my friends and I helped do ‘get out the vote’ work during the election.”
—Ivan (age seventeen), student
Youth have always been at the vanguard of change. Active in civic and movement work, they are actively seeking ways to transform their communities and create a more just and inclusive society. Across the country, their efforts are driving local and national initiatives to address diverse issues such as climate change, food sovereignty, and gun violence. They are visionaries and innovators, and their activism reflects an understanding that a sustainable future begins in the present and they have a direct stake in making that future a possibility. Youth are not just inheriting the future; they are actively involved in reimagining and shaping it.

Program Highlights

Emerging Media Makers
Young filmmakers, journalists, and media artists are leveraging the power of media to share their stories and amplify youth voices.
Learning Together
Family and community workshops come to life as artists present their handmade objects—and the skills and stories behind them—that contribute to distinctive ways of life and cultural legacies.
Museum of Contemporary American Teenagers
Youth are demonstrating art, fashion, music, rites of passage, sports, and many things in between that illustrate the vibrancy of youth expression and the power of youth advocacy.
Music Apprenticeship
Young musicians are expressing how music has the power to unify across generations.
Native Language Reclamation in the U.S.
Young American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian language learners and users, who balance being changemakers and carrying on traditional culture, are sharing their languages and what motivates them to become the next generation of speakers.
Next Generation Artisans in the Traditional Building Trades
Young craftspeople are sharing their experiences learning the heritage building trades from master artisans dedicated to passing on their knowledge and skill to the next generation.
Streetwise
The Streetwise area showcases the creativity with which young people express their connections to public spaces through lowrider culture, street art and graffiti, skating and skate arts, and sidewalk astronomy.
Wordsmiths and Storytellers
Wordsmiths and Storytellers highlights the power of narrative, lyricism, and verse, and how youth breathe new life into literary and performance scenes.

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