MozFest and Youth

After last year’s success, we’re excited to announce that MozFest 2022 will be running virtually between March 7 - 10. More importantly, however, is that its Call for Proposals is now open until November 5.

Youth and Futures is Mozilla Festival’s home for the young, and this year we’re focusing on youth participation for digital futures - and where better for this than Mozfest? Nowhere else brings together technologists, educators, creatives, policy-makers, activists and youth from around the world with the common purpose of facilitating internet health and trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (AI). Don’t miss this opportunity to showcase your work, ideas or creativity with a global community and submit your session now!

The Youth & Futures Space is particularly relevant in discussions for fairer digital technologies. Did you know that one in three individuals online globally are under the age of 18? That representation doubles in more lower-income countries. Given this large number of younger generations on the internet, it is of the utmost importance to develop solutions to not only protect them, but to also encourage their active participation in shaping the world and ultimately, their future. What’s clear is that young people are speaking up and want to make the most of this opportunity to change the world. You only need to look at Greta Thunberg’s Friday’s for Future movement, or Kpop fans using their community for political activism and change as proof of the global reach that young people have online.

Connect with its thriving and creative global community

For more than 10 years, MozFest has been beating the drum for the participation of younger generations in building digital futures. For much of that time, these endeavours have been through the Youth Zone Space, but this year we’re revamping as “Youth & Futures”. Now more than ever we’re dedicated to schools, universities, civil society organisations and groups focussed on or led by youth. We want to do this through fun, creative and crafty adventures that allow collaboration, design, play, and storytelling to drive the process.

We’re also looking forward to hosting activities that are connected to topics from the eight other MozFest Spaces and exhibiting sessions that are accessible for all ages. For example, there are beginner coding workshops, talks from young people passionate about tech, and opportunities for discussion and feedback from young people about how they want to shape our shared digital future.

The Youth & Futures Space is run by a team of Wranglers well experienced with the world of youth participation and digital futures. We are a group of educators, computer scientists, artists, software engineers,social researchers and youth from Ireland, Uruguay and the UK. You can learn more about previous Youth Digital Participation at MozFest in this article written by MozFest Wranglers Aoibheann Mangan, Dervla O’Brien, and Alia ElKattan. You can also read the MozFest book Chapter “Youth Zone: A New Generation For Internet Health” for more inspiration.