Blog by Emmanuela Kumi

Hi, I’m Emmanuela Kumi. I’m a sixth form student, youth advocate, and peer researcher on this year’s Authoring Our Own Stories project with Partnership for Young London.

Over the past few years, I’ve had the privilege of speaking in some incredible spaces, from the United Nations Foundation Headquarters in Washington D.C. to rooms inside the UK government, championing gender equity, educational reform, and access to healthy food. These moments have been powerful and formative, shaping both how I see the world and how I view my role within it.

But what drew me to Authoring Our Own Stories was something more local and more personal. Much of my advocacy work has operated at a national or global scale. This project offers something different: the chance to make an impact on a grassroots level, directly within communities I belong to. It’s a way of not just telling stories, but helping others author their own: especially those whose voices are too often silenced, distorted, or spoken over.

This project stands out from others and feels different because it is. It’s intimate. It goes beyond statistics and sweeping policy critiques. It holds space for vulnerability, and it understands that meaningful change starts with truly listening.

What excites me most in the work we do is our creative, participatory approach to research. Traditional models often exclude people by design. They privilege certain ways of knowing and expressing, and in doing so, reproduce power imbalances. But creativity disrupts that.

For me, creativity isn’t just aesthetic: it’s about access. Whether it’s through storytelling, visual or performance art, or interactive formats, creative tools lower the barriers to participation. They allow people with learning disabilities, diverse needs, and different cultural reference points to contribute in ways that feel natural and empowering to them. Instead of asking young people to adapt to rigid systems, we’re adapting systems to fit them. That shift is radical and, more importantly, necessary in order to achieve the goals of our research.

Creative methods don’t just make participation easier; they make the research better. They allow for deeper, more complex truths to be shared - truths that might be lost in a tick-box survey or a clinical interview.

Co-creating research processes with the people we’re aiming to serve makes our findings more authentic and more usable. If we want research that truly reflects lived realities and leads to meaningful change, then those realities have to shape every step of the process, not just the outcomes.

Emmanuela presenting at London South Bank University.

In terms of what I bring to the project, I’m proud to use it as a platform to share my academic, creative, and advocacy experience. I’ve been active in the realms of social justice and changemaking since the age of 14, working on intersectional campaigns, moderating and participating in panels, leading workshops, and conducting independent research.

I also bring lived experience. As an autistic, mixed-race young woman, I relate personally to many of the themes we’re exploring. I’ve been both a participant in research and someone designing and conducting it, and that dual perspective shapes how I approach this role. I think deeply about not just what we ask, but how we ask it, and whether those we hope to reach will feel safe and empowered enough to respond.

My primary hope for this project is that it forms an opportunity to shift power. Youth voice shouldn’t be a box to tick, nor something dusted off for the odd consultation or token panel. It should be embedded, structural, and central to how professionals, funders, and policymakers understand wellbeing, especially when it comes to Black and Brown young women.

We talk a lot about resilience in youth spaces. And yes, it’s a strength - but it’s also a cost. Too often, young people are applauded for being resilient without anyone asking what it costs them to constantly be “strong.” I think our project is brave enough to hold that tension: to explore how resilience can both empower and isolate, uplift and harm.

If our work helps professionals view mental health through a more nuanced lens, if it challenges systems to listen and respond differently, and if it leaves behind creative tools that other youth researchers can build on, then we’ve done something that lasts and holds value.