Drawings that Make History: A Viewing Guide to Understand Youths’ Perspectives, Identity Traits and Emotional and Material Worlds

Abstract

Drawings made by minors are assets for understanding their perceptions of events and for addressing themes that are difficult to talk or write about. However, when found in archives they pose methodological and ethical challenges if the makers or the contexts of creation and collection are not known. These absences complicate writing about youths and matters that represent them. To overcome this, we propose a viewing guide by example of drawings made by early youths in Finland in two historical contexts: the process of European integration in the early 1990s and the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. Grounding the analysis in the motifs and their materiality, four viewings are proposed: the first focuses on how these historical events are depicted, the second examines traits that evidence the makers’ youth, the third highlights emotions and states of mind, and the fourth zooms into the material and the sensory experiences they transmit. This viewing guide demonstrates that drawings effectively capture youths' perceptions of specific events, but also broader phenomena that affect them, opening possibilities to understand their experiences more holistically. This guide helps researchers appreciate drawings as personal narratives, and it informs the future collection of similar materials to better include minors in curatorial processes.