YUP Project featured at the 12th Urban Social Forum
With the completion of SUAKA—a digital platform for young people to share ideas and work collectively for their cities—the YUP Project team organised a series of exhibitions and activities at Kota Kita’s annual Urban Social Forum (USF) in Yogyakarta on 30 August 2026 to launch and activate the platform. USF provides an open and inclusive space for exchanging knowledge, debating ideas, and networking between civil society organisations, activists, academics, and students working on pressing urban issues. The forum is a public and democratic space for people to put forward alternative ideas and imagine ‘Another City is Possible!’.
The YUP’s exhibition and activities were inspired by the meaning of suaka in Bahasa Indonesia: a sanctuary or refuge. This reflects our understanding of SUAKA as more than an online platform, but as a space where young people can reflect, exchange ideas, and engage with others about the cities they live in.
The exhibition comprised four interconnected components, representing SUAKA as a quiet, interactive, and dialogic space. The first was an art installation: a bamboo cocoon accompanied by relaxing music and incense, where visitors were invited to step inside and take time to reflect on their lives in the city. They were then encouraged to write their reflections as a letter to the city (Picture 1). The second component introduced SUAKA and its co-production journey. Visitors were invited to write down their ideas for their cities, mirroring one of SUAKA’s key features in an analogue form (Picture 2 and 3). The third, the SUAKA Kiosk, provided a space for visitors to discuss their concerns, ideas, and visions for their cities with others (Picture 4 and 5). Finally, YUP Project organised a public interactive discussion on Indonesia’s shrinking civic space and the potential of co-production and digital spaces as alternative means and spaces for political expression (Picture 6 and 7). The discussion was sparked by brief interventions and provocations from six city figures representing academia, activism, student groups, citizen scientists, and civil society.
An estimated 1,000 people attended the USF, while the YUP team—including our citizen scientists—actively facilitated the activities, shared insights from the project, introduced SUAKA, and built connections with young people, activists, and communities in Yogyakarta. More than 40 people joined the YUP discussion and participated actively in a lively exchange of ideas.
The event reinforced several insights from the YUP Project. Young people are eager to participate actively and meaningfully in the life of their cities. They are concerned about the shrinking of civic space and seek spaces that are safe, accessible, and open to diverse voices. Importantly, their political concerns extend beyond electoral or elite politics to the everyday issues that shape urban life.
They also see digital platforms as an essential but not sufficient means of civic organising and political expression. Online connections need to be complemented by offline, in-person interaction where people can build relationships, exchange ideas, and organise collectively. At the same time, young people recognise that digital spaces bring their own barriers and risks, including misinformation, doxing, censorship, and the formation of echo chambers. Amid the multiple and intersecting crises they face, they are therefore looking not simply for more opportunities to participate online, but for new combinations of digital and physical spaces through which they can connect, organise, express themselves, and collectively imagine different urban futures.
YUP project’s successful engagement during USF demonstrates young people’s care about their cities and their enthusiasm in an inclusive, equal, and safe space to think through urban issues and to take actions.