This article discusses the empowering potential of spaces that enable youth participation. It proposes that a perspective on participation as a process of learning rather than as control over resources opens up novel insights on the ways participatory processes unfold. Drawing from empirical work in the UK and Greece, the article looks at the dynamic potential of youth participation as it is expressed through social practices and social relations in given spaces, to identify distinct facets of participation such as performative, managerial and creative. It concludes that youth participation can be empowering when it is linked to other domains of young people’s experience and when its capacity to produce diverse processes and outcomes is recognized.