Grounded in 150 hours of fieldwork connected to the Youth Leadership and Resilience project with undocumented youth in the Netherlands, this project uses an engaged and co-creative approach to build knowledge about building collaborative relationships across generations. The project evolved based on the desires, input, and needs of participants, including a series of youth-led, arts-based workshops, a culminating event, and a subsequent co-creative research group. The project was based on an open-ended research question: What can the YL&R project teach us about working with undocumented youth in the Netherlands? This paper focuses on three specific questions, which emerged from the project: What are the critical building blocks and the role of adults in fostering and nurturing youth-adult partnerships with undocumented youth? How can we conceptualize spaces where this type of relationship can flourish? And, how can we apply these building blocks to institutional environments such as higher education? Two key themes emerged in response to these questions: embracing the mess and finding the role of Adult Presence. The co-creative research project that followed the Youth Leadership and Resilience project provides an opportunity to reflect on putting these concepts into play within the institutions of higher education. The project promoted reflection and learning about the experiences of undocumented youth and the role adults can play in supporting them and creating space for them to take the lead by building intergenerational collaborative spaces. Additionally, it highlights the promise of these spaces to transform institutions of higher education for better inclusion of marginalized youth.