Art is increasingly being used to give people who have experienced homelessness a voice to inform practice and policy, participants in an Expert Community on Housing (ECOH) webinar heard.
The May 2 webinar was presented by researchers in the Aging in the Right Place (AIRP) node of the Collaborative Housing Research Network (CHRN).
Alison Grittner, educated as an architect and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Work at the University of Cape Breton, said the voices of people with lived experience of homelessness has been missing from much of the dialogue on supportive housing design and operation. And that was partly because it was difficult to capture the thoughts and feelings of vulnerable people through traditional quantitative survey methods.
“We’ve found that in moving beyond these standard interviews, that arts-based research provides us new possibilities for understanding really complex social problems that include homelessness, experiences of trauma, substance use — all of these really salient social issues that we are wrestling with,” she said.
Grittner described three forms of arts-based methods used in the project: photo voice, graphic elicitation, and ethno drama.
She said photo voice was at the core of the project’s research methods. Participants photographed places and experiences in their supportive housing environments that either supported or challenged their ability to age in the right place. They shared their photos with interviewers, along with captions, and explained the story behind the images.
“They provide a really rich understanding of how individuals are experiencing those spaces and the meaning that they are creating in their own lives,” Grittner said.
Graphic elicitation involves creating art while conducting a research interview.
“Creating art together offers the participant more time to reflect, more time to think through their answers,” Grittner said.
The third form of art space methods used in the AIRP project was ethno drama, where the participants’ stories are turned into theatre.
“It really is a process of empowerment for many of the residents to have their photographs, have their pieces of art, have their stories shared with communities,” Grittner said.
Kari Spivak, who is pursuing a Master of Social Work at the University of Waterloo, reviewed the literature n the topic and said “there’s a clear increase in the application of art space methods and research.”
Christine Walsh, a professor at the Faculty of Social Work, University of Calgary, noted that the AIRP project is being done in three cities across Canada — Vancouver, Calgary and Montreal — and includes more than two dozen co-applicants, collaborators, and partner organizations.
Walsh invited the audience to consider using an arts-based approach in other forms of research, “to really meaningfully partner with groups of people who are seldom consulted.”
View webinar here: https://www.sfu.ca/airp/news-events/webinars/Turning-insights-into-action.html