Facilitating Visual Socialities: Processes, Complications and Ethical Practices 3031252586, 9783031252587

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SOCIAL VISUALITIES

Facilitating Visual Socialities Processes, Complications and Ethical Practices Edited by Casey Burkholder Joshua Schwab-Cartas Funké Aladejebi

Social Visualities

Series Editors

Gary Bratchford School of Journalism University of Central Lancashire Manchester, UK Dennis Zuev c/o Nickolay Nickolaevich Zuev City University of Macau Krasnoyarsk, Russia

This book series, affiliated with the ISA’s RC57 research group https://bit. ly/3mgQQ5S, examines the role and function of images, objects and/or performances within society and/or in particular cultures or communities. The series foregrounds visuality as a useful theme to approach the production, representation and naturalisation of power (state or otherwise) and society that otherwise remains hidden or unseeable. With an emphasis on socio-visual thinking, the series unpacks some of the pre-existing imaginaries and boundaries that still dominate a major discipline like sociology. In particular, the ways in which we engage with images, their production and use in specific spaces and contexts. To this end, Social Visualities looks to further normalise the visual as a valid data source as well as provide a platform for the interrogation and analysis of new, emerging and ever-changing types of visual data and image production practices. The series provides theoretically rich, case-study oriented guides that address the ongoing scholarly and pedagogic ‘visual turn’ in the social sciences, including, but not limited to visual global politics and international relations, visual criminology as well as topics more broadly associated to visual culture and society.

Casey Burkholder Joshua Schwab-Cartas  •  Funké Aladejebi Editors

Facilitating Visual Socialities Processes, Complications and Ethical Practices

Editors Casey Burkholder Faculty of Education University of New Brunswick Fredericton, NB, Canada

Joshua Schwab-Cartas NSCAD University Halifax, NS, Canada

Funké Aladejebi University of Toronto Scarborough, ON, Canada

ISSN 2731-4626     ISSN 2731-4634 (electronic) Social Visualities ISBN 978-3-031-25258-7    ISBN 978-3-031-25259-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25259-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and ­transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Walter Bibikow / mauritius images GmbH / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Dr. Gary Bratchford and Dr. Dennis Zuev for including us in the Palgrave Macmillan Social Visualities book series and for their critical and generative feedback on our manuscript. We would also like to thank the authors in this collection for their thoughtful scholarship, for generously responding to feedback, and for the myriad ways they have shaped our thinking about facilitating visual sociological research. Casey would like to thank her wonderful and critically supportive mentors, co-conspirators, and collaborators: Aaron Beaumoont, Alice Chan, Alicia Noreiga, Amelia Thorpe, Angela Tozer, April Mandrona, Auralia Brooke, Brody Weaver, Claudia Mitchell, Darrah Beaver, Indigo Poirer, Indra Johnson, Jen Thompson, Katie Hamill, Katie MacEntee, Loaneen Palmer-Carroll, Matt Rogers, Melissa Keehn, Roger Saul, Starlit Simon, and Symone Hunt. Thank you to Tyler and Frances for so much joy. A very special thank you to Lauren Cruikshank and Sabine LeBel for Feminist Write Club. Josh would like to thank Xquixhepelli Jña Bida Lilia Cartas Guzman ne Bixozebida Gil Cartas Posada ne binnilidxe stí Ranchu Gubiña ne Canada, Claudia Mitchell, Candace Kaleimamoowahinekapu Galla,

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Mela Sarkar, Morgan Phillps, José Arenas, Mique’l and Mike Dangeli, April Mandrona, Jen Thompson, and Katie MacEtee. Funké would like to thank her family and partner who provided endless support while working on the completion of this collection. She is also grateful for her friends and colleagues including Lisa Best, Francesca D’Amico-Cuthbert, Jenneillia Julius, Rhonda George, Thomas Hooper, Pamela Fuentes and Katie Bausch who provided generous space to think through ideas and discuss possibilities. Many thanks to the women of Home Room for their endless support during our writing sessions and creating a collaborative place of learning and mentorship. Finally, Casey, Joshua, and Funké would also like to thank their colleagues, friends, and families who have been endlessly supportive through the writing and editing of this collection.

Contents

1 I ntroduction: Facilitating Visualities—Enacting Ethical Practices in Visual Research  1 Casey Burkholder , Joshua Schwab-Cartas , and Funké Aladejebi 2 Facilitating  Black Identity and Advocacy: Creating Cellphilms for Reflecting on Issues Affecting Black Students 23 Alicia F. Noreiga 3 The Fibres of Our Being: A Visual Artefact of Community-­Engaged Visual Arts in St. James Town 47 Mehdia Hassan 4 An  Afternoon Making Mole with My Jña Bida (Grandmother): A Zapotec Approach to Facilitation 67 Joshua Schwab-Cartas 5 Narrow  AI-Powered Visualization Facilitation Tools in Foreign Language Learning: A Visual Approach Promoting Equal Opportunities in Foreign Language Grammar Teaching 85 Thomas Strasser vii

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6 (In)Visible  Youth: Considerations for Visual Research in Rural New Brunswick’s Queer Spaces 99 Melissa Keehn 7 Pivoting  Online in a Pandemic: Facilitating Object Elicitation Interviews with Canadian Craft Vendors117 Kaylan C. Schwarz 8 Facilitating  Ethical Participatory Visual Research in Taboo Spaces135 Mathabo Khau 9 Facilitating  a “Virtual Space” for Social Change During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Working with High-Risk Population Using an Arts-Informed Method153 Zehra Melike Palta 10 F  acilitating Gender-Affirming Participatory Visual Research in Embodied and Online Spaces177 Casey Burkholder , Amelia Thorpe , and Pride/Swell 11 Researcher  Positionality: Reflexivity, Ethnic Identities, and Cultural Lines of Difference in Multicultural Research205 Eunice Y. M. Chau and Jan Gube 12 When  I Facilitate, What Do I Make? Revisiting Research Facilitation as Intervention, Opportunity, and Solidarity-­Building223 Auralia Brooke 13 For  Us, with Us: Creative Expressions as Means to Collectively Elevate Minoritized Experiences, Knowledge, and Wisdom241 LaShaune Johnson , David Olawuyi Fakunle , and Sarah Lux

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14 Engaging  in Collaborative Visual Research Practice with Refugees to Promote Social Inclusion and Enhance Belonging in Non-metropolitan Australia271 Mandy Hughes 15 Ethical  and Methodological Considerations for Facilitating Community-Based Participatory Visual Research with Queer and Disabled Elders291 Megan Hill 16 Experiential  and Land-Based Learning of Wapana’ki Language, Culture and Art, and Worldviews: Piquing Interest and Accessibility Through Digital Archiving307 Starlit Simon 17 Facilitating  Art in Digital Classrooms During COVID-19: Engaging in Inquiry with Jamaican Visual Art Teachers323 Loaneen Palmer-Carroll 18 Facilitating  Ethical Visual Sociological Research: What Difference Can We Make Together?341 Casey Burkholder , Joshua Schwab-Cartas , and Funké Aladejebi I ndex349

Notes on Contributors

Funké Aladejebi  is an assistant professor in the Department of History at the University of Toronto. Her research and teaching interests focus on oral history, the history of education in Canada, Black Canadian women’s history, and transnationalism. Her recently published book, Schooling the System: A History of Black Women Teachers (2021), explores the importance of Black Canadian women in sustaining their communities and preserving a distinct Black identity within restrictive gender and racial barriers. Her articles on Black Canadian history and feminist pedagogies have appeared in Education Matters, Ontario History, and the Southern Journal of Canadian Studies. She is also currently co-­editing with Dr. Michele Johnson a collection of essays titled, Unsettling the Great White North: African Canadian History (2022), which explores the histories of African Canadian, Canadian, and African Diasporic communities across chronological, regional, and thematic subjects. Auralia Brooke  is a PhD student at the University of New Brunswick and an instructor in Community-Based Education at Saint Thomas University. She came to New Brunswick via Alberta, where she was Edmonton’s first full-time school-based research consultant, building initiatives with staff and students and consulting on international partnerships with Norway and Finland. Her MEd Project, You Should Read This, used art and text messages to address loneliness in school hallways. Her xi

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current research explores experiences of belonging/unbelonging with youth in New Brunswick secondary schools through participatory visual methodologies. Casey Burkholder  is an associate professor at the University of New Brunswick’s Faculty of Education. Her research programme centres on work with 2SLGBTQ+ youth and pre-service teachers to agitate for social change through participatory visual research approaches, including DIY art production and participatory archiving. In choosing a research path at the intersection of resistance and activism, gender, sexuality, inclusion, DIY media-making, and social studies education, Casey seeks to work with community members to create solidarities, address oppressive systems and structures, and take collaborative social action from-the-­ ground-up. Casey previously co-edited Facilitating Community Research for Social Change: Case Studies in Qualitative, Arts-Based and Visual Research with Dr. Funké Aladejebi and Dr. Josh Schwab-Cartas (2022), Fieldnotes in Qualitative Education and Social Science Research with Dr. Jen Thompson (2020), and What’s a Cellphilm?: Integrating Mobile Phone Technology into Participatory Visual Research and Activism (2016) with Dr. Katie MacEntee and Dr. Josh Schwab-Cartas. Eunice Y. M. Chau is a research assistant at the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, The Education University of Hong Kong. She is also a former District Councillor in Hong Kong who actively engaged the community in promoting social justice and equity through participatory action. Eunice is currently involved in a project entitled Diversity Through Understanding Equity in Teaching (DUET). This project aims to promote shifts in attitude towards diversity through dialogues with the community and to provide new insights to educators in better supporting culturally diverse learners. Her current research interests include the formation of pro-diversity language and discourses, and the impacts of pro-diversity education in an informal setting. David Olawuyi Fakunle  (PhD) is a “mercenary for change,” employing any skill and occupying any space to help elevate everyone divested from their truest self, especially those who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour. David serves as Assistant Professor of Public Health at the

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Morgan State University School of Community Health & Policy, adjunct assistant professor at the University of Florida Center for Arts in Medicine, and associate faculty in the Mental Health department of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. David’s interests include stressors within the built environment, societal manifestations of racism, and the use of arts and culture to strengthen health, equity, and ultimately, liberation.Additionally, David has applied artistic and cultural practices such as Black storytelling, African drumming, singing, and theatre in the proclamation of truth for over 25 years, collaborating primarily with organizations in the Baltimore/Washington, D.C. region. Jan Gube  is assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, The Education University of Hong Kong. He takes an interest in understanding and supporting how schools and civil society might leverage cultural differences in fostering equitable and caring learning environments. Jan’s research engages with issues of diversity, race and ethnicity, particularly how their interrelations shape curriculum and pedagogy. His recent work has appeared in journals such as Pedagogy, Culture & Society, Integrative Psychological Behavioral Science, Identities, Visual Studies, and Culture & Psychology. He co-edited Education, Ethnicity and Equity in the Multilingual Asian Context (2019) and Identities, Practices and Education of Evolving Multicultural Families in Asia-Pacific (2022). Mehdia Hassan  is a PhD student in the Department of Social Justice Education at the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). She is also a visual artist and graduate research fellow with interests in the sociology of youth, arts-based research and education, migration, and wellness. Since 2014, Mehdia has been facilitating visual arts workshops for youth in her inner-city, Toronto, neighbourhood of St. James Town. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she adapted her arts facilitation practices to lead virtual community-­engaged arts programming for youth. Mehdia has co-authored an analytical photo essay published in Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies, using her sociological imagination to make visible the structural causes of health and illness in St. James Town. Her arts-based research and artworks have been exhibited at multiple venues, effectively mobilizing knowledge between academic and public communities.

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Megan Hill  is a master’s student at Trent University, conducting research at the intersection of critical aging studies, disability studies, and queer theory. Megan holds an honours degree in Sociology and Native Studies from St. Thomas University. She works as a research assistant with Pride/ Swell+, an arts and activism project with queer youth and elders in Atlantic Canada, and teaches in the Gender and Social Justice department at Trent. Megan is a graduate research affiliate of Trent’s Centre for Aging and Society (TCAS), Concordia’s Aging in Data (AiD) project, and the Aging Activisms Collective. Mandy Hughes  is Senior Lecturer in Sociology and is the Social Science course coordinator at Southern Cross University in regional Australia. Her research interests include refugee studies, regional communities, food cultures, the sociology of health, and creative arts. Mandy has a strong commitment to using audio visual methods to communicate cultural and social justice issues. Her PhD film The Last Refuge: Food Stories from Myanmar to Coffs Harbour, about the sociocultural role of food for refugee background communities, was selected in ethnographic and community film festivals in Europe, North America, and Australia. Mandy has published articles about this collaborative research in Visual Studies and the Journal of Sociology. A subsequent creative arts project with refugee communities focused on social inclusion has been presented in the Journal of Intercultural Studies. LaShaune Johnson  (she/her) LaShaune Johnson is medical sociologist at Creighton University in Omaha and the Assistant Director of the university’s office in a Purpose Built Community, in the city’s historical heart of Black arts, culture, and activism. Her research focuses on Black experiences across the cancer continuum, BIPOC mental health, and maternal and child health. She employs participatory, qualitative, and arts-based methods and offers training in culturally responsive, racial equity-focused evaluation. She is culturally responsive, race equitable evaluator, and is a Certified Listener Poet. Melissa Keehn  (she/her) is a New Brunswick educator and doctoral candidate at the University of New Brunswick. As part of her work to support 2SLGBTQ+ students in rural contexts, she has facilitated mul-

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tiple Gender Sexuality Alliances with high school youth and serves on the New Brunswick Pride in Education Executive. Melissa’s research interests include critical studies, educational pedagogy and policy, rurality, and queer youth cultures. Her work is inspired by her own lived experiences teaching as a queer educator in rural communities, an ongoing concern over the spatial exclusions which have impacted her 2SLGBTQ+ students, and a desire for educational reform. Mathabo Khau  is an associate professor in the Faculty of Education at the Nelson Mandela University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Her research focuses on using participatory visual methodologies in addressing gender, sexuality, and HIV/AIDS issues and integrating HIV/AIDS into higher education curricula. Her science education (Biology and Chemistry) background and interest in inclusive education provide a frame for working towards the inclusion of those who are marginalized— using “intersectionality” and “research as social change” frameworks. She has published several peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. She is the co-editor-in-chief for Educational Research for Social Change—an Online Journal. She is a 2010 GEXcel International Collegium Research Fellow with the Universities of Linköping and Örebro, Sweden, and a 2017 Nordic Africa Institute Research Fellow. She is the 2020 Nelson Mandela University Faculty of Education Researcher of the Year. Sarah Lux  (she/her) is an assistant professor in the Medical Humanities Department at Creighton University’s School of Medicine. She holds a PhD in Education from Iowa State University, and her professional background is in college student development and higher education leadership and administration. Her past research has examined knowledge construction and identity development among college students with disabilities, using an ecological systems theory framework. She is a scholarpractitioner with specific interests in higher education policy, equity and access issues in postsecondary institutions, and the role of meaning-­ making in academic leadership and student learning. Alicia F. Noreiga  (B.Ed., 2011; M.Ed., 2016) is a PhD candidate at the University of New Brunswick: Faculty of Education, where she pursues studies that promote social justice and equity. Through her academic

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focus and advocacy, Alicia hopes to raise awareness of and assist in transforming inequitable systems that disadvantage marginalized groups. As such, her research path includes critical participatory methodologies that amplify the voices of queer, Black, and rural communities, and among people experiencing the intersections of these characteristics. Loaneen Palmer-Carroll  is an art educator and education officer from Jamaica and a PhD student at the University of New Brunswick. Her passion for the Visual Arts and working with children with behavioural challenges has impressed upon her the willingness to conduct research: Using Art as therapy as a tool for behaviour management, Disruptive Art, and Using art as therapy to curb a selected group of students with disruptive behaviour within the school environment. She is also interested in using photo-elicitation and art production, including cellphilms (cellphone + film production + intention) to better understand disruption in Jamaican schools and communities. She is committed to creating meaningful and stimulating art-based programmes to improve student’s ability, creativity, appreciation, perception, awareness, concentration, confidence, and motivation. Zehra Melike Palta  (PhD) is an educator and researcher at the University of Toronto. She completed her doctorate degree at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. She is interested in exploring the experiences of individuals from refugee backgrounds and marginalized youth through participatory arts-informed methods to provide the space for them to present and represent their stories from their own perspectives. Her work is inspired from her own e­ xperiences as an individual from refugee background and through her community involvement with the newcomers to Canada. She is interested in not only continuing using arts-based methods for her research but also exploring how they can be implemented in arts education to bring about social change in the lives of marginalized youth. Pride/Swell is a University Research Fund (UNB) and SSHRC Connections Grant (2020–2021)-funded social distance art and activism project with 2SLGBTQ+ youth from across Atlantic Canada. From 2020 to 2021, 50 2SLGBTQ+ youth from across Atlantic Canada received a

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package in the mail that contains (1) art supplies and (2) a prompt. In 2022, we received an SSHRC New Frontiers in Research Grant to continue the project as Pride/Swell+ with an explicitly intergenerational focus, working with 55 2SLGBTQ+ youth and elders from Atlantic Canada. Through art making and collaborative approaches to archiving (on social media and later in physical spaces), we seek to share our experiences creating intergenerational queer-focused community around art, identities, and space during COVID-19. Visit https://prideswell.org to see a growing archive of our art and activism! Joshua Schwab-Cartas  is an assistant professor at NSCAD University. He was formerly a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia. He completed his PhD from McGill University where he was an active member of Dr. Claudia Mitchell’s Participatory Cultures Lab. Schwab-Cartas uses cellphilms (or mobile technologies + film production) as an educational tool to explore Indigenous language revitalization strategies in the Isthmus Zapotec community of his maternal grandfather in Ranchu Gubiña, Oaxaca, Mexico. For many years he has worked with a Zapotec media collective, to create a series of initiatives aimed specifically at youth to revitalize language and culture. Some of these strategies have included Zapotec classes, recording elders, producing CDs in the Zapotec language with bilingual inserts, playing games like bingo, producing documentary films, and establishing a community radio station which broadcasts in the Zapotec language. Schwab-Cartas is a leading participatory visual researcher, having co-edited the book What’s a Cellphilm? Integrating Mobile Phone Technology into Participatory Visual Research and Activism in 2016. Kaylan C. Schwarz  is an assistant professor in the School of Liberal Education at the University of Lethbridge. Her chapter is based on research conducted during an SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University. She is the co-editor of Studies on the Social Construction of Identity and Authenticity (2021). Starlit Simon  is Mi’kmaw from Elsipogtog First Nation and a full-time PhD candidate at the University of New Brunswick (UNB) in the Faculty

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of Education. She has previously worked as a Mi’kmaw language instructor and as an academic advisor to Indigenous post-secondary students at UNB. Starlit received her Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from UNB in 2006 and her Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from Saint Thomas University in 2012. She went on to receive her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Kings College in 2015. Her writing has been published in the National Geographic Traveler, Dawnland Voices, Dawnland Voices 2.0, and The Fiddlehead. She is often found on the sides of highways harvesting porcupine quills from roadkill for her artwork. Images of her artwork can be found at www. starlitsimon.com as well as on her social media platforms on Facebook and Instagram as @Mikmaq.Matues. Thomas Strasser  is Professor of Language Methodology and Technology-­ Enhanced Learning & Teaching at the Vienna University College of Teacher Education, Austria. His research interests focus on technology-­ enhanced (language) learning (mobile language learning, educational applications, wearable technologies, narrow AI-powered language learning tools). [email protected] www.phwien.ac.at www.bildungshipster.online Amelia Thorpe  is a PhD candidate and Vanier Scholar at the University of New Brunswick. She is a queer, cis, white educator and activist who holds a Master’s in Social Justice Education from the University of Toronto and has extensive experience working in 2SLGBTQ+ spaces of education and advocacy. Amelia has worked with numerous community organizations, locally and nationally, focused on sexual and gender diversity for over 15 years. Her research interests centre around community activism, intergenerational connectivity within 2SLGBTQ+ communities, and queering concepts of identity, space, and education.

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Fig. 2.2 Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2 Fig. 3.3 Fig. 7.1 Fig. 7.2 Fig. 8.1 Fig. 8.2 Fig. 10.1 Fig. 10.2 Fig. 10.3 Fig. 10.4 Fig. 10.5

Cellphilm still from ‘Black Spaces’ 36 ‘We are STRONG’ cellphilm still 37 The Fibres of Our Being. 2021. Acrylic on canvas. By Mehdia Hassan48 Through our commonalities as complex points of connections, we foster trust and vulnerability in each other (Keating 2013)56 Knowledge-production is not a linear process, but more like an unbounded spiral that is in the making (Sameshima et al. 2019; Keating 2013) 57 Linda’s selection of paper bead items (Author photograph) 122 Stephanie’s craft booth display (Photograph provided by Stephanie)124 Female initiates (https://www.google.com/search?q= traditional+initiation+ceremonies+Lesotho&tbm)143 Male initiates (https://www.google.com/search?q=traditional +initiation+ceremonies+Lesotho&tbm)144 Where are our histories? Poster (designed by coyote watson) 185 Images from a drawing and screen printing workshop 187 The digital workshop space 191 S/S/S (school/safe/space) cellphilm still 192 Madigan’s collage about “finding community amidst COVID-19”193 xix

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Fig. 10.6 Fig. 10.7

List of Figures

Ocean’s facemask, “justice for Joyce” 194 Queer histories matter YouTube channel and dedicated webpage197 Fig. 10.8 Casey’s zine on her intersectional identities 198 Fig. 10.9 Screening Nackawic needs a GSA Now! in a film festival and online199 Fig. 10.10 Pride/Swell’s YouTube channel and dedicated website 199 Fig. 11.1 Mind map drawn by Eunice and Jan 209 Fig. 11.2 (Bobo, V02; faces are blurred to maintain confidentiality) “What are ethnic minorities in your view? (Title translated)”. The photos shown reflected Bobo’s impression of ethnic minorities are South Asians, while “you” in the title refers to the ethnic Chinese audiences 217 Fig. 12.1 First day of school 232 Fig. 12.2 Strong 236 Fig. 14.1 Placemaking in non-metropolitan Australia, film still from The Last Refuge: Food Stories from Myanmar to Coffs Harbour, Mandy Hughes, 2015 278 Fig. 14.2 Festival food preparations, film still, The Last Refuge: Food Stories from Myanmar to Coffs Harbour, Mandy Hughes, 2015 279 Fig. 14.3 3Es to Freedom participants exploring their local area, film still, Mandy Hughes, 2019 282 Fig. 14.4 3Es to Freedom film projected at one of the exhibition sites, photo, Emma Aspden, 2019 283 Fig. 16.1 Visual representation of how my experiences in combining digital dissemination and land-based experiences have looked like316 Fig. 17.1 Engaging emojis in the virtual visual arts classroom (researcher-­generated photograph) 331 Fig. 17.2 500 ml lifespan spring water bottle and 1.5 L lifespan spring water bottle (participant-generated photograph) 332 Fig. 17.3 Leaves symbolizing positivity, hope, burnt out (L), and chaos (R) (researcher-generated photograph) 334 Fig. 17.4 River rapids and a still pond (researcher-generated photograph)335 Fig. 17.5 Frustrated and a positive side to online teaching (researchergenerated photograph) 336

List of Tables

Table 11.1 Summary of video entries 212 Table 11.2 Equivalent pronouns in Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin) and English 215 Table 11.3 Summary of frequencies of pronouns in video entries 216

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1 Introduction: Facilitating Visualities— Enacting Ethical Practices in Visual Research Casey Burkholder , Joshua Schwab-Cartas and Funké Aladejebi

,

Introduction Positionality, reflexivity, and power relations between visual researchers and participants have been long documented in the literature on participatory visual research (Gubrium et al. 2016; Milne et al. 2012; Mitchell et al. 2017) and visual sociology (Hauber-Özer and Call-Cummings 2020; Luttrell 2019; Pauwels 2010; Phelan and Kinsella 2013; Wagner 2014; Zuev and Bratchford 2020). These same methodological literatures

C. Burkholder (*) Faculty of Education, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada e-mail: [email protected] J. Schwab-Cartas NSCAD University, Halifax, NS, Canada e-mail: [email protected] F. Aladejebi University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Burkholder et al. (eds.), Facilitating Visual Socialities, Social Visualities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25259-4_1

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also give weight to participation and non-participation as important components for rich and critical analysis. Although researcher reflexivity has been well documented (Råheim et al. 2016; Switzer 2020), as well as the need for researchers to “suspend damage” (Tuck 2009) to participants and communities, we consider the incremental and complex negotiations made during moments of uncertainty in planning and undertaking the research process. Here we consider the unplanned decisions made by visual researchers in response to unexpected moments during fieldwork and research. What does anti-racist visual research facilitation actually look like? What might it look like to queer visual research facilitation? What does community-specific visual research facilitation look like? How does research facilitation shift and change depending on the communities you engage with? How can community protocols be best incorporated into visual research practices and facilitation? What co-created strategies might visual researchers engage with in order to “do most good”? Or do the limitations of academic research always mitigate the potential to “do good”? We come to these questions about facilitation from particular subjectivities and lived experiences. Casey is a white cis bisexual settler professor who lives and works on the unceded and unsurrendered territory of the Wolastokiyik people (Fredericton, New Brunswick). Casey uses cellphilm method and DIY art production (collage, zines, sewing, stencil, and sticker making, among others) in a research for social change framework (Nygreen 2009; Wheeler et al. 2020) to confront and disrupt school-­ based norms around gender, sexuality, sex education, and social studies education. Josh is a mixed race Indigenous Binnizá-Austrian scholar activist born outside his ancestral community on the traditional and unceded territory of Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations (Vancouver). His work seeks to explore how best to combine mobile technology, specifically cellphilms, into Indigenous practice (Urrieta Jr 2015; Cajete 1993) and land-based education (Simpson 2016) as a means of fostering intergenerational knowledge transmission and language reclamation. Josh also uses the cellphilm method as a means to unpack and examine the emotional work involved in the journey of language reclamation. Funké is a Black, Nigerian-born cis heterosexual scholar residing in the traditional lands of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and the

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Mississaugas of the Credit where her research and work centre on Black Canadian history. Her scholarship seeks to bridge the gap between academic and community knowledges and prioritizes the work of African descended peoples in Canada. She also reviews the intersections of race and gender within Canadian educational institutions largely through oral history. Together, we wondered, what do we know about the incremental decisions that researchers make when they facilitate visual research? What do facilitators of visual sociological research do? What are the consequences of these decisions? How do these moments shape the research space? How are researchers using the visual to make change or to confront systemic oppression? To what extent does facilitating visual research disrupt and in what way does it reaffirm systemic oppression long associated with research involving over-researched, deficit represented, and underserved populations: Black, Indigenous, people of Colour, disabled, queer, trans, and other marginalized identities? It is our hope to present some of these debates as a way to elicit further inquiry and consider future possibilities. To this end, we acknowledge that some of the contributions in this book have previously been published in a special section of the journal Visual Studies, including the pieces contained in this book by Alicia F. Noreiga (Chap. 2); Zehra Melike Palta (Chap. 9); and Casey Burkholder, Amelia Thorpe, and Pride/Swell (Chap. 10). In this edited collection, we seek to shine a spotlight on some of the ways in which visual sociological research is facilitated. In doing this work, we are indebted to the scholarship of Dr Sarah Switzer, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto, who notes: In my many roles (graduate student, facilitator, community artist, project coordinator, front- line worker and researcher), I have learned as much about what not to do when working with the visual from the communities I’ve worked with, as what I ought to do. It has been through these interactions, and the generosity of participants, fellow artists and facilitators, that I have learned about the myriad of ways in which systems of oppression, institutional power and structural forms of violence impact the way in which visual methods get applied, understood, adapted and transformed in different contexts. (Switzer 2018, 190)

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By exploring facilitation practices as the topic of inquiry, we seek to make visible the implicit and taken for granted interactions that happen within research spaces. We do this work within a research for social change framework (Greenwood and Levin 2006; Harris and Sinclair 2014; Mitchell et al. 2017), where we seek to engage in more ethical research relations and challenge the existing status quo (Wemigwase and Tuck 2019). While we realize that in doing this work within academic institutions, we may risk edifying the very structures that we seek to disrupt and change, we seek to understand more about facilitation within visual sociological research. Perhaps as a way to disrupt institutional and disciplinary boundaries that seek to silo and contain visual sociological research, we ask: What can we learn from each other? How might we build new strategies and solidarities across institutions and geographies in order to disrupt systems of oppression? How are visual sociologists and artists working with the visual facilitating their research? What decisions are being made and why? What happens when facilitation fails (Bratchford et al. 2018)? Instead, we situate these complex questions not as assumed and unnamed elements of research processes, but rather important areas by which researchers and participants can reflect upon and prioritize as part of ethical research practice. This edited collection explicitly centres facilitation of visual sociological research across a variety of visual methods including cellphilm method (Tomaselli and Dockney 2018; MacEntee et al. 2016, 2019), photovoice (Wang 1999), collage (Culshaw 2019), sewing (Sklar and Donahue 2018), drama and poetry (Richardson 2002) assemblage (Taylor 2013) and performance. The collection also takes up important issues relating to the screening of participant-produced visual works (see also Burkholder and Rogers 2020a, b) as well as the ways that facilitators position themselves when sharing participant-produced visual texts in academic contexts. We seek to call attention to the ways in which facilitation has been undertheorized in visual sociological research and disrupt this lack of attention by shining a critical light on facilitation in visual sociology.

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Organization of the Collection Our edited collection seeks to establish facilitation as an important yet underreported component of visual sociological research. Although chapter contributions are located diversely in terms of context and method, we establish key questions that the collection takes up, including: What might deep, ethical, meaningful, or useful facilitation look like in visual sociological research? Putting social justice concerns about power within research processes at the fore, the collection argues that thinking through visual research facilitation must go beyond researcher reflexivity, and move towards theorizing real time on the ground decisions made within the research settings in which we work. The book is organized into three parts: (1) Processes of Facilitating Visual Sociological Research for Social Change, (2) Complications in Facilitating Research, and (3) Ethical Practices in Research Facilitation. Part I of the collection begins with Alicia F. Noreiga’s chapter (Chap. 2), “Facilitating Black Identity and Advocacy: Creating Cellphilms for Reflecting on Issues Affecting Black Students.” This chapter presents a unique approach to employing cellphones as filmmaking tools to raise awareness of and promote advocacy towards Black inclusion and equity within university spaces. In reflecting on the facilitation of a series of cellphilm (cellphone + film production + intention) workshops for Black students from two universities in New Brunswick, Canada, the chapter highlights how participants were able to produce short videos to effectively stimulate discussion and raise awareness of racial challenges experienced by both local and international Black students. As a Black facilitator within these workshops, Noriega reflects on her experiences as both teacher and learner, as she created a space for participants to express their feelings in multiple formats while reflecting on her own experiences, thus embarking on a journey of critical self-reflection. Chapter 3, “The Fibres of Our Being: A Visual Artifact of Community-­ Engaged Visual Arts in St. James Town,” by Mehdia Hassan describes research conducted in the St. James Town neighbourhood of Toronto during COVID-19. Hassan critically explores questions like: how can we use paintings produced within the context of virtual community-engaged

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arts programming, to theorize, understand, and collectively address social isolation facing marginalized youth? Community-engaged visual work is often dialogical, blurring the boundaries between the participant and researcher to effectively capture unspoken nuances that would have otherwise not been seen (Sameshima et al. 2019; Guruge et al. 2015). As a lifelong resident of the St. James Town neighbourhood and a youth arts educator, Hassan draws on their empirical experience of successfully piloting a virtual painting programme for St. James Town youth, in partnership with St. Michael’s Hospital. They problematize the dichotomous notions of “found visual imagery” and “made visual imagery” of visual artefacts within the context of community-engaged arts (Pauwels 2010). With their painting The Fibres of Our Being, produced from a series of interactive virtual workshops with St. James Town youth, Hassan blurs the boundaries between researcher and community to demonstrate the multidimensionality of community-engaged visual work. Hassan presents new, generative dialogue about fostering social connections during the pandemic, as a community response to social isolation. Inspired by my meaningful group discussions and reflections with youth, they use multiple visual metaphors in my painting to visually theorize the significance of social capital (Putnam 2000), social cohesion (Echeverria et al. 2008; Durkheim 1997), and positive coping skills during the pandemic (Agha 2021). Hassan’s virtual painting programme in St. James Town reveals the transformative possibilities of actively doing community-­ engaged visual sociology outside the classroom, during the pandemic, in order to support building more equitable communities. Next, Chap. 4, “An Afternoon Making Mole with my Jña Bida (Grandmother): A Zapotec Approach to Facilitation,” by Joshua Schwab-­ Cartas shares and examines how the consejos and enseñanzas (life lessons and teachings) taught to him by Elders, such as his bixozebida and jña bida (grandfather and grandmother) as well as others in our community and beyond, has influenced what approaches and topics he uses or addresses when facilitating visual workshops. Some of the teachings he discusses include everyday forms of practical decolonization (Alfred 2005), while also looking at failure, not as lack of success, but as a critical, if not vital step in the learning and teaching process. Other topics addressed in this chapter include, actionism versus activism and its

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influence on accountability to community, how to be conscious of the impact of emotions in facilitation, as well as more Zapotec-specific ideas such as guendalisa (community work). These topics and how they have influenced his facilitation process are presented through a series of small vignettes or encounters he has had with various Elders over the years, such as making mole with his grandmother or working in the milpa (corn field) with his uncle. Through these teaching encounters, he has learned how to be aware of different forms of learning and knowledge, such as embodied knowledge, experiential and visual observational knowledge, which has made him more cognizant of creating facilitation approaches that speak to an array of different learning strengths and styles. Moreover, these lived experiences have taught him how to both share and ground his facilitation praxis in Indigenous Zapotec epistemology in a way that resonates to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous participants. Chapter 5, “Narrow AI-Powered Visualization Facilitation Tools in Foreign Language Learning,” Thomas Strasser aims to critically examine the potentials and challenges of narrow AI-powered visualizer tools to enhance adaptive, individualized grammar input (Schmidt and Strasser 2022) and promote equal opportunities for the learners. The chapter provides an introductory, practical discussion of terms, methods, and common application types of (narrow) AI visualizer tools in foreign language learning processes. Strasser seeks to address features of intelligent practice in the foreign language classroom (Pandarova et al. 2019), and then explore the possibilities of using AI visualizer tools to create diverse learning environments. Strasser also emphasizes how these teacher-facing tools (Pokrivcakova 2019) can act as a visual facilitator towards equal opportunities concerning the learner’s reception of curricular knowledge artefacts. Ultimately, this chapter provides insights into current research and development projects in the field of AI-powered language learning and teaching tools. The chapter concludes with practical recommendations of how weak AI-powered visualizer tools can be methodologically engaged in order to create equal opportunities within a multi-faceted and supportive learning environment, getting rid of the clear instructivist, tech-­ determined paradigm of digital technologies. Melissa Keehn in Chap. 6, “(In)Visible Youth: Considerations for Visual Research in Rural New Brunswick’s Queer Spaces,” puts forward a

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possible framework for conducting visual research with queer and trans youth within rural areas of New Brunswick (NB), Canada—building on existing scholarship focusing on social change within the province (see: Burkholder 2021). Challenging the common perception of the queer space as an urban one, she centres emerging literature on queer research spaces into more rural geographies. Within the ongoing landscape of systemic 2SLGBTQ+ exclusions in Canadian schools, recent visual research with queer and trans youth reveals its efficacy as a methodology in pushing back against dominant cis-heteronormative narratives (Burkholder 2021a, b; Burkholder and Thorpe 2019). At the centre of this research facilitation lies the actual research space, which can both empower and constrain youth participants. Given that the social structures of small towns make queer visibility difficult (Schweighofer 2016) and that schools and family homes often act as sites of tension for queer youth (Campbell, Peter and Taylor 2021), thinking about the actual spaces of visual research facilitation in rural communities calls for close (and critical) attention. Framing this inquiry are three bodies of knowledge: (1) knowledges on visual research with queer and trans youth; (2) more general knowledges on the spaces of queer research, including in rural geographies; and (3) knowledges rooted within queer world-making (see: Muñoz 2019). Through a critical literature review on emerging visual research involving queer and trans youth across North America, Keehn makes visible the general trends in its methodological limitations and successes. Bringing together a framework on the spatiality of research presented by Baker and Weller (2003) with local perspectives on queer rural landscapes (see: Marple 2005), Keehn presents specific recommendations for conducting visual research with queer and trans youth in rural New Brunswick—a geographical space which she argues necessitates special considerations for visual research facilitation. Chapter 7, “Pivoting Online in a Pandemic: Facilitating Object Elicitation Interviews with Canadian Craft Vendors,” by Kaylan Schwarz describes her postdoctoral study, which utilized qualitative and visual methods to investigate the ways small and independent craft vendors in Canada work to support international development causes through the sale of handmade and handcrafted objects (such as beaded jewellery, quilted handbags, and handwoven baskets). Her chapter focuses on the

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methodological aspects of the study and describes the ways object elicitation techniques may be enabled and constrained in online settings. Here, she introduces three categories of objects: spontaneous objects (in-the-­ moment additions brought from participants’ immediate surroundings), pandemic objects (new items made in response to COVID-19 and craft market closures), and wearable objects (clothing or jewellery presented on and narrated through the body). In doing so, she reflects on larger methodological questions relating to space and location, time and context, and embodiment and attachment. Chapter 8, “Facilitating Ethical Participatory Visual Research in Taboo Spaces,” by Mathabo Khau explores how gender intersects with practices of witchcraft globally, with sexuality as a measure towards possible witchcraft involvement of practice. While issues of gender, sexuality, and witchcraft remain taboo topics among many communities, rural communities in the Global South have unique experiences and identities that create challenges in facilitating ethical research within their spaces. Using personal reflections of her engagement with elders within rural communities of Lesotho, Khau documents how she facilitated ethical participatory visual research on taboo issues within cultural spaces and highlights the challenges and opportunities such engagement has for researchers. Using visuals as entry-points, Khau utilizes facilitated narrative storytelling with elderly participants to explore constructions of gender and sexual identities within their society, as a mechanism to understand the connections between such constructions and the practice of witchcraft. Based on this engagement, this chapter not only reviews the inhibitors and enablers to ethical research practice, but also highlights best practices learnt within research engagement. Part II of the book, “Complications in Facilitating Research,” opens with Zehra Melike Palta chapter (Chap. 9), “Facilitating a ‘Virtual Space’ for Social Change During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Working with High-Risk Population Using an Arts-Informed Methods.” Polat interrogates the term “integration” often used in immigration policies and discourses, as a highly contested term because of the ways it highlights asymmetrical power relationships between the host community and the immigrants (Rytter 2019). The host society’s expectation of what is considered as an “integrated immigrant” is an image constructed through

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dominant ideology on culture, race, and belonging (Rytter 2019). Immigrants are individuals who voluntarily moved to Canada through point-systems—possessing a certain level of social capital that can be useful to become an “integrated” individual. This asymmetrical power relationship becomes even wider when it comes to asylum seekers whose actions and futures are restricted and shaped by systemic barriers. The post-migration experiences of young adult Turkish and Kurdish asylum seekers arriving from Turkey to Canada have not been previously studied in Canada. This chapter focuses on Polat’s experiences of adapting a photovoice research design to adhere to pandemic safety measures. As a result of closures and social distancing measures, Polat’s research had to be carried out over a virtual platform therefore raising legal, social, and psychological complexities associated with vulnerability level, privacy of participants, language barriers, and power struggles among the participants in the virtual discussions. Although the present technology allowed for the research to be carried out using virtual tools, Polat reflects on how systemic inequalities in accessing technological resources led to the withdrawal of participants that were recruited before the pandemic. In addition, technological disparities led to the exclusion of “voices” of asylum seekers from the project. Despite some of the disadvantages of carrying out this research over a virtual platform, she highlights how the critical discussions have led to the construction of a virtual community allowing participants a space to reflect on their lived experiences, and propose solutions to address their needs and concerns. As a result of this digital community space, Polat also found that participants planned individual actions to challenge and change their current precarious conditions. Casey Burkholder, Amelia Thorpe, and Pride/Swell’s chapter (Chap. 10), “Facilitating Gender-Affirming Participatory Visual Research in Embodied and Online Spaces,” asks how might participatory visual research with 2SLGBTQ+1 be facilitated in gender-affirming ways across physical and digital spaces? What do these practices look like, and how might facilitators adapt their practices in response to cisnormative language and binary physical spaces? This chapter describes the opportunities and challenges to facilitating research with 2SLGBTQ+[1] youth. They highlight a study called Where Are Our Histories (2018–2020)— was a face-to-face participatory visual research project addressing the

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erasure of 2SLGBTQ+ people, experiences, and histories from the New Brunswick Social Studies curricula and classrooms and co-creating media to interrupt these erasures with youth (Burkholder and Thorpe 2019). Heteronormative policies—including curricular erasures—and cisnormative practices—including binary spaces and language—within schools encourage interpersonal and structural violence for 2LGBTQ+ youth (Filax 2006). Queer, trans, and non-binary identifying students may feel unseen and unwelcome at school and excluded from the larger community (Stufft and Graff 2011), while simultaneously provided with tokenistic places to gather, like GSAs (Gilbert 2014). The chapter considers the ways that participatory visual research can be facilitated with 2SLGBTQ+ youth in embodied spaces that are gender-affirming and resist tokenism and structural violence by employing DIY (do-it-yourself ) strategies. Chapter 11, “Researcher Positionality: Reflexivity, Ethnic Identities and Cultural Lines of Difference in Multicultural Research,” by Eunice Chau and Jan Gube describes how the applications of visual methods in education settings have focused on redressing inherent power imbalances between educators and learners, thereby helping learners become active producers of knowledge. Most studies, however, overlooked the subtlety of identity perceptions of video producers embedded in visual data. This chapter illustrates how preservice teachers communicate their understandings of multiculturalism and equity in anticipation of working in culturally diverse settings. Chau and Gube examine eight videos produced by ethnically Chinese student-teacher participants in Hong Kong. These videos were produced as part of a competition in a newly developed informal learning programme. This programme aimed to “guide preservice teachers to reflect and draw on this knowledge base to create supportive and inclusive learning environments for all learners” (Diversity through Understanding Equity in Teaching (DUET), 2022, Jan 24). The authors interrogate the videos using critical discourse analysis (CDA). CDA helps reveal the mechanism of how languages, symbols, and signs (re)construct the macro society. The authors contend that since discourses within power relations can shape our understanding of the world, teachers’ choices of expressions signify their efforts in socializing their learners in the society they live in. Chau and Gube’s chapter considers how preservice teachers demonstrate their understanding of multiculturalism’s

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implications (or lack thereof ) in classrooms and workplace settings by working towards the goals of the programme and judging criteria of the video-making competition. Chapter 12, “When I Facilitate, What Do I Make? Revisiting Research Facilitation as Intervention, Opportunity, and Solidarity-Building,”Auralia Brooke juxtaposes observations from SMS storytelling research with youth in schools alongside discourses on anti-oppressive research design. By layering qualitative data with methodological theory, Brooke explores how research facilitation can support participants as co-designers to leverage authorship and anonymity in relation to digital products and undermine cultures of oppression. The ethics of participatory digital methodologies demand an inclusive approach to research design beginning with how we formulate questions to choices around exhibition and analysis of digital products (Gubrium and Harper 2016; Mitchell 2011). Facilitation of this kind of research should be responsive to participants’ expertise with the research context to refine and define methodological choices. This chapter reviews a six-week project designed to promote empathy in school spaces, where youth experiencing discrimination based on their visual identity used anonymous SMS stories and artwork as a deliberate tool to undermine prejudice. As participants in the project revealed and concealed authorship of their digital products based on their relationship to school cultures, Brooke’s decisions about anonymity and participant control reflected a complex negotiation between student choices, ethics applications, and the demands of a partially automated text messaging system. Using interviews to consider choices around anonymity, this chapter asks how we as research facilitators can extend decisions about authorship and anonymity into aspects of research design allowing for flexible and responsive tools for community dialogue. The final part of the book, “Ethical Practices in Research Facilitation,” opens with LaShaune Johnson, David Olawuyi Fakunle, and Sarah Lux’s chapter (Chap. 13), “For Us, With Us: Creative Expressions as Means to Collectively Elevate Minoritized Experiences, Knowledge and Wisdom.” The dismantling of structural oppression can be aided by culturally and ethically responsible co-creation between marginalized communities and arts-based public health researchers. In this chapter, the authors will provide examples of nurtured relationships with Black women on the breast

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cancer continuum, focusing on their “real talk” (Morgan et al. 2014). Specifically, through Black women-led discussions about their cancer experiences, use of cultural health capital (Dubbin et al. 2013) to address provider misogynoir (Sacks 2018), and gendered and racialized roles in community wellness, poetry, and narratives were cultivated and shared as part of arts in health education (Sonke et al. 2019) initiatives. Guided by epistemic justice, transformative grounded theory, and culturally relevant creative expressions, this chapter explores how arts-based health researchers can amplify genuine Black experiences and infuse Black epistemology into BIPOC community problem-solving opportunities, while also minimizing risk of exploitation through co-creation, co-evaluation, and co-dissemination. Chapter 14, “Engaging in Collaborative Visual Research Practice with Refugees to Promote Social Inclusion and Enhance Belonging in Non-­ metropolitan Australia,” by Mandy Hughes describes how visual research provides a vehicle to create authentic cross-cultural and everyday stories (Pink and Leder Mackley 2012), provides a space to collaborate with those previously excluded from having a public voice allowing them to become fully involved in the process of their representation (Blomfield and Lenette 2018). More specifically, collaborative visual research “creates an open space for dialogue: a space for filmmakers to learn to pose the questions they do not originally know to ask, a place where film subjects select the fragments of their reality they deem significant to document, and a moral place where subjects and image makers can mediate their own representation” (Elder 1995, p. 94). In this context, Hughes discusses applying a collaborative visual research framework when working with refugee background participants in non-metropolitan Australia to capture meaningful accounts of lived experience that educate and connect with local communities. This work includes making a documentary with the Myanmar community about the sociocultural meanings of food in reconnecting with their cultural heritage, provoking positive memories from the past and embedding a sense of identity and belonging. The chapter also describes and analyses the process of making multiple films with a local NGO supporting refugee background women to meet their aspirations and connect with their local community. Hughes also considers the ways visual methods can be used to create, present, and promote

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public art exhibitions that seek to extend their connection to the broader community. Chapter 15, “Ethical and Methodological Considerations for Facilitating Community-Based Participatory Visual Research with Queer and Disabled Elders,” by Megan Hill asks how does one foster a queer, crip feminist participatory visual research space for queer and disabled older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic? Community-based participatory visual research challenges the traditional power relations between the researcher and the researched by working together to co-­ produce knowledge (Burkholder 2020). In doing so, community-based participatory visual research is well-oriented to take up foundational feminist, queer, and crip beliefs such as the valuing of lived experiences and emotions, relationships of reciprocity and care, a rejection of researcher-objectivity, and an orientation towards social change (Hesse-­ Biber 2012). Hill’s chapter explores experiences of ten ageing queer and disabled elders using cellphilms to tell their stories about queer and crip temporalities and life courses. This is significant because queer and disabled individuals are not represented within the prevailing discourse of successful ageing and are often written out of ageing futures, existing outside of conventional, forward-moving narratives of the life course (Sandberg and Marshall 2017). Hill grapples with some of the methodological and ethical challenges of conducting this research as a young and relatively able-bodied queer researcher during an ongoing pandemic that has proven fatal for many older and disabled community members (Shakespeare et al. 2021). In their chapter, Hill describes the ways they have incorporated feminist, queer, and crip values in their methodologies during deliberations about how, where, and with whom to conduct research. In doing so, Hill provides other researchers with tools for considering the power relations embedded in their research methodologies, and makes visible the decision-making process of their research methodologies. Chapter 16, “Experiential and Land Based Learning of Wapana’ki Language, Culture and Art and Worldviews—Piquing Interest and Accessibility Through Digital Archiving,” by Starlit Simon observes the ways in which land-based art, culture, traditions, and language lessons can be taught and presented through various digital mediums and

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methods in Mi’kma’ki. Simon also considers the tensions that exist between the merging of land-based and digital learning. As such, this chapter argues that while merging the two will not have the impact that land-based and in-person lessons can have, it has significance for its ability to mobilize Mi’kmaq Indigenous youth in their continued explorations of their culture, traditions, and language. Through visual research and digital research and archiving, Simon considers howvarious methods can pique the interest of youth and suppor their curiosity. Simon also explores the methods needed for exploring and engaging in digital land-­ based lessons, including having the seven sacred teachings as guiding principles and establishing clear boundaries, protocols, and zero tolerance for cultural appropriation. Simon contends that a spirit of relationality and respect must be central to any digitized land-based learning to limit the potential of harm, misconceptions, or cultural appropriation for vulnerable groups. Chapter 17, “Facilitating Art in Digital Classrooms During COVID-19: Engaging in Inquiry with Jamaican Visual Art Teachers,” by Loaneen Palmer-Carroll offers thoughts on facilitating visual art teaching online with secondary school students in Jamaica. Through photo elicitation interviews with four teachers and autoethnographic inquiry into her own experiences, Palmer-Carroll describes the ways that the move to the virtual classroom served to exacerbate existing socio-economic inequities in the context of Jamaican society. In the final chapter (Chap. 18), “Facilitating Ethical Visual Sociological Research: What Difference Can We Make Together?,” Casey Burkholder, Joshua Schwab-Cartas, and Funké Aladejebi summarize the contributors’ key findings about facilitating visual sociological research. We identify thematic similarities and expand upon contradictions in the chapters. We end the chapter with a reflection on the remaining challenges to facilitating ethical visual sociological research and explore future possibilities. Throughout this edited collection, we seek to interrogate the processes of facilitation in a more critical and nuanced manner, as well as think through the kinds of relations, problems, and local changes that happen within a project. We see these deliberations as a mechanism to support visual sociologists move towards more equitable research practices with an understanding that these processes are ongoing and ever changing. We

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ask readers to think through their own facilitation practices in working with the visual, and ask how we might centre facilitation practices to disrupt power relations within and beyond research spaces. We wonder: how might we better facilitate visual sociological research collectively?

Note 1. 2SLGBTQ+ stands for Two-Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and the + stands for the myriad gender and sexual identities that are not included in the terms Two-Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer.

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2 Facilitating Black Identity and Advocacy: Creating Cellphilms for Reflecting on Issues Affecting Black Students Alicia F. Noreiga

Introduction Suppressed notions of racism and racial segregation can stimulate a perception that Canada is an unblemished embodiment of equity and human rights. However, a closer examination of the country’s systems and institutions reveals strategically concealed dimensions of anti-Black racism, anti-Black oppression, and White supremacy. Canada’s education system employs levels of disregard towards dismantling existing systemic racial inequities. Refusing to acknowledge and address racism historically embedded in the country’s education institutions continues to adversely affect Canada’s Black students (Codjoe 2001; Harper et al. 2018; Hooks 1994; Hubain et al. 2016; Mogadime 2002). Sharing personal narratives is one way of de-silencing the existence of racial domination present in Canada’s higher education institutions (Lorenz 2018; Wane 2002).

A. F. Noreiga (*) Faculty of Education, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Burkholder et al. (eds.), Facilitating Visual Socialities, Social Visualities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25259-4_2

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The increasing tensions between systems that segregate Black students and academic scholars that acknowledge universities’ inability to address racism within their institutions can motivate critical researchers to facilitate ethical research and other scholarly activities to stimulate discourse and provide support to Black students. Ethical facilitation is of paramount importance if educators are to genuinely address the issues that plague Black students. Ethical facilitation entails creating an environment of trust and solidarity alongside a genuine desire to conduct research that empowers persons to build solidarities and collectivities to actively disrupt systemic oppression (Brown and Danaher 2017). The paucity of educational research that focuses on ethical facilitation is a significant indication that there is a need for such discussion. Some scholars have contributed to the limited discourse by analysing ways ethical research practices successfully built comradeship and stimulated researchers’ genuine interest in participants’ wellbeing (Brown and Danaher 2017; Graham et al. 2016). Ethical researchers must facilitate Black student research from a critical (Carspecken 1996; Fuchs 2015) stance whereby their intentions go beyond understanding Black students’ experiences, and move towards taking action alongside participants. Such scholars support and work with Black students to transform anti-Black systems of injustice and inequity that disadvantage Black students. In this paper, I ask: What can ethical research facilitation look like in projects that seek to move towards social change and disrupt anti-Black racism? How have my experiences as a Black student-facilitator influenced the techniques I employed in providing support for Black university students? How might ethical facilitators promote resilience and activism among Black students while disrupting anti-Black racism? I respond to these questions via an autoethnographic account of my experiences facilitating a participatory arts-based project. As part of this project, I coordinated two cellphilm—a contemporary participatory visual research approach that combines cellphones and filmmaking as activist tools (MacEntee et al. 2016; Mitchell and de Lange 2013)—workshops with Black university students attending two universities in New Brunswick, Canada. The accounts I explore in the article focus on my interpretations and perceptions based on my insider position as a Black

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female international student attending a university located in New Brunswick on the stolen lands of the Wolastokiyik peoples. In what follows, I consider the ways my racial identity compelled me to embrace a minority positioning within a predominantly White university. I discuss the ways in which I sought to facilitate an affirming space for Black students to share their experiences and vocalize the need to transform universities to better disrupt anti-Black racism through anti-­ racist pedagogies and inclusive practices. I begin by contextualizing racism in Canada. I then establish African-Canadian Feminism as the overarching theoretical underpinnings that influence my interpretation. Next, I describe autoethnography as a methodological approach to provide first-hand experiences and critical self-reflection. I then describe cellphilm method as a contemporary participatory arts-based research methodology and provide examples of ways I utilized cellphilms within ethical facilitation. I present an autoethnographic account of my pre-­ workshop planning and first cellphilm workshop as I reflect on how I worked towards stimulating trust and creating a supportive environment for participants. Following the description of my first workshop, I reflect on how my interpretation of participants’ cellphilms led me to create a cellphilm as a support mechanism. I then provide a detailed account of facilitating the second cellphilm workshop. Finally, I examine post-­ workshop activities that took my facilitation and activism beyond cellphilm creation as I reflect on the ways I disseminated and capitalized on my various positions within the university to raise awareness of racist practices that exclude and marginalize Black students.

Context Canadians—especially White Canadians—often promote the façade that the country is a perfect representation of equity and human rights. White Canadians practice selective amnesia in regards to acknowledging Canada’s racist past and current prejudiced practices. The deliberate attempt to erase the Black experience from Canada’s history has led to many Canadians’ reluctance to admit that slavery, and significant Black presence, existed in the country. Instead, educators inculcate histories

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that glorify Whites with very few references to Black and other people of colour; excluding the fact that Canada was built on the backs of racial minorities (Mensah 2010). As Black historian, Nickerson (2020), asserted, In Canada, we feel disconnected from this story in terms of our own history. To distance ourselves from and inoculate ourselves against that American ugliness, we have expunged the racialized aspects of our history, and as a consequence we purged Black history from public discussion for the sake of avoiding conflict. (15)

Anti-Black racism in Canada can be subtle yet is deeply entrenched and normalized within the country’s institutions, policies, and practices (Henry 2015; Quamina 2020). However, deliberate scrutiny unveils a barrage of prejudices and discriminations intrinsic to racism. For instance, Mullings et al. (2016) revealed ways African Canadians are beaten, brutalized, sexualized, shot, killed, imprisoned, detained, separated, expelled, suspended, isolated, searched, targeted, and denied. Mensah (2010) also analysed the various forms of socio-economic deprivation, subordinations, stereotypes, and prejudices that historically and currently disadvantage African Canadians. Policymakers’ insistence that racial segregation is a dilemma prevalent in other countries and nonexistent in Canada (Mullings et al. 2016; Reynolds 2016; Walker 1985) leads to inaction rather than improving situations that negatively affect persons belonging to the country’s racially minoritized groups. Consequently, Canada has done little to transform systems that have historically plagued its Black population. Occupying lands stolen from Indigenous peoples and developed with the labour of Black slaves and migrants, New Brunswick schools and society have traditionally erased its racist past and disregards its racist present. I posit that, in a predominantly White province, New Brunswickers systemically conceal the knowledge that slavery lasted longer in the Maritimes than any New England state (McCarthy 2014) and that Blacks have lived in the province for over 250 years (Mensah 2010; Spray 1972). Through her autoethnographic accounts, McCarthy described her frustration towards the province’s erasure of her ancestral

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heritage, ‘I felt deeply frustrated by the lack of public awareness of my ancestors’ lives—particularly their lived experiences and their subsequent contribution to my province’ (120). As an act of activism, scholars such as Spray (1972), Backhouse (1999), Meisha (2010), Reynolds (2016), and Nickerson (2020) conducted comprehensive studies to resurrect the province’s rich Black history. Spray and Nickerson traced Blacks’ presence in New Brunswick before the province’s establishment. In 1783, over 3000 free Black loyalists settled in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Although treated inhumanely, Blacks played integral roles in the province’s development, and through resilience, several influential Blacks emerged. Schools do not parallel these Blacks with White influential New Brunswickers observed in education forums. Black scholars such as Mensah (2010) and Nickerson (2020) worked towards disseminating information about influential Black New Brunswickers such as Willie O’Ree, Canada’s first Black National Hockey League player; Abraham Beverley Walker, Canada’s first Afro-Canadian lawyer; Nancy Morton, who challenged the validity of slavery in the province; and David George, the founder of the Baptist Church in New Brunswick and Sierra Leone, along with the African Baptist Church in the United States. Acknowledging Black’s contributions also means acknowledging the province’s 17 active Ku Klux Klan Lodges—known as Klaverns—between 1925 and 1930 (Backhouse 1999; Reynolds 2016), along with segregated schools, churches, cemeteries, and recreational areas (Spray 1972) that disallowed Blacks’ participation in the province during life and even after death. Today, in many ways, New Brunswick remains dormant in addressing anti-racist practices that oppress its non-White population. White dominance and systemic discrimination continue to plague Indigenous, Blacks, and people of colour (Downey 2018). A New Brunswick Multicultural Council study recently revealed that over 80% of the 900+ participants, consisting of New Brunswickers of varying races, believed that there was unconscious bias or covert racism in the province (Samson 2021). The researchers concluded that systemic racism was very prominent in the province whereby policies and practices, fixed in institutions, promote White supremacy.

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African-Canadian Feminism Nestled in an African-Canadian Feminist lens, Wane et al. (2002) argue that there needs to be a unique theoretical framework for Black women in Canada. White women often pioneer literature grounded on feminist theories which often reflect White women’s lives and exclude Black women’s multifaceted lived realities and the juxtaposing experiences that race creates (Hooks 1984). Black women experience multiple oppressions, including race and gender (Wane et al. 2002). Wane (2002) define Black feminist thought as [A] theoretical tool meant to elucidate and analyze the historical, social, cultural, and economic relationships of women of African descent to develop a liberatory praxis. It is a paradigm grounded in the historical and contemporary experiences of Black women as mothers, activists, academics, and community leaders. (38)

Black women in Canada experience racism differently than Black women in America. And racism looks differently for Black women residing in different parts of Canada. African Canadian Feminist theories place Black Canadian women at the nexus of analysis and allow their diverse voices to become unified empowering tools in opposing racism and White dominance in a Canadian context (Wane 2002). Albeit African Canadian Feminism remains germane to this paper, I choose to include works from various areas of the Black Diaspora to support my underlying assumptions. Having established the theoretical framework that guides the study, I now describe the study’s methods.

Autoethnography Autoethnography is ‘the practice of doing identity work self-consciously, or deliberately, in order to understand or represent some worldly phenomenon that exceeds the self; it is a form of self-narrative that places the self within the social context’ (Reed-Danahay 1997, 9). It is a qualitative research methodology that stimulates critical self-reflection of first-hand

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experiences to place the self at the nexus of a phenomenon under investigation (Singleton 2020). Marx et al. (2017) recommended autoethnography as a suitable approach to allow socially marginalized voices to enter academic discourse, as it creates opportunities for persons to disseminate their first-hand accounts of ways power and privilege play out in their personal lives. Freire (2002) maintained that the best people to speak of, challenge, and transform oppressive situations are the people experiencing oppression. Through autoethnography, Blacks become active participants in educating marginalized and dominant groups about racist actions, challenging the status quo of normalizing systemic racism, and transforming racist practices. Mekonen (2021) utilized this approach to describe and analyse his experiences as a Black Ethiopian moving to Berlin to pursue higher education. Through his vivid imagery and thought-provoking self-reflections, he critiqued the country’s colonialist system that labelled him Black and described his journey to racial awareness. Quamina (2020) adopted autoethnographic methodologies to examine his racialized encounters serving as a social service worker and engaging with Black youth and their families in Toronto, Canada. Quamina called out anti-­ racist and White supremacist practices and policies that positioned racialized people as societal threats while simultaneously placing White people as the representation of an acceptable citizenry. Through autoethnography, the author relayed his personalized accounts to describe instances of violence against the city’s Black community. Black feminist autoethnography provides a forum for Black scholars to find solidarity, engage in revolutionary discourse, and self-reflect as they resist anti-racism via their fashion (Osei 2019), hair (Norwood 2018), and ways of manoeuvring code-switching (Myers 2019). Black feminist autoethnography considers Black women’s complexities and multi-­ layered experiences (Osei 2019) and provides a space for Black feminist scholars to expose and counteract racism in their institutions. Mogadime (2002) shared her experiences as a Black graduate student in a predominantly White institution. She analysed the ways her university’s practices suppressed Black graduate students while providing opportunities for White students. Hernandez et al. (2015) along with Kumsa et al. (2014) employed collective ethnography to describe their experiences as

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foreign-­born racial minoritized professors and students in higher education institutions and critiqued White dominance in Canadian and American universities. Through counter-storytelling, Hill et al. (2019) illuminated instances where racism encapsulated their schooling experiences, and the ways their encounters with bad education adversely impacted their lives. Henry (2015) reflected on university life as a Black woman in American and Canadian universities and the ways systemic racism dominates Canada’s university culture. In a specifically New Brunswick context, McCarthy (2006, 2014) analysed racism through her experiences as a Black New Brunswicker. Adding to these crucial discourses, I present my narrative on the ways racism is a reality for Black international students in New Brunswick and call for the need to unveil concealed systemic racism, form solidarities, and amplify Black feminist voices.

Cellphilm Method Dockney et al. (2010) coined the term cellphilm. As an arts-based participatory methodological approach, cellphilms allow participants to use their cellphones, and other smart devices, to create videos geared towards activism (MacEntee et al. 2016; Mitchell and de Lange 2013). The cellphilm producers’ intentional response to a prompt—sometimes becoming advocates for social change as they highlight injustices that exist in their lives—sets this method apart from ordinary cellphone video production. In cellphilm method, participants are in the centre of the research process as they create, screen, and partake in post-viewing discussions. Cellphilms can encourage participants in a research study to create and disseminate short videos with their smart devices and make strong statements about issues of concern to them, thereby creating a medium that coalesces discourse and action. Researchers often use cellphilm production to amplify the voices of marginalized groups and resist systems that disadvantage them. As a means of anti-racist activism, Burkholder (2017) employed cellphilms to provide a platform for ethnic minority youths residing in Hong Kong to share their feelings of exclusion. As a means of Black empowerment,

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Mitchell and Sommer (2016) guided rural educators in two South African schools in creating cellphilms highlighting risks youth face at their schools. This methodology created an avenue for South African educators to easily utilize their films as social interventions to stimulate transformation. In another South African study, Mitchell and De Lange (2011) and MacEntee (2015) used this participatory methodological tool with South African educators and local clinical staff to analyse critical issues such as poverty and gender-based violence. Starr and Mitchell (2020) also provided a range of examples of ways participants creating cellphilms addressed critical issues related to gender equality and gender-­ based violence, such as female student participation in college classroom activities, sexual violence that targets female college students, and unsafe situations female students face daily. Next, I describe how I used cellphilms to create a forum for Black university students to voice their experiences and address racism in Canadian universities.

Pre-workshop Planning In November 2019, a couple of White faculty members approached me, seeking my willingness to facilitate two cellphilm workshops with self-­ identified Black students attending two New Brunswick universities. It was not surprising that I, a PhD student, would be asked to assist in this nature, considering the absence of Black faculty members and the university’s predominantly White student body. Graciously welcoming the opportunity to conduct the workshops, I considered my own challenges as a Black international student attending a predominantly White university. I wanted to know if other Black students experienced similar feelings of exclusion. I felt the urge to create a safe, welcoming environment and offer mutual support. Finally, as a critical researcher, I felt drawn to initiate change through collaborative activism. Activism, in this context, reflects Freire’s (2002) condemnation of any form of deception or radicalization as a means of activism. Instead, Freire encourages activism through courageous dialogue where disadvantaged groups speak out about the ways systems oppress them. As such, I desire to amplify the existence of

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domination and racial segregation and seek ways of encouraging dialogue to highlight and transform unjust racial systems. As I began planning my first workshop, I reflected on the ways the façade that the country’s higher education institutions are welcoming, nurturing, protective, and inclusive masks Black students’ realities. I was mindful of the varying ways encounters with racial microaggressions affect Black students. Some of these microaggressions may be intentional or unintentional and may take the form of everyday verbal, non-verbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or insults that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages (Hubain et al. 2016). At the same time, policymakers and administrators do little to intervene to provide support. Instead, they place Black students on a metaphorical back burner by downplaying their disadvantages in order to maintain the appearance of racial impartiality within their education system. Hubain et al. (2016) call this ‘institutional betrayal’ (947), where students experience trauma due to negative interactions with the people they depend on for protection. As Henry (2015) explained, ‘Our Faculty espouses social justice. However, to raise any questions about race, White supremacy, or White privilege, is, for the most part, off limits’ (603). As I began planning for my first session, I was aware that trust was required if I sought to create a comfortable welcoming atmosphere. I was aware that dominant groups may perceive verbalizing racism in their institutions as taboo and subversive (Gulliver 2018), so I needed to create a space where participants will be safe without the risk of victimization. Above all, I needed to create a space where students would leave feeling affirmed, knowing that I heard and supported them.

First Cellphilm Workshop Introductions In December 2019, I conducted the first cellphilm workshop with four Black students from various disciplines. All, except one, were unknown to me, and students did not know each other. Brown and Danaher (2017) emphasized the importance of connectivity (the need to establish a

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relationship with participants), empathy (a willingness to appreciate the perspectives and experiences of others), and humanness as crucial elements of ethical facilitation. With these elements in mind, I set out to establish a relationship with participants. I adopted a friendly approach to facilitation. Considering the need to make students feel comfortable, I ensured all aspects of the process, from unstructured seating accommodations to my jeans and t-shirt, were as informal as possible. I first introduced myself. I shared information about who I was, where I was from, some of my experiences, and why conducting this workshop was important to me. My Blackness branded me an insider, acknowledging that I am a casualty of an unjust system, reinforced my position, and laid the groundwork for building trust and respect. I did not want participants to perceive me as an authority figure. Instead, I wanted participants to view me as a comrade and someone willing to teach and learn. However, as a PhD student-facilitator, I anticipated that participants— bachelor and master’s students—may consider me with authority. To minimize this power relation, I stressed our commonalities: race, internationality, and student experiences rather than my academic position and accomplishments. I emphasized the privilege I felt to partake in the discourse and to be an active participant in supporting each other. Sharing my experiences as a Black international student and my challenges attributed to my race and status was a difficult task. Since moving to Canada to pursue studies, it was the first time I spoke with strangers about my experiences with racism. I expected some of the participants to be grappling with similar tensions; thus, my vital role as the first presenter served as a stimulus for initiating feelings of comfort and cohesiveness. Following my introduction, I invited participants to introduce themselves and disclose any information they felt comfortable sharing. As anticipated, there was some hesitance among participants to speak about this sensitive issue that may have gravely affected multiple elements of their wellbeing. Eventually, participants began sharing their experiences. As time progressed and the realization that we all shared commonalities set in, participants grew increasingly comfortable speaking about their challenges. As a facilitator, my job was to sustain the momentum as I encouraged expression rather than suppressing views. While group members shared many similar experiences, it was apparent from the offset the

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juxtaposition between participant’s interactions with racism. There were Afro-Canadians who grappled with racial discrimination all their lives. Then some international students who were experiencing life as racial minorities for the first time. On the one hand, Afro-Canadians had endured racism throughout their academic lives, and expected to find racism within their university. They may have been more equipped with coping mechanisms developed over a lifetime dealing with racial segregation. On the other hand, Black international students, shielded from racially segregated upbringing, grappled with navigating their new identity and finding ways of coping with their new circumstance and the revelation that their colour excluded them from the majority. One international student shared their experiences moving from a predominantly Black country to a predominantly White university and community. The participant’s experiences resonated with my deliberate choice to abandon my homeland to attend a Canadian university, searching for more favourable academic and professional opportunities. A product of colonization, like many West Indian islands, my country comprises mainly descendants of African slaves and Indian indentured labourers. The less-than-one-per cent White population comprises the most affluent and influential members of society. These minority, yet dominant, members of society are successful in strategically downplaying the apparent societal inequities that historically awarded Whites privilege over other races. As such, White-Black racial disparities seemed insignificant throughout my Black majority upbringing. Migrating to Canada initiated my experiences with racial division as, for the first time in my life, I found myself a member of a minoritized and overtly disadvantaged race. I also felt hesitant about criticizing my educational institution and risking being misconceived as unappreciative of the opportunity.

Cellphilm Creation After a successful introductory session focused on dialogue and brainstorming, I was confident that participants felt safe enough to create their cellphilms. I was ready to introduce cellphilm as a tool that participants can utilize to express themselves. I defined cellphilms, explained the ways

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cellphilms can be used in activism, and provided a screening of cellphilms created to highlight issues affecting queer students in New Brunswick. Participants considered the ways the producers created their cellphilms and how the cellphilms encouraged dialogue and action. I explained the ethical issues related to cellphilm production and dissemination, including issues of anonymity and ownership. I explained the benefits and drawbacks of disseminating cellphilms in public media forums and suggested that participants contemplate these pros and cons as they create their cellphilms. As a medium for social justice activism, there is no strict format for creating cellphilms. Participants had the autonomy to determine what and how they wanted to display their narratives. I also created a cellphilm to express my views. Sitting among the participants, I began transforming my views and experiences into a cellphilm. At the end of the session, all participants displayed partially completed films and we opted to complete our cellphilms at home and share them via email. As I reflected on the day’s events, I considered the many ways my ethical facilitation strategies created a space for participants and me to voice our feelings and support each other. During those two hours, the room evolved into a haven for Black students. I left the workshop satisfied that I fostered a supportive relationship with fellow Black students. Moreover, I knew that I was not alone, that the challenges I faced were not unique.

Creating My Cellphilm Throughout the following week, I received participants’ cellphilms. The videos highlighted issues of concern and reinforced the dire need for universities to take proactive efforts to raise awareness and address Black students’ needs. The cellphilms revealed numerous instances of racist encounters. Some cellphilm producers described lifelong combats with racism in education institutions, negative perceptions towards Black hair, and feelings of otherness. As I viewed each cellphilm, I experienced a growing sense of despair. I envisioned participants feeling similar levels of hopelessness when they viewed their creations at our second workshop. I began to think of ways I could stimulate a sense of hope among participants.

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As Freire (2002) maintained, hope is the driving force that leads disadvantaged persons to act towards transforming their lives, but hopelessness leads to inaction and the continuation of oppression. I decided to create a cellphilm to promote and encourage participants to envision a better future. I created a cellphilm entitled Black Spaces and purposefully included Bob Marley and the Wailers’ (1980) ‘Redemption song’ as its musical accompaniment. The last song of Marley’s final album, Uprising, ‘Redemption song’ sends a message of hope and eventual triumph for Blacks (McCann 2011). I began my cellphilm by highlighting the various exacerbated challenges I face as a Black international student, such as the absence of family and friends, lack of cultural connection, and feelings of isolation. In the second part of my cellphilm, I articulated my beliefs that ignorance—due to the erasure of Black histories and contributions in the province’s education institutions—hinders any considerations for Black inclusion (Fig. 2.1). At this point, I felt the need to promote empowerment and hope to Black students. My cellphilm displayed me writing the words, ‘We are STRONG We are UNIQUE We are PROUD.’ I strategically placed the

Fig. 2.1  Cellphilm still from ‘Black Spaces’

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video clip showing the writing of these words to align with Marley’s singing of Marcus Garvey’s words, ‘Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds.’ Historical Black rights activist, Marcus Garvey, recited these words during his legendary 1973 speech in Nova Scotia (McCann 2011; Reynolds 2016). To me, there were no better lyrics to give Canada’s Black students hope as Marcus Garvey’s words to Black Canadians underscored the need for them to be proactive in their empowerment and their ability to break barriers (Fig. 2.2). Finally, my cellphilm ended with a display of two pictures—the first presented the word ‘Black’ while the second presented the word ‘Spaces’— displayed chronologically. I wrote the words in black against a snowy backdrop. In this final strong significant message, I intended to signify Black’s resilience. Canada’s politicians and legal enforcers historically promoted the country’s cold weather as a deterrent to Black immigration. In the early twentieth century, Liberals and Conservatives found common grounds nestled in racism as both political bodies pioneered efforts to discourage Blacks from migrating to Canada under the justification that the weather conditions and culture were unsuitable for Blacks (Reynolds 2016). Despite the weather conditions, Canada’s Blacks population increased, and Blacks continued to contribute to Canada’s development significantly.

Fig. 2.2  ‘We are STRONG’ cellphilm still

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Second Cellphilm Workshop I accomplished three of my four objectives in my first cellphilm workshop. I offered support to participants, learned about their experiences, and created a space for their counter-narratives to be shared. Through ethical facilitation, I now needed to maintain my previous accomplishments and create an avenue to inculcate empowerment through activism. I needed to assist participants in using their cellphilms to initiate discourse and awareness of Black issues for the larger campus community in an effort to move towards systems change. Film production is just the first component when utilizing cellphilms as a means of engagement. Integral to this method is the dialogue arising from viewing cellphilms (Mitchell and De Lange 2011). During the second workshop, the group screened each cellphilm and the producers relayed their feelings about and intentions behind their videos. The effectiveness of my facilitation was evident in the comfort participants demonstrated as they spoke, which contrasted with their hesitance at the beginning of our first workshop. I presented my cellphilm last as a carefully contemplated effort to relay a message of resilience and hope. I carefully provided a comprehensive explanation of my intention while creating each aspect of my cellphilm, homing in on Black students’ need to be empowered to speak freely, form collective strength, and generate strategies of resilience without the fear of victimization. I initiated a discussion on ways participants can safely apply their cellphilms as tools to raise awareness about the challenges that affect universities’ Black students. As a group, we compiled a list of crucial issues arising from our discussions and films that we believed were necessary to incorporate in any discussion regarding racial issues affecting Black university students. I opted to create a report highlighting these issues to share in various university forums. I next initiated a discussion regarding overarching rules for dissemination. We examined risks associated with revealing identities and agreed on gaining permission from participants before presenting cellphilms at any forum to ensure that producers were comfortable with the medium and purpose of each cellphilm display.

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As I reflect on the second workshop, I think about how I created a space that placed participants at the centre of the process. They were the decision-makers. They had the power to decide with whom, where, and why to use the cellphilms as a means of activism. At the end of my final cellphilm session, I was confident that my role as facilitator worked favourably. Participants were able to unleash ideas while I explored my new identity as a racialized minority and academic to break through white supremacy, thus, contextualizing Marcus Garvey’s words, ‘Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds.’

Dissemination Dissemination is an integral component of ethical facilitation and involves distributing findings in manners that ensure respect for and appreciation of participants. Braden (1999) and Mitchell and Sommer (2016) emphasized the critical role participatory visual research methods, such as cellphilms, can play in disseminating and initiating positive transformative action. Videos can create a direct connection between participants and persons accessing results. The original speakers’ voices replaced my voice; thus, further empowering participants to directly relay their stories and opinions. In addition, some participants chose to disseminate their cellphilms via their social media platforms; therefore, creating avenues for their voices to reach the wider public. With the cellphilms created and the report completed, I set out to find avenues to disseminate participants’ voices ethically and safely. I wanted the cellphilms to disrupt the silencing of racial issues and to provide support to Black students experiencing similar challenges with White supremacy as those the participants expressed. I felt it necessary to create spaces for other Black students to view the cellphilms to generate solidarity and support. We first screened the cellphilms during a Black History Month social event for Black students belonging to both universities. Screening the cellphilms to Black students during Black History Month was fundamental to developing supportive environments. With the assistance of the university’s lone Black professor, we accommodated

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approximately one dozen Black students. Within this predominantly Black space, the students sought connection, comfort, and relished the opportunity to be in a space where they could find coherency, unity, and healing. Black students sat together and shared innermost emotions, knowing that they were not alone. The cellphilms played in the background while students engaged in conversation about Black students’ experiences and the necessity for Black students to find solidarity in dismantling anti-Black racism and exclusion. To further provide avenues for dissemination, I capitalized on my position within the university to enlighten university staff and administrators about their practices that intentionally or unintentionally marginalize students. I used my power as a Black PhD student and graduate student representative in one of the university’s committees established to assist in addressing equity, diversity, and inclusion concerns. With participants’ approval, I presented the report and cellphilms at a faculty’s professional development workshop and during an equity, diversity, and inclusion committee meeting. Using my experiences as examples, I facilitated screenings at these forums to present the report and cellphilms to a predominately White audience. I elucidated the various shortcomings within the university’s practices that fail to address racism and inclusion. In the hope of taking my discussion beyond merely highlighting issues of concern, I provided specific participant-generated suggestions on ways the university can foster more inclusive spaces for Black students.

Conclusion Exploring the intricacies that shape my Canadian life as a Black immigrant woman in academia was an empowering feat. Autoethnography created a space for me to resist and denounce White supremacy and anti-­ Black racism. My counter-narrative provided a space for me to reflect on my privilege as an emerging academic that supports activism via visual research methodologies. I was able to examine ways I created an opportunity for New Brunswick’s Black university students to disrupt the normalcy of White domination and counteract notions that Canada’s

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education institutions are free from biases and inequities. It is, thus, imperative that Black women continue to engage in counter-discourses that denounce normative White superiority. As a junior scholar, I am committed to using my academic privilege to actively engage in anti-­ oppressive praxis through my writing and future studies. I could have chosen to quietly accept the challenges that exist and focus on merely surviving my schooling experience. However, my Black identity and genuine desire to create better spaces led me along a road of ethical facilitation and activism that benefited participants and me. I, therefore, urge all Black women to continue creating spaces and representing our voices through writing and other scholarly work. We must actively resist assimilation into an institutional culture that does not recognize our significance, impact, culture, and race. Notwithstanding my call for Black women to stand up and raise their voices in academic forums, I also recognize the importance of institutional solidarity towards dismantling anti-racism in education. Hubain et al. (2016) asserted that raising issues of diversity in universities should not only be the responsibility of persons of colour but should be a shared responsibility involving everyone in the learning space. I posit that all faculty members should embrace ethical praxis in their teaching and facilitation. They must engage in conscious efforts to ensure Black students and other marginalized groups can speak freely, form collectivities, and generate resilience strategies without the fear of victimization. This implies intentionally acknowledging the existence of racism and viewing Black students as victims of an unjust system that seems incapable and unwilling to include them. There is no specific formula or stringent guidelines for scholars willing to engage in ethical facilitation, but there are governing principles that can be followed (Brown and Danaher 2017). Among these principles are facilitators’ deep desires to work with participants to promote social justice and change. Ethical facilitators must ensure Black students access spaces to voice their experiences. As such Black students can become active participants in reconstructing systems to honour their identities, consider their aspirations, and promote their capabilities.

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Acknowledgement  I acknowledge the support received from members of my doctoral supervisory team, led by D. Elizabeth Sloat, and my mentor Dr Casey Burkholder. Your guidance has significantly contributed towards my academic progress. Thank you. Disclosure Statement  No potential conflict of interest to report.

References Backhouse, C. 1999. Colour-coded: A legal history of racism in Canada, 1900–1950. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Bob Marley and the Wailers. 1980. Redemption song. Uprising. Island/ Tuff Gong. Braden, S. 1999. Using video for research and representation: Basic human needs and critical pedagogy. Journal of Education Media 24 (2): 117–129. Brown, A., and P.A. Danaher. 2017. CHE principles: Facilitating authentic and dialogical semi-structured interviews in educational research. International Journal of Research & Method in Education 42 (1): 76–90. Burkholder, C. 2017. DIY media-making for social change: Hong Kong’s ethnic minority youth speak Back to exclusion and call for social action through cellphilms. In Youth as architects of social change: Global efforts to advance youth-driven innovation, ed. S. Bastien and H.B. Holmarsdottir, 155–174. Cham: Springer. Carspecken, P.F. 1996. Critical ethnography in educational research: A theoretical and practical guide. New York: Routledge. Codjoe, H.M. 2001. Fighting the ‘public enemy’ of black academic achievement – The persistence of racism and the schooling experiences of black students in Canada. Race Ethnicity and Education 4 (4): 343–375. Dockney, J., K. Tomaselli, and T.B. Hart. 2010. Cellphilms, mobile platforms and prodsumers: Hyper-individual and film. In The citizen in communication: Re-visiting traditional, new and community media practices in South Africa, ed. N. Hyde-Clarke, 75–95. Cape Town: Juta. Downey, A. 2018. Speaking in circle: Lived experiences of white-seeming privilege. Antistasis 8 (1): 1–11. Freire, P. 2002. Pedagogy of the oppressed, 50th anniversary edition. New York: Continuum International Publishing.

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into participatory visual research activism, ed. K. MacEntee, C. Burkholder, and J. Schwab-Cartas. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Marx, S., J.L. Pennington, and H. Chang. 2017. Critical autoethnography in pursuit of educational equity: Introduction to the IJME special issue. International Journal of Multicultural Education 19 (1): 1–6. McCann, I. 2011. Bob Marley: The completer guide to his music. 2nd ed. London: Omnibus Press. McCarthy, M.L. 2006. Releasing my critical chatter: An autobiographical narrative from a black diaspora. PhD diss., University of New Brunswick. Library and Archives Canada. McCarthy, M.L. 2014. Mixed-race identity black and Maliseet. Acadiensis 43 (1): 117–124. Mekonen, S.A. 2021. I am black now: A phenomenologically grounded autoethnography of becoming black in Berlin. In Under construction: Performing critical identity, ed. M. Kohl Basel, 9–28. Switzerland: MDPI. Mensah, J. 2010. Black Canadians: History, experience, social conditions. Black Point: Fernwood Publishing. Mitchell, C., and N. De Lange. 2011. Community-based participatory video and social action in rural South Africa. In The sage handbook of visual research methods, ed. E. Margolis and L. Pauwells, 171–185. Sage Publications. ———. 2013. What can a teacher do with a cellphone? Using participatory visual research to speak Back in addressing HIV & AIDS. South African Journal of Education 33 (4): 1–13. ed. E. Margolis and L. Pauwells. Mitchell, C., and M. Sommer. 2016. Participatory visual methodologies in global public health. An International Journal for Research, Policy and Practice 11 (5–6): 521–527. Mogadime, D. 2002. Black women in graduate studies: Transforming the socialization experience. In Back to the drawing board: African-Canadian feminism, ed. N.N. Wane, K. Deliovsky, and E. Lawson, 129–157. Toronto: Sumach Press. Mullings, D.V., A. Morgan, and H.K. Quelleng. 2016. Canada the great white north where anti-black racism thrives: Kicking down the doors and exposing the realities. Phylon 53 (1): 20–41. Myers, T.K. 2019. Can you hear me now? An autoethnography analysis of code-­ switching. Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies 20 (2): 113–123. Nickerson, G.A.J. 2020. Why didn’t they teach us that? The untold black history of New Brunswick. Journal of New Brunswick Studies 12: 15–23.

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3 The Fibres of Our Being: A Visual Artefact of Community-Engaged Visual Arts in St. James Town Mehdia Hassan

Introduction Neighbourhoods are always in motion, transforming, adapting, and bending collectively to manifest alternative realities in the face of social injustices (Anzaldua 2002). Recently, during the COVID-19 pandemic, I began to wonder: how is community redefined during the socially isolating times of the COVID-19 pandemic, when you’re living in one of the most densely populated high-rise neighbourhoods in all of Canada? By actively doing visual sociology in my Toronto inner-city neighbourhood of St. James Town, I demonstrate the ways in which visual artefacts, like my painting The Fibres of Our Being (see Fig. 3.1), may have transformative impacts on the everyday lives of youth, through the ways in which it theorizes social connectedness. I created my painting as part of my virtual painting programme, depicting a spiral of entangled muscle fibres winding upwards towards the bright sky. The painting contrasts darkness

M. Hassan (*) University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Burkholder et al. (eds.), Facilitating Visual Socialities, Social Visualities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25259-4_3

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Fig. 3.1  The Fibres of Our Being. 2021. Acrylic on canvas. By Mehdia Hassan

with light, depicting a distorted perspective of a spiralling staircase that simultaneously represents the sun’s multiple rays. There are a series of vertical buildings placed very close to each other, representing the high population density in St. James Town. The sun rays cross over the buildings. With this visual artefact, I open new pathways for the co-existence of multiple, diverse ontologies and epistemologies for St. James Town youth in the community (Dei 2010; Riessman 2008). While there are varying definitions of youth by various organizations, in this chapter, I will abide by Statistics Canada’s (2019) definition of youth as individuals aged 15–29 years old. As sociology becomes more visual (Pauwels 2010), how might we use paintings produced within the context of virtual

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community-­engaged arts programming, to theorize and understand the ways in which we can collectively address social isolation in marginalized youth? In this chapter, I will discuss the ways in which my painting visually theorizes the significance of social capital, social cohesion, and positive coping skills in St. James Town youth during the COVID-19 pandemic; this is evident through the visual metaphors of muscle fibres, the large spiral, and the staircase of sun rays.

Situating St. James Town, Toronto St. James Town is the most densely populated neighbourhood in both Toronto and Canada (Elsayed 2019; Barnes 2011). Located on the traditional Indigenous territory of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples, St. James Town is also home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples (City of Toronto 2019). It is critical to recognize and honour the rich histories of the land, of Indigenous communities who called this place home, before the arrival of settler colonialism (Tuck and Yang 2012). St. James Town consists of 19 high-rise towers that were built in the late 1950s for mobile signals, and the neighbourhood later became home to low-income families (Guide 2021). More than half of St. James Town’s population identifies as immigrants to Canada, with 67% of the population identifying as racialized minorities (City of Toronto 2018). According to the 2016 Census by Statistics Canada, the neighbourhood that is formally labelled as “North St. James Town” is home to at least 18,615 residents (City of Toronto 2018). The population continues to rise, as community organizations and service providers struggle to provide sufficient resources and keep up with the increasing, unique challenges of the neighbourhood (Elsayed 2019). In winter of 2021, St. James Town was designated as a COVID-19 “hot spot community,” where the number of COVID-19 cases was especially high in residents, compared to the less marginalized regions of the city (City of Toronto 2021).

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Contextualizing Social Isolation Although St. James Town is the most densely populated neighbourhood in Canada, many of its residents experience social isolation, which has intensified during the pandemic (Elsayed 2019). In the St. James Town Cultural Plan, more community-engaged arts programming was recommended to foster social capital and reduce social isolation in community residents of all ages (STEPS Initiative 2019). Ipsos (2021) reported that 60% of young people, ages 18–34 years old, experienced more social isolation during the pandemic. However, staying connected through digital online platforms might contribute to decreased social isolation and stress, during the pandemic (Xiang et al. 2020).

Positioning Myself in the Community Context I have witnessed the transformative power of community-engaged visual arts in St. James Town, after co-establishing the first youth-led, visual arts programme for St. James Town youth (Bisaillon et al. 2017). Since 2014, I have been actively working towards positive social change in my community, as a youth arts educator and a life-long resident of St. James Town. My activism work in my community also challenges dominant media narratives that it is a “bad neighbourhood” of criminal activity (Bisaillon et al. 2017; Mugammar and Rania 2017). As much as visual imagery reveals the cultural context it is made in, it also offers an insightful gateway into the culture of the producer (Pauwels 2010). As a racialized, young woman in St. James Town, I am simultaneously moving between the worlds of an insider and outsider in my community-­engaged work, as I organically reveal my multiplex subjectivities in my collaborative work (Taber 2010). My academic backgrounds in arts-based methodologies and critical pedagogy inform my equity-­ focused approach to creating inclusive virtual learning spaces. My positionality as an arts educator and as arts-based researcher enabled me to advocate loudly for youth in this programme.

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Most importantly, my positionality as a racialized settler on the Indigenous traditional territory that is now known as St. James Town informs the many purposes of my community-engaged work. Beyond acknowledgement of the Indigenous histories of the land, I am reminded that I have the responsibility to actively work with Indigenous peoples towards the decolonization and repatriation of Indigenous land (Tuck and Yang 2012). Through community-engaged arts, we can envision alternative futures, build coalitions, and co-create diverse cultural knowledges to resist settler-colonial ways of knowing (Dei 2010; Tuck and Yang 2012). I continue to reflect on how a pervasive history of institutional harms and injustices inform my presence in current physical and virtual spaces, relationships, and activities, during the collaborative processes of group art-making (Kushnir and Valve 2022).

F acilitating Community-Engaged Arts: Forming Entangled Community Connections Facilitating community-engaged arts initiatives involve collaborative and creative processes that are inclusive to a diverse range of art forms and cultural practices; they include forms of visual arts, music, drama, poetry, creative writing, and dance, but are not limited to these art forms (Sameshima et al. 2019). Various studies across Canada, USA, and the UK demonstrate how community-engaged arts hold the promising potential to address social isolation and foster greater wellness in youth (Forrest-Bank et al. 2016; Hadland and Stickley 2010; Lee 2013; Macpherson et al. 2016; Van Lith et al. 2013; Victor et al. 2016; Wright et al. 2006; Zarobe and Bungay 2017). The notions of social capital, social cohesion, and positive coping skills are importantly entangled with community-engaged arts and social isolation. During a time of increased social distress and social isolation, brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, these entanglements become increasingly important to consider in young people, including how they manifest in virtual learning spaces.

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Social Capital and Social Cohesion Social capital includes “features of social organisations, such as networks, norms, and trust, that facilitate action and co-operation for mutual benefit” (Putnam 2000 quoted in Stafford et al. 2008, 395). Social capital can create bonds within and bridge between communities (Hampshire and Matthijsse 2010; Putnam 2000). Bonding social capital includes social networks with people who are like us, and bridging social capital includes social networks with people from across social groups (Stafford et al. 2008). Social capital can come from the individual’s social networks or can be the sum of a community’s social networks, influencing belonging and adaptation (Hoerder et al. 2005). “Constellations of social relations” and communities of “temporary coherence” are created in collective learning spaces, such as in the context of virtual community-engaged arts programming (Hoerder et al. 2005, 18). However, social capital is also contextual and constantly being negotiated by social actors in power hierarchies (Hoerder et al. 2005). Relatedly, social cohesion—“the degree of connectedness and solidarity that exists among people living in defined geographic boundaries” (Echeverria et al. 2008, 854)—and connectedness in neighbourhoods can reinforce health-promoting behaviours and meaningfully contribute to a greater sense of purpose in life. Community-­ engaged arts can help youth build meaningful and close-knit relationships when they are in informal learning environments and community spaces (Lee 2013).

Positive Coping Skills Community-engaged arts programmes can improve feelings of loneliness in youth, helping prevent youth suicide, while generating important dialogue about social and health inequities (Hampshire and Matthijsse 2010; Van Lith et al. 2013; Zarobe and Bungay 2017). Harnessing positive coping skills has become even more critical during the pandemic, as many people have turned to the arts to cope with the collective trauma of pandemics (Button 2020). Learning and developing a specific skill set,

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such as visual arts techniques, can build resilience and foster positive coping in marginalized youth (Macpherson et al. 2016). Normative resiliency discourses can be used to further vulnerablize young people, which is not what I intend to do, in highlighting their resiliency (Hutcheon and Lashewicz 2014). Resiliency should not be expected of marginalized communities, in the face of systemic adversities. Rather, the need for resiliency should point to the urgency for actively addressing hegemonic systems of oppression that continue to marginalize specific communities, including youth (Hutcheon and Lashewicz 2014).

 he Blurring of “Found” and “Made” Visual T Imagery in Visual Analysis My painting The Fibres of Our Being blurs the definitive boundaries of what Riessman (2008, 144) and Pauwels (2010, 548) describe as “found” visual imagery and “made” visual imagery. “Found” visual imagery, often associated with archival documents, are pre-existing societal artefacts that document and produce multiple meanings of culture (Riessman 2008, 144). “Made” visual imagery, often associated with paintings and collages, allows for more control to create narratives and meanings that are constructed within the moments of the research and learning process (Riessman 2008, 144). I argue that my painting tells a rich narrative about its imagery and with its imagery, as it holds multiple meanings from the time it was first produced during the community-engaged arts programme, and in the moments that proceed it; the cultural data is actively being interpreted and reinterpreted (Chase 2005; Pauwels 2010; Riessman 2008). Within the evolving context of the pandemic, how might facilitators reframe what a creative “output” or product is supposed to look like in virtual community-engaged arts? (Kushnir and Valve 2022). Moreover, by engaging with the natural “messiness” and complexities of knowledge-­ production, as well as the productive entanglements of methodologies, facilitators should make space for a multiplicity of knowledges that guide us towards social transformation (Keating 2013; Jungnickel and Hjorth 2014).

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 eflections on Facilitating a Virtual R Painting Programme How do community-engaged arts practices change during the pandemic? My virtual painting programme holds many possibilities to meaningfully build social cohesion, social capital, and positive coping skills in St. James Town youth, who may experience social isolation. My painting The Fibres of Our Being is also used pedagogically, as a visually creative form of inquiry, to make meaning of and critically reflect upon the learnings from the community programme (Sameshima et al. 2019). During the end of 2020, I was graciously invited by Unity Health Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital to design and facilitate a virtual community-engaged arts programme with interested youth in my neighbourhood of St. James Town, in hopes of increasing social connectedness during the isolating pandemic. The five youth participants in the programme were all racialized women with multiple intersecting identities and had diverse experiences of living in St. James Town. To adapt my traditional arts education facilitation practices to our physical distancing conditions of the pandemic, this programme was structured into three virtual workshops, each 90 minutes long, held over the Zoom video-conferencing platform. To foster an inclusive and welcoming virtual environment of courage and vulnerability, I co-created a Brave Space Agreement with youth (see Appendix), where we developed group norms together and revisited them at the beginning of each session to maintain accountability (Arao and Clemens 2013; Hooks 1984; Kushnir and Valve 2022). Each workshop began with informal conversations with the group about how we were all feeling during this specific moment in time, during the pandemic. The first virtual workshop consisted of an introduction to the programme and a collective brainstorming discussion about community, health, and wellness. The second virtual workshop was a check­in session for youth participants, where we further discussed the progress we made so far on our paintings. By the third virtual workshop, we had mostly completed our paintings and engaged in meaningful discussions about our artworks. Youth participants and I reflected on the inspirations and stories behind our creations, responding to each other’s work.

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 nravelling Multiple Entanglements: The U Fibres of Our Being The youth participants’ multidimensional perspectives about community also naturally informed how I understand my painting The Fibres of Our Being, as a visual product made in the process of community-engaged work. In this way, diverse ways of knowing and being can be legitimized (Bhattacharya 2015; Dei 2010). How might the visual arts redirect learning and understanding? (Kushnir and Valve 2022). My discussions and dialogues with youth participants in the programme revealed the significance of social connections in addressing social isolation in St. James Town. With The Fibres of Our Being, I make visible the role of social connections in a pandemic, discussing how it is entangled with social capital, social cohesion, and building positive coping skills for youth living in Canada’s most densely populated neighbourhood, St. James Town. I will address this by theorizing specific aspects of my painting, such as the interconnected, visual metaphors of muscle fibres, the large spiral, and the staircase of sun rays. I use visual metaphors to bridge new semantic fields and guide our learning (Scuh and Cunningham 2004; Sermijin et al. 2008).

Muscle Fibres: Radical Relationality The title of my painting The Fibres of Our Being is inspired by how muscle fibres work together to facilitate organized movements in tissues and limbs of the body, as a dynamic way to conceptualize social cohesion and the formation of community connections. Each community member is like a muscle fibre that can virtually entangle with other community members. Just like muscle fibres synchronously working together to move a tissue or limb in the body, youth participants and I connected with each other and trusted each other through sharing our paintings of our experiences (see Fig. 3.2). Each muscle fibre exists uniquely on its own, yet they are also strengthened in co-existence with other unique muscle fibres. Like muscle fibres, community members’ paths can entangle with one another, through

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Fig. 3.2  Through our commonalities as complex points of connections, we foster trust and vulnerability in each other (Keating 2013)

shared activities like community-engaged arts, interdependently building social capital and social cohesion. By constantly moving together, and as Rice et al. (2018) state, “becoming together” virtually, within this radical form of relationality, youth participants in the painting programme were practicing creative solidarity (Recollet 2015, 131; Rice et al. 2018, 674).

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The Upward Spiral Resembling the collective nature of transformational change and knowledge-­production, the spiral of muscle fibres is centred in my painting. Social capital and social cohesion enable community members to move together in a synchronous spiral. There is unbounded, spiralling inquiry that grows through multiple dialogues with ourselves and others, as one idea provokes another (Sameshima et al. 2019). This is the messy, permeable, and unfinished process of facilitating collective knowledge building, as alluded to in the process of making the yellow, inner spiral (Keating 2013) (see Fig. 3.3). There are many uncertainties that still exist about the pandemic, such as not knowing when it will end and if restrictions will return. Therefore,

Fig. 3.3  Knowledge-production is not a linear process, but more like an unbounded spiral that is in the making (Sameshima et al. 2019; Keating 2013)

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the spiral also reminds us of the humility that more learning is to come. The creative arts can provoke an emotional learning experience that is embedded within love, hope, and care for a better community; this drives the St. James Town community’s continuous struggle of pushing against the grain to survive the various inequities exacerbated by the pandemic (Sameshima et al. 2019). While the spiral is going upward, I acknowledge that this feeling of radical hope is constantly changing. The programme was constantly adapting to the messiness of the pandemic context, including the ever-­ changing public health regulations and lockdowns. I was constantly shifting my facilitation practices, being open to sudden structural and schedule changes.

The Staircase of Sun Rays The bright yellow sun rays in The Fibres of Our Being simultaneously resemble a distorted, upward staircase. My facilitation practices centred a need for community members to collectively pivot and adapt to the many adversities brought by the pandemic, such as increased social isolation and concentrated poverty in St. James Town (Gibson 2021). Youth participants discussed positive coping skills during the pandemic, such as going to therapy, going for more walks, spending time in nature, sitting in the sunshine, calling family members and friends, and practicing gratitude. Participating in the painting programme was itself a coping skill for most of the St. James Town youth, which inspired some of their paintings. I resonated with our collective search for warmth and sunshine, amidst the pandemic lockdown of the winter. The sun rays are also a distorted, spiral staircase to signify that the path towards the light is not always straight-forward and easy to navigate. There is a collective struggle to make sense of an insensible, surreal situation brought by the pandemic. Coping through the pandemic is an ongoing, messy process and not all coping strategies are positive.

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 piralling into the Future: The Becoming S of Virtual Community Connections My painting The Fibres of Our Being depicts the need for community connections and creative solidarity, through its imaginative visual metaphors of muscle fibres, the large spiral, and the staircase of sun rays. Similarly, youth demonstrated their collective capacity to translate their social ties into the common purpose of helping each other cope with increased social isolation, through their art-making. While community-­ engaged arts programming was already immensely needed for St. James Town youth before the pandemic, the programme highlights the hopeful possibility of adapting arts education practices to a virtual sphere to facilitate greater social capital, social cohesion, and positive coping skills in marginalized communities (STEPS Cultural Plan 2019). A critical advocacy window has opened, with the increased institutional and policy-­ maker attention to the diverse lived experiences of inner-city youth during the pandemic; and it urgently calls for more sustainable funding that supports community-engaged arts programming. My painting The Fibres of Our Being is both “made” and “found” imagery, as it artfully captures the specific, finite moment of time when social connections actively form in this virtual painting programme (Riessman 2008, 144; Pauwels 2010, 548). However, the social context in which the painting was produced also limits what we know about fostering social connections. Visual silences can meaningfully reveal additional perspectives and nuances that need to be considered for social transformation (Guruge et al. 2015). This leads me to another important set of spiralling provocations unravelled by my painting. Since social capital and social cohesion are context-dependent, and therefore constantly negotiated, to what extent might community-engaged creative facilitators expect these social connections to last? How can we facilitate and sustain these meaningful connections, beyond the end of programming? Or rather, should we strive to maintain the “constellations of temporary coherence” that we have formed together? (Hoerder et al. 2005, 18). Facilitating the creation of visual artworks has aesthetically opened liminal spaces for further critical discussion and continuous inquiry on

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social connectedness, also revealing how sociology has become more visual (Sameshima et al. 2019; Pauwels 2010). In facilitating this project amidst COVID-19, the youth participants and I cultivated a shared space of multiple truths and perspectives to co-exist and complexify the many nuances about ourselves and our neighbourhood, which may not have otherwise emerged. We must carefully listen to and centre young people’s multiplex lived experiences in the processes of urban policy-design. The pandemic has clearly shown us that we are much more dependent on each other than we think we are. We excitedly anticipate the exhibition of artworks in the health clinic and the community’s responses to it, with further learning and entangled inquiry yet to come.

Appendix Co-creating a Brave Space Agreement I am grateful to the youth participants of this programme, who shaped and co-created versions of a Brave Space Agreement with me during each virtual workshop. I am also grateful to Rania El Muggamar for her anti-­ oppression and anti-racism workshops, as well as the Afghan Youth Engagement and Development Initiative, and Arao and Clemens (2013), which all shaped this living document. Below is an iterative example of the Brave Space Agreement that I described on my PowerPoint slide, during one of our virtual workshops of the painting programme: • Nobody knows everything, but together we know a lot. You can share as little or as much as you like. • What is said here, stays here. What is learned here, leaves here. • You can leave the virtual room at any time, and you are always welcome back in. • Active listening: listen to hear, not always to respond. • Speak with humility and an open heart. Everyone has unique, diverse lived experiences.

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• Be compassionate—give each other space and time to reflect and process. • If we want to go far, we need to go together. • This is a non-linear process—let’s strive to be iterative in our thinking and approach. • There is no learning in the comfort zone, and no comfort in the learning zone. Please feel free to unmute your microphone to share your contributions to this living agreement. You are welcome to use the chat box to contribute to the discussion. Then, use a “thumbs up” emoji if you agree with the group norms that we have all shared. Do you have any questions about this agreement that we can clarify together?

References Anzaldua, G. 2002. (Un)natural bridges, (Un)safe spaces. In This bridge we call home: Radical visions for transformation, ed. Gloria Anzaldua and AnaLouise Keating. New York: Routledge. Arao, B., and K. Clemens. 2013. From safe spaces to brave spaces: A new way to frame dialogue around diversity and social justice. In From the art of effective facilitation, ed. Lisa M. Landreman. Sterling: Stylus Publishing. Barnes, S. 2011. Canada’s densest neighbourhood St. James town to possibly get new condos. Wellesley Institute. https://www.wellesleyinstitute.com/housing/ st-­james-­town-­residents-­feel-­powerless-­in-­light-­of-­new-­development-­in-­one-­ of-­north-­americas-­densest-­neighbourhoods/. Bhattacharya, K. 2015. Diving deep into oppositional beliefs: Healing the wounded transnational, de/colonizing warrior within. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 15 (6): 492–500. Bisaillon, L., M. Hassan, and M. Hassan. 2017. Committing sociology: Being healthy, happy, and up-high in St. James town. Health Tomorrow 5: 107–132. Button, K. 2020. The inexorable link between the arts and surviving a pandemic. The Daily Utah Chronicle. https://dailyutahchronicle.com/2020/11/11/ the-­inexorable-­link-­between-­the-­arts-­and-­surviving-­a-­pandemic/.

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Chase, S. 2005. Narrative inquiry: Multiple lenses, approaches, voices. In The sage handbook of qualitative research, ed. N. Denzin and Y. Lincoln, 651–679. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. City of Toronto. 2018. Neighbourhood profile: North St. James Town. https:// www.toronto.ca/ext/sdfa/Neighbourhood%20Profiles/pdf/2016/pdf1/ cpa74.pdf. ———. 2019. Land acknowledgment. https://www.toronto.ca/city-­ government/accessibility-­h uman-­r ights/indigenous-­a ffairs-­o ffice/land-­ acknowledgement/. ———. 2021. COVID-19: How to get vaccinated. https://www.toronto.ca/ home/covid-­1 9/covid-­1 9-­p rotect-­y ourself-­o thers/covid-­1 9-­v accines/ covid-­19-­how-­to-­get-­vaccinated/?accordion=vaccine-­eligibility. Dei, G. 2010. Fanon and anti-colonial theorizing. In Fanon and the counterinsurgency of education, 11–28. Paderborn: Brill Sense. Echeverria, S., A. Diez-Roux, S. Shea, L. Borell, and S. Jackson. 2008. Associations of neighborhood problems and neighborhood social cohesion with mental health and health behaviors: The multi-ethnic study of atherosclerosis. Health & Place 14: 853–865. Elsayed, D. 2019. Hundreds calling for “highly neglected” St. James Town to become neighbourhood improvement area. CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/ news/canada/toronto/st-­james-­town-­petition-­1.5208378. Forrest-Bank, S., Nicoterra, N., Bassett, D.M., and Ferrarone, P. 2016. Effects of an expressive art intervention with urban youth in low-income neighborhoods. Child & Adolescent Social Work Journal 33 (5): 429–441. Gibson, V. 2021. Seven people, one bathroom: What It’s like to weather the pandemic in an overcrowded Toronto home. Toronto Star. https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2021/04/18/seven-­people-­one-­bathroom-­what-­its-­like-­ weather-­the-­pandemic-­in-­an-­overcrowded-­toronto-­home.html. Guruge, S., M. Hynie, Y. Shakya, A. Akbari, S. Htoo, and S. Abiyo. 2015. Refugee youth and migration: Using arts-informed research to understand changes in their roles and responsibilities. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/ Forum: Qualitative Social Research 16 (3). Hadland, R., and T. Stickley. 2010. Community art project for excluded teenagers. Mental Health Practice 13 (6): 18–23. Hampshire, K., and M. Matthijsse. 2010. Can arts projects improve young people’s wellbeing? A social capital approach. Social Science & Medicine 71 (14): 708–716.

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Hoerder, D., Y. Hebert, and I. Schmitt. 2005. Negotiating transcultural lives: Belongings and social capital among youth in comparative perspective. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Hooks, B. 1984. Essentialism and experience. In Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom, 77–92. New York: Routledge. Hutcheon, E., and B. Lashewicz. 2014. Theorizing resilience: Critiquing and unbounding a marginalizing concept. Disability & Society 29 (9): 1383–1397. Ipsos. 2021. COVID continues to take heavy toll on Canadians’ mental health. https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2021-­02/ mental_health-­factum-­2021-­02-­20-­v1.pdf. Jungnickel, K., and L. Hjorth. 2014. Methodological entanglements in the field: Methods, transitions, and transmissions. Visual Studies 29 (2): 136–145. Keating, A. 2013. Transformation now! Toward a post-oppositional politics of change. Champaign: University of Illinois Press. Kushnir, A., and L. Valve. 2022. Proximity lab: Imagining the future of verbatim theatre. Project Humanity. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/541b34b9e4b03814779c9ca2/t/6216f093ea926d 5b920dd05d/1645670557623/Proximity+Lab+Magazine+by+Project+H umanity.pdf. Lee, D. 2013. How the arts generate social capital to foster intergroup social cohesion. The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society 43 (1): 4–17. Macpherson, H., A. Hart, and B. Heaver. 2016. Building resilience through group visual arts activities: Findings from a scoping study with young people who experience mental health complexities and/or learning difficulties. Journal of Social Work 16 (5): 541–560. Neighbourhood Guide. 2021. St. James Town. https://www.neighbourhoodguide.com/toronto/downtown/st-­james-­town/?wplpage=3. Pauwels, L. 2010. Visual sociology reframed: An analytical synthesis and discussion of visual methods in social and cultural research. Sociological Methods & Research 38 (4): 545–581. Putnam, R. 2000. Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York: Simon and Schuster. Rania, E.M. 2017. What most Canadians don’t get about ‘bad neighbourhoods’ like mine. CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/2017/what-­most-­canadians-­ don-­t-­get-­about-­badneighbourhoods-­like-­mine-­1.3992488get-­about-­bad-­ neighbourhoods-­like-­mine-­1.3992488.

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Recollet, K. 2015. Glyphing decolonial love through urban flash mobbing and walking with our sisters. Curriculum Inquiry 45 (1): 129–145. Rice, C., E. Chandler, K. Liddiard, J. Rinaldi, and E. Harrison. 2018. Pedagogical possibilities for unruly bodies. Gender and Education 30 (5): 663–682. Riessman, C. 2008. Visual analysis. In Narrative methods for the human sciences. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. Sameshima, P., P. Maarhius, and S. Wiebe. 2019. Parallaxic praxis: Multimodal interdisciplinary pedagogical research design. Wilmington: Vernon Press. Scuh, K., and D. Cunningham. 2004. Rhizome and the mind: Describing the metaphor. Semiotica 149 (1–4): 325–342. Sermijin, J., P. Devlieger, and G. Loots. 2008. The narrative construction of the self: Selfhood as a rhizomatic story. Qualitative Inquiry 14 (4): 632–650. Stafford, M., M. De Silva, S. Stephen, and M. Marmot. 2008. Neighbourhood social capital and common mental disorder: Testing the link in a general population sample. Health & Place 14: 394–405. Statistics Canada. 2019. A portrait of Canadian youth. https://www150.statcan. gc.ca/n1/en/pub/11-­631-­x/11-­631-­x2019003-­eng.pdf?st=p5Yh1dk5. STEPS Initiative. 2019. St. James Town community cultural plan. https://stepspublicart.org/project/st-­james-­town-­community-­cultural-­plan/. Taber, N. 2010. Institutional ethnography, autoethnography, and narrative: An argument for incorporating multiple methodologies. Qualitative Research 10 (1): 5–25. Tuck, E., and W. Yang. 2012. Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1 (1). Van Lith, T., M. Schofield, and P. Fenner. 2013. Identifying the evidence-base for art-based practices and their potential benefit for mental health recovery: A critical review. Disability and Rehabilitation 35 (6): 1309–1323. Victor, J., W. Linds, Jo-A Episkenew, L. Goulet, and D. Benjoe. 2016. Kiskenimisowin (self-knowledge): Co-researching wellbeing with Canadian First Nations youth through participatory visual methods. International Journal of Indigenous Health 11 (1): 262–278. Wright, R., L. John, R. Alaggia, and J. Sheel. 2006. Community-based arts program for youth in low-income communities: A multi-method evaluation. Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal 23 (5–6): 635–652.

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Xiang, Yu-T, Y. Yang, W. Li, L. Zhang, Q. Zhang, T. Cheung, and N.G. Chee. 2020. Timely mental health care for the 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak is urgently needed. The Lancet Psychiatry 7 (3): 228–229. Zarobe, L., and H. Bungay. 2017. The role of arts activities in developing resilience and mental wellbeing in children and young people: A rapid review of the literature. Perspectives in Public Health 137 (6): 337–347.

4 An Afternoon Making Mole with My Jña Bida (Grandmother): A Zapotec Approach to Facilitation Joshua Schwab-Cartas

Making our Binnizá food is an anchor to our culture, it reminds you of your people, your pueblo, memories of who you ate it with, it is about learning your responsibility of being in your pueblo while continuing to pass on our ancestors’ teachings to the next generation. —Grandmother Lilia Cartas Guzman

Introduction In this chapter, I will focus on an afternoon with my Jña Bida (grandmother) Lilia Guzman Cartas, passing on our family recipe of Mole Negro and how this seemingly ordinary interaction, much like my experience with other Elders, was abundant with cultural teachings including ways to facilitate from a Binnizá (Zapotec) standpoint. The teachings I learned from my jña bida hold valuable insights that helped me on my journey of

J. Schwab-Cartas (*) NSCAD University, Halifax, NS, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Burkholder et al. (eds.), Facilitating Visual Socialities, Social Visualities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25259-4_4

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decolonization, but also gave me new perspectives on what it means to live as a Binnizá, my responsibilities to my community, myself, and future generations. That is to say, through this facilitator/knowledge holder-­ participant/learner encounter I learned that quotidian activities, such as making Mole, can be powerful acts of resistance, decolonization, and have real life impacts. I mention this because many participants I have worked with, myself included, can at times feel overwhelmed by the weight of the issues encapsulated under the banner of social justice and don’t know how or where to start. It leaves them feeling hopeless that there is no action effective enough to make a difference, which can lead to inaction. Or that the only way to make changes is by always being on the front lines protesting and fighting with major institutions, whether they be the government or corporations, which of course is powerful and necessary, but comes with its share of tribulations. I learned from my grandmother that we don’t have to have an all or nothing attitude, that in fact small everyday actions, such as making Mole and planting a garden, can and do have real tangible impacts in people’s lives. I shared this personal experience because it came to mind when my co-editors Casey Burkholder, Funké Aladejebi, and I received an intriguing question during the launch of our recently edited volume on facilitation in visual research entitled Facilitating Community Research for Social Change Case Studies in Qualitative, Arts-Based and Visual Research. Dr Claudia Mitchell, my former supervisor and mentor, asked, how does one teach facilitation to others? This inquiry prompted a series of other questions within myself, such as what is facilitation. Where did I learn how to facilitate? What does facilitation look like when grounded in an Indigenous epistemology?

Ni Bizaaca (The Past) My Jña Bida (Grandmother) Lilia My jña bida Lilia Guzman Cartas was born in the small Isthmus Binnizá (Zapotec) pueblo of Guia’ti (Ixtaltepec) in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. She is the youngest of five children and was always very close to

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her mother, helping her make totopos (oven-baked tortillas) and chorizo to sell at the local market. My grandmother also would run many errands, such as delivering chorizo, since my great-grandmother Augstina was a butcher. In fact she was the only female butcher in the town. Her bixozebida (father) José was a very stern and overprotective father, who loved my grandmother very much, but he thought forbidding her to learn how to speak diidxazá, our ancestral language, was a way to protect her. He felt that if she did not speak her ancestral language or even have any semblance of a Zapotec accent when speaking Spanish she would not face the kind of discrimination her parents and siblings had to endure. This act of “protection” was a very common experience for many Zapotec youth of the time, but unfortunately my grandmother felt that this decision robbed her of a vital piece of culture/identity. Despite this decision by her father, my grandmother found other ways to continue to live and pass on our Zapotec lifeways, with the help of her mother, who also was fiercely proud of being Binnizá. I was 6 years old the first time I heard my bixzoebida (grandfather) Gil and my jña jña bida (great-grandmother) Agustina speaking diidxazá. I remember asking my grandmother why I couldn’t understand the Spanish they were speaking and she told me “son they are speaking diidxazá, Zapoteco—the language of our ancestors.” I asked her if she spoke it, which prompted her to recount the aforementioned story of her father. However, she proudly exclaimed that she understands everything, and all the recipes and teachings that her mother passed on to her were in diidxazá. I would later find out through my language revitalization work that in fact there was a term for language speakers like my grandmother, a silent speaker that is someone who is fully fluent in their language but does not speak it. I have met many Elders like my grandmother who, like her, have continued to live and celebrate their Indigenous way of life through different ancestral practices. In spite of being a silent speaker, my jña bida Lilia has always been fiercely proud of being Binnizá (Zapotec) and has inculcated this pride in me through her stories, teachings, and her recipes. My jña bida has been one of my key teachers of our Binnizá way of life! Today I will share a personal experience of my jña bida sharing with me, as a young man, our family recipe of Mole Negro (Black Mole). Not only did I learn a recipe, our family history, and cultural significance,

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but I also came to learn a Zapotec approach to teaching and facilitation. My jña bida Lilia’s teachings also provided me with the foundation to recognize and understand these teachings when I would work with other Elders in our community. These teachings have and continue to inspire my pedagogical and facilitation approaches.

Xinga Mole? What Is Mole? For those unfamiliar with Mole, it is a traditional Indigenous Mexican dish whose name comes from the Nahuatl word molli (stew), which is typically eaten during special occasions, like weddings, baptisms, and funerals. There are different types of moles, such as rojo, colorado, amarillo, just to name a few, and we even see this variety documented in the sixteenth Florentine Codex created by “Indigenous scribes under the direction of Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, describes numerous pre-­ Hispanic molli-turkey with small chiles, frogs with green chiles, and lobster with red chiles” (Pilcher, 2018, p. 640). As I have learned from my Elders, each mole is eaten and prepared for a specific celebration or occasion. For this chapter, I will be focusing on Mole Negro de Oaxaca, which is a complex and labour-intensive dish to prepare. Most moles have over 30 ingredients ranging from chiles, species, fruits, nuts, and chocolates all of which need to be either fried, toasted, roasted, and then blended by hand with a guiiche (pestle and mortar). The difficulty of this dish is having to balance all those ingredients, which takes years to master, through trial and error. I should note that Mole Nergo is eaten across Mexico, but is primarily associated with the states of Puebla and Oaxaca, both of which have markedly different versions of the Mole. Even within each state, there are subtle variations from town to town. My jña bida prepares an Isthmus of Tehuantepec version, but even in the community, every family has their own variation of it too, some are sweeter than others, spicier than others, and reflect the geographical location. The Isthmus version my grandmother makes is sweeter and nuttier, it has more fruits in it such as ripe plantains and sesame seeds both of which are abundant in the region.

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Runi Endaró: Making Mole with My Grandmother I have loved Mole since I was a young child. It is a dish that has always brought me so much happiness as well as cultural pride because I know it has been in our family for hundreds of years. Without fail, every time I visited my grandmother, she made this dish for me, knowing how much I love it, but out of those times I may have helped serve it or perhaps stirred the sauce. I never actually helped or participated in the process of making Mole from scratch until I was 26 years old. You may ask, how do I remember this? It is because I had participated in a life altering experience. In 2006, I participated in the Oaxacan protests and stood in solidarity with the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca or known locally by its acronym as APPO. The APPO, like many citizens of Oaxaca, were demanding the removal of then Governor Ulisis Ruiz Ortez known for his despotic behaviour against its citizens, namely Indigenous teachers, as well as corruption and severe underfunding of education and other social services. That summer, I was living and sleeping on the streets of Oaxaca city in a makeshift encampment in the middle of the city that was occupied by non-violent protests made of Indigenous groups, anarchists, teachers, foreigners, and everyday citizens in solidarity with the APPO who wanted change. For several months, the peaceful protests used art, traditional food, music, and movies as peaceful acts of resistance. Unfortunately, in early fall the military was called in to end this occupation. The conflict between police, military, and protestors unfortunately ended with casualties on all sides, including an American filmmaker, which prompted me to leave Oaxaca city and go back to my grandparents’ home. It is against this backdrop that I learned how to make Mole. I had arrived early in the morning, around 4 am, to the port city of Veracruz. As I exit the bus, I am greeted by the familiar sensation of humidity and the smell of the ocean in the air. I slowly make my way from the bus terminal to my grandparents’ house. I slept for a couple hours and woke up to the smell of coffee. I make my way downstairs to see my grandmother reading the newspaper. I could see on the headline on the front page that reads “protesters finally removed from the Zocalo of Oaxaca.” My grandmother pours me a cup of coffee, gives me a big

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hug and says welcome home, and proceeds to tell me “I am so happy you are finally home, safe and sound, away from the dangers of where you were. I was so worried something would happen to you, I read what happened to the American.” She could see that this whole experience had affected me. My mind is suddenly filled with a rush of different memories and emotions. I begin to think of the untimely passing of the American filmmaker, or the many times that tear gas was hurled at us, or when we had to flee in trucks only seconds later hearing violence erupt in the background. I told her I felt scared as well as disillusioned with what we accomplished, but more than anything I was trying to process this entire experience. My grandmother asks me “what exactly are the people in Oaxaca protesting?” I told her that the people of the state are tired of the violence and corruption of the governor and his government. They were also demanding accessible and culturally relevant education for their children. She nodded in agreement and said: Yes, it is a very difficult situation, but why were you there? You are not from Oaxaca, nor do you live there. “Yes” I said “but our relatives do live there and that is where we are from. Plus this movement is about protesting the injustices that Indigenous peoples, our family and relatives have and continue to face.”

As a young Zapotec person at the time, I told her that I could not sit by and not try to support the movement. I also told her that another reason I wanted to be there is because I wanted to learn more about my culture, our traditions, and reconnect with my Zapotec heritage and roots. To which she said: Sure, that is one way to connect with your roots, so did you feel you accomplished that? I said “No.”

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She said, Well, I find it admirable that you are standing up for a just cause, which is very much what our people have always done, but there are other ways to make change while reconnecting with your culture.

I give my jña bida an inquisitive look, as if saying such as Now that you are here safe and sound, I want us to make your favorite dish, Mole negro. You are ready to learn our family recipe that was shown to me by my mother, who learned it from her mother, who learned it from her mother. So one day you will show it to your child.

My jña bida and I did a smudging ceremony to cleanse ourselves before we started making Mole, after the ceremony she told me we need to be grounded, at peace when we make Mole so as to be able to connect with the teachings of our ancestors. She knew making Mole would nourish me both physically and spiritually. She also saw that I was not at ease and that my experience in Oaxaca had a significant impact on me. She had anticipated my arrival, so the day before she went to the market and picked up all the ingredients to make Mole. My grandmother begins by laying out and naming (some in Spanish and some in Diidxaza [zapotec]) all the ingredients that will go into her Mole, explaining in detail how each will be used in the recipe as well as possible medicinal uses. Ingredients: •  Chiles Multato, Pasilla, and Chilhuacles negros •  Sesame seeds • Pecans • Peanuts • Walnuts • Salt •  Cumin seeds • Thyme • Marjoram •  Bay leaves •  Black peppercorns

•  Cinnamon sticks • Onion • Garlic •  Pork lard •  Plum tomatoes • Raisins • Prunes • Plantains •  Sweet bread • Sugar •  A whole chicken •  Dxuladi (Chocolate)

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After she explains in detail each ingredient, she grabs a large cauldron and fills it with water, salt, and bouquet garni of different herbs (oregano, thyme, marjoram) and then places two chickens into the water. I notice that as she does this she makes a cross with her hand above the stockpot. This of course prompts me to ask her why she did that and she tells me it is to give thanks and honour the chicken whose life was taken for this meal, but also to honour those who taught us this recipe. She goes on to explain that part of the reason for the early morning cleanse was that it is important to cook when you are in a good mood because your mood, whether you are sad or angry or happy, will get transmitted into your food, so it is best to be content, patient, and calm. She also mentions that bad or happy feelings can also be passed on to the guests through the food, which is another reason to be aware of your emotional state when you are cooking. She continues by saying of course these are las creencias de los viejos (the beliefs of our old people, which refers to our binniguala’sa’ our Elders and ancestors). I observed her for quite a while in silence. It was a comfortable, yet deliberate silence, paying my respect to the process and trying to not miss anything. Her movements are so precise like watching a choreographed dance. She guides me with periodic hand gestures, getting me to taste, smell, feel, and tells me to jump in when I feel comfortable. I jump in without saying anything and begin peeling onions and garlic. My grandmother smiles and nods in approval as she cleans different dried chiles. Again another long silence as we each tend to our individual tasks, yet the silence is familiar, contemplative, reflexive, and supportive. I feel my grandmother’s energy guiding me while I settle into being open to receiving my jña bida’s teachings. I feel elated to finally be learning a dish that has always fascinated me since I was a child. According to my mother, I first ate this dish when I was mere 3 years old, while others worried that it would be too spicy, my grandmother encouraged me to try and according to my mother it made me smile and ask for more sauce! Mole, for those who haven’t tasted this dish, is a somewhat difficult flavour profile to describe because there are so many flavours of bitter, sweet, salty, smokey, spicy all in perfect balance. Balance, as my jña bida said, is the key to this dish but to life as well. Balance, she explains, is a key aspect of Zapotec values and philosophy. For example, good health is

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defined by having a balance between cold and hot elements, like good weather is a balance between wet and dry, too much of one element causes illness or problems. So it is not surprising that this philosophy permeates our gastronomy and Mole is a perfect example of balancing various elements. After I was done peeling and chopping the onions, my grandmother began grinding the freshly toasted chiles on a mano y metate (pestle and mortar) that has been passed down from her great grandmother. I pondered all the spices, chiles, and dishes that have been prepared using this pestle and mortar. My grandmother catches me watching her grinding the chiles and other ingredients into a paste and gestures that I come and try it. I give it a try and quickly realize how easy my grandmother made it look, but she assures me that I am a natural, it’s in your blood, she says. Reminding me of Momaday’s (1968) concept of “blood memory,” which refers to how ancestral knowledge of ceremonies and practices is not just passed on through stories, but is already embedded into our genetic makeup and passed on through a kind of genetic memory. My grandmother tells me to toast some sesame seeds, peanuts, and bread on the comal, but not being familiar with a gas range, nor have I ever toasted seeds, I burned all the ingredients. I was embarrassed, but more than anything I was annoyed that I had ruined the seeds and bread, but my grandmother looks at me compassionately and says, have you ever made this dish? She says it is okay to have a blunder; in fact it is important to make mistakes. She goes on to explain that some of the most valuable lessons and learning we do in our lives are because of the mistakes that we make. Now you know that you will never toast seeds on such high heat and that it is important to continuously mix the seeds. And she was right; it is something I have never forgotten. This was a very different message I received in school where we are supposed to avoid mistakes at all costs. Instead, here a mistake becomes a valuable learning experience that should be embraced. Making an error doesn’t make you inadequate, rather by seeing it as a teachable moment, it allows us to be kinder to ourselves, understanding that it can and does happen to everyone.

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My grandmother reminds me we are not simply making Mole, but in fact we are choosing to embrace our Binnizá culture by actively contributing to the continuity of our ancestral lifeways. Her hope is that one day I will pass on her teachings to the next generation to come. These small everyday actions, she said, have a real impact on your life as a Zapotec person. This is not to say, do not protest, but remember it’s also okay to focus on self, family, and community. Change at these levels is more attainable and honours our responsibility to our pueblo. With these words my grandmother takes the paste of chiles, nuts, spices, chocolate that she ground in her pestle and mortar and slowly blends through a strainer into the chicken stock until it combines into a beautiful deep sienna brown, which will now simmer for hours on low heat until the Mole becomes almost black. It simmers for a while and she asks me based on your experience of eating our Mole how does it taste? Is it missing something? I shrug my shoulders as if saying I don’t know, so my grandmother encourages me to recall memories and experiences of eating Mole, she continues by saying, remember you have a voice and a perspective, don’t be afraid to share it. I say, well I think it needs more chocolate, and she exclaims exactly that’s right. “Remember in our community it is important that people speak up and share their insights because they can make all the difference. For instance, the Mole would not have tasted the same had we not put more chocolate in it and this happened because you shared your insight based on your lived experiences.” Her words reminded me of the first time I participated in a community assemblea (a talking circle), how nervous I was, but how an Elder told me the same words as my grandmother, that your voice and opinion matter here. Both of these Elders encouraged me to speak my truth and share my opinion, which has given me the courage to speak in other contexts later on in my life. My jña bida puts in another couple pieces of chocolate into the Mole and gives a little prayer and says “now my Ba’du huiini (child), you now know our family recipe and my hope is you will share this with your children and remember you can always make it when you feel like being closer to your ancestors, to your Zapotec culture, to your other home and me! Now go take some to Nina (one of our Elderly neighbors).”

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Rutiiñe”/Facilitation When we think of facilitation, words such as support, change, assistance, neutral, and encouragement come to mind. There is no singular approach to facilitation; there are several methods and approaches to facilitation, which greatly vary depending on the theoretical or methodological orientation, objectives, and context. “The root definition of facilitation is ‘to make easy’, thus group facilitators provide assistance, not control, making it easy for the group to do its work” (Raelin 2006, p. 4). Facilitation, according to Raelin (2006), has one goal which is to help the group attain their objective through activities that engender constructive dialogue, while managing internal obstacles or conflicts that could hinder achieving the desired outcome. Moreover, the International Association of Facilitators (IAF) facilitation should underscore process over content. According to the literature, Raelin (2006) notes that a facilitator should be an impartial outsider with a neutral stance, who does not have vested stake in the outcomes, nor impose their personal agenda or views that could influence or impact the end result. However, as Ingrid Bens (2017) points out, the difficulty in maintaining a neutrality boundary because the fact remains “that a lot of facilitation isn’t done by disinterested outsiders, but by someone from within the group [or community] who has a real stake in the outcome” (Bens 2017, 12). As a Zapotec scholar, this has been my experience because a lot of the work I do is in service of our community, which is about honouring our Zapotec traditions. Being part of the community also means that our/my home or community is not the “field,” but in fact our home that embodies our history and traditions, as well as the place our ancestors are buried, so as an Indigenous facilitator and researcher I have the dual responsibility of satisfying both my community and the academy (see Ives et al. 2007). Moreover, I find it difficult as an Indigenous facilitator to not be invested in the content especially when you are trying to address a specific community concern and trying to attain a particular objective. In this context, I find that the content becomes inseparable from the process of facilitation and in fact, the content informs both process, objective, and outcomes. In my experience, when working with and in community, it requires that the content

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and facilitation activities (i.e. workshops) need to be co-created not just by the facilitator, but the community itself to ensure that both the process and outcomes are ethical (following community protocols), relational, and effective for the community. For example, when planning a cellphilm workshop as a language revitalization intervention in our community of Ranchu Gubiña (Union Hidalgo) Oaxaca, I introduced the idea to members of our media collective who in turn shared the idea with other members and Elders in our community. This was done as a way to evaluate and assess the project while ensuring protocols are being followed in the content creation, action, and outcomes, but more specifically to try to ensure that the actions do no harm and have tangible outcomes for both participants and community. Facilitation in an Indigenous framework therefore requires this vital step known as what Maōri researcher Lynn Pere Russell (2006) called the “Pre-research Consultation,” which ensures that not only will the facilitation process follow community protocols but also allow for community input and feedback. This might be an extra step, but it is a critical one. By including Elders, knowledge holders, and other community members to evaluate the project and process, it will help ensure that it is of actual use to the participants and community. Bens (2017) identifies what she calls Ten Core Principles that are the foundational tools that facilitators of change have at their disposal, which are the following: 1.  2.  3.  4.  5. 

Staying neutral Listening actively Asking questions Paraphrasing continuously Summarizing discussions

6.  7.  8.  9.  10. 

Recording ideas Synthesizing ideas Keeping on track Testing assumptions Managing the climate (p. 10)

These critical skills named by Bens are of course not an exhaustive list, but rather some essential skills that a facilitator can use to lead groups through activities and discussions. As a facilitator, I have used many of the principles named by Bens, such as listening actively or asking questions. I am not saying these skills are incompatible with what I have done in my practice or what I have learned; rather I want to share what I have learned about facilitation from a Binnizá perspective.

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Facilitators according to Mignone, Phillips, and Phillips-Beck (2015) irrespective of whether they are leading a workshop, leadership exercise, or running a problem solving activity should always keep in mind that facilitation is not the same as teaching. Teaching according to Mignone, Phillips, and Phillips-Beck “involves speaking at someone whereas facilitating is a two-way street of communication between yourself and the group” (11). They argue that teaching is a teacher-centred activity, whereas facilitation is dialogical and student centred, which may be the case in Western academic context. However, I did not find this to be my experience with my jña bida, in fact I felt facilitation and teaching weren’t thought as separate activities, but as two mutually supportive activities used together to achieve various outcomes. “In the Indigenous world, knowledge is passed on to the next generation through mentorship learning, indirectly through a complex web of storytelling, as well as through direct instruction, where a more expert other guides the learning” (Williams et al. 2018, p. 239). Even though Williams, Tanaka, Leik, and Riecken are speaking about the Lil’ Wat nation teaching principles, they resemble the principles I have learned from my grandmother and Elders in my community. Learning, teaching, and mentorship in an Indigenous context, whether it is Lil’ Wat nation or an Isthmus Binnizá community, are based on direct lived experience with ancestral practices, such as making Mole or tending the corn fields, taught/learned at appropriate times in one’s life. Also, my learning and teaching encounters with Elders like my grandmother focused on nurturing the learner’s strengths and gifts.

Guendariziidi: Lessons Learned I wanted to start this section with the worldview shared with me by my grandmother and other Elders. My grandmother, throughout this experience, spoke of an interconnected holistic world, where there is no distinction and balance between the physical world or the spirit world of our ancestors who continue to influence and guide us, or between mind, body, or spirit, nor between humans and other earthly beings. She also taught me that reciprocity, balance, responsibility, and the importance of individual experiences are key principles to both our pedagogy and

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facilitation. Through my experience of making Mole with my grandmother, I learned that teaching/learning/mentorship and facilitation are interconnected and these activities are designed to strengthen the interdependence between Elder/mentor and learner/participant and their environment/culture. According to my grandmother Lilia, my great-grandmother Augstina, who taught her how to make Mole, was considered a binni guenda bianni, which in our language means a wise person, someone who creates or brings the light. That is people who have mastered their craft whether it be healing, breadmaking, farming, yet are humble about their gifts or talents, “believing that the gifts they have are only loaned to them—they do not own them nor do they make any claim to privilege” (Royce 2011, 3). Therefore, within this Zapotec framework the goal is to share knowledge and/or gifts/talents with the community. Unlike facilitation or teaching in a Western academic context where knowledge is shared with the aim of individual intellectual growth, in Indigenous pedagogy reciprocity is the foundational value. Receprocity as understood by Brayboy and MaCarty (2010) is more than a quid pro quo, rather inspired by Deloris Jr’s (1992) idea of self development, they believe that “individuals act outside of their self-interests for those of the community and work towards their own betterments for the community’s sake” (p. 191). Thus the act of sharing and/or learning knowledge is not only done for self, but for family, community, and the generations yet to come as well. Years later, I am amazed at how many lessons I learned through this experience of making Mole with my jña bida. I learned our Binnizá theories and approaches to passing on knowledge/facilitation, teaching the significance of this dish to our people, when and why it is eaten, but my jña bida also taught me to look at activism and social justice differently. She taught me that seemingly quotidian activities, such as cooking, speaking words in your language, eating your traditional food, can be radical actions that can and do disrupt systems. Before this I felt that the only way to resist and fight for freedom was through activism and protesting on the front lines, much like I did in Oaxaca. This is not to say that activism is wrong or not necessary, it is absolutely critical to raise awareness of the issues. Meanwhile, one may ask, how does one resist or fight for freedom by making Mole? It is about celebrating what is right in

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front of you and making tangible change through direct action. Actionism, a term used by Joseph Leblanc on Ryan Mcmahon (2018) episode 1, season 7 podcast entitled Food Sovereignty and Nationhood, I feel best describes what I learned from my jña bida and later on from other Elders in my community. Leblanc asserts that actionism starts with what he refers to as asset-based mobilization that is looking into your own backyard, like learning how to make Mole, to actively seek and learn from knowledge holders before they pass and doing so is critical to reclaiming and transmitting ancestral practices. Mcmahon and Leblanc go on to discuss how activism and actionism are both necessary, but not equally generative, which is to say they are clearly not pitting them against one another. Activism on the one hand, Leblanc contends, has an immediacy effect that temporarily satisfies, but overtime will make you sick, disillusioned, frustrated, angry, and tends to deal with abstract and overwhelming concerns, such as capitalism, global warming, racism. Moreover, Leblanc notes that activism is in many ways an extension of the dependency model in that the state needs to change, the crown needs to change and so on, so you are putting change in someone else’s hands. Whereas, with actionism, you put into direct action what you are frustrated with. Unlike activism, as Mcmahon points out, where you need a bad guy, while with actionism we depend on each other. Listening to Leblanc and Mcmahon’s conversation helped me recognize that my jña bida was teaching me that change can happen through direct action, such as making Mole, learning the ingredients in your language, that through small but deliberate actions one can directly address local or personal challenges we are facing and we don’t necessarily have involved anyone else but yourself. Yet at the same time promotes this idea of communality beginning with individual action learning to collective affect—what I like to think of as individual communality. Under these circumstances change is correlative or reciprocal because not only are you affected by change, but eventually so is your household and social circle and your community. For example, I have shared this meal with family and friends telling them how and why I learned it. Through this experience I truly learned how radical making Mole was and in fact how these everyday activities are powerful ways to resist and exercise cultural sovereignty.

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I wanted to end this chapter with the following principles I learned from my experience with my grandmother that can help guide facilitators and participants dedicated to change and action to have at their disposal: 1. Always start the process of facilitation/mentorship with a culturally appropriate ceremony to strengthen a participant/learner connection to the physical and spiritual world, to provide healing, clarity, ­tranquillity, and gratitude. As my jña bida says, it will start us on the right path. 2. Promote the following principles, reciprocity, respect, and mutual responsibilities. 3. Nurture careful listening and observation through story and action, but also allow them to embrace their own pace of learning, so as to develop their own expertise in the process of learning their family or community knowledge. 4. Encourage dialogue and questions. 5. Foster and nurture a horizontal relationship that positions you not so much as an “expert,” but as a mentor who serves as a conduit to pass on knowledge, a skill, an action. Not to be confused with not respecting Elders or knowledge keepers. It is about letting go of ego for the welfare of the community and learner. 6. Tell participants to embrace mistakes. These lived experiences will be their best guide to learning a skill. As my jña bida said, you remember a mistake more vividly and what you could do differently next time, but as she says, by embracing mistakes it makes you more resilient and able to cope with future difficulties. 7. Embrace silences, don’t interpret it as boredom rather this means the participant is processing and reflecting on the lesson. It also can mean both facilitator and participant are of one mind, working in harmony. 8. Be reassuring, nurturing, but keep the praise to a minimum to foster self-confidence in themselves and their ability to learn that skill. 9. Always promote active, hands-on participation in the skill being shared.

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10. Remind participants to dispense with the all or nothing attitude of change and that in fact small, dedicated, and continued actions, such as making Mole, farming, speaking or learning words in your language, will and do make significant impacts. These small actions by dedicated Elders and knowledge holders are the reason we have some of our ancestral traditions today. They may not seem like much at first, but as Joseph Leblanc reminds us through a wonderful analogy that “life is like a river, it is fast and feels like it is passing us by, but rivers change over time and what changes them is rocks, pebbles, which are everyday actions and enough people throwing in their pebbles they will eventually change the course of the river.” Xquixhe pe lii jña Bida Lilia Guzman Cartas ne Bixosebida Gilberto Cartas Posada ne binni lidxe Arias ti beda guuyalu' sa' stidu.

References Bens, I. 2017. Facilitating with ease!: Core skills for facilitators, team leaders and members, managers, consultants, and trainers. Wiley. Brayboy, B., and Teresa L. McCarty. 2010. Indigenous knowledges and social justice pedagogy. In Social justice pedagogy across the curriculum, 200–216. Routledge. Deloria, V. (Ed.). 1992. American Indian policy in the twentieth century. University of Oklahoma Press. Ives, N.G., O. Aitken, M. Loft, and M. Phillips. 2007. Rethinking social work education for indigenous students: Creating space for multiple ways of knowing and learning. First Peoples Child & Family Review 3 (4): 13–21. Mcmahon, R. 2018. Food sovereignty and nationhood. Red Man Laughing. (Podcast). https://redmanlaughing.squarespace.com/season-­7. Accessed 20 June 2022. Mignone Javier Darrell Phillips Wanda Phillips-Beck and Canada. 2015. Moving toward a stronger future: An aboriginal resource guide for community development. Ottawa: Public Safety Canada. https://central.bac-­lac.gc.ca/. item?id=PS18-­24-­2015-­eng&op=pdf&app=Library. Momaday, N.S. 1968. House made of Dawn. New York: Perennial.

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Pilcher, J. M. (2018). The land of seven moles: Mexican culinary nationalism in an age of multiculturalism. Food, culture & society, 21(5), 637–653. Raelin, J.A. 2006. The role of facilitation in praxis. Organizational Dynamics 35 (1): 83–95. Royce, A.P. 2011. Becoming an ancestor: The Isthmus Zapotec way of death. Albany: SUNY Press. Williams, L., M. Tanaka, V. Leik, and T. Riecken. 2018. 11. Walking side by side: Living indigenous ways in the academy. In Learning and teaching community-­based research, 229–252. University of Toronto Press.

5 Narrow AI-Powered Visualization Facilitation Tools in Foreign Language Learning: A Visual Approach Promoting Equal Opportunities in Foreign Language Grammar Teaching Thomas Strasser

Introduction A Multitude of Definitions Digital technologies have been a prominent part of the academic discourse, especially in education (Belshaw 2011; Cunningham et al. 2019; Toh et al. 2013). Especially during such complex processes like learning and teaching a foreign language, it is of great relevance to put digitization into a more concise conceptual framework (Garone et  al. 2022). Digitization derives from the Latin word digitus (finger). Therefore, one can assume that digitization tries to measure something in particular (Grünberger et al. 2017). But what needs to be measured, especially in

T. Strasser (*) Vienna University College of Teacher Education, Vienna, Austria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Burkholder et al. (eds.), Facilitating Visual Socialities, Social Visualities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25259-4_5

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foreign language teaching and learning? In this chapter, we seek to understand facilitating learning success through digital technologies with young foreign language learners in a diverse Viennese grammar school.

Excluding Technological Determinism Apart from all its scalable, tech-determined definitions, digitization also implies a coherent and motivational connection between humans and technology, a step towards a development of digitization where analogue meets digital, where tradition meets innovation (Schier 2022). If we want to understand digitization as a supportive concept in the foreign language classroom, we need to consider heterogeneity and a certain balance between analogue and digital environments and a diverse young learner’s zeitgeist (Bauer and Strasser 2019). Modern technology-enhanced language teaching wants to exclude a purely technocratic paradigm of digital tools. The original tech-driven approach was mainly promoted in the late 1990s, where Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) was mainly techand gadget-driven and hardly considered a learner’s versatile awareness of internet tools. Digital tools and their methodological exploitation have come a long way. Starting from clearly behaviourist and instructivist cloze exercises with HotPotatoes or JClic, there has been a rapid development towards highly collaborative and constructivist mind mapping tools, like Padlet or Miroboard. However, instructivist knowledge transmission scenarios are not inferior to constructivist co-creation activities. Digital tools have drastically improved their potential to support learners with visual input or facilitation (Comi and Eppler 2011; Hautopp and Buhl 2020). Tools like Canva, Wordclouds, Kahoot, or AI-powered applications like Mysimpleshow or Midjourney Bot tool are examples of how complex curricular topics can be facilitated visually using multimodal artefacts.

Accessibility of Tools as an Inclusive Catalyst Seen from an infrastructural point of view, there have been massive improvements concerning the accessibility of Wi-Fi and mobile devices (König et al. 2020; Pachler and Turvey 2016). Learning spaces have been

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extended, and therefore, new methodological patterns were designed for the technology-enhanced language learning classroom. However, in terms of equity of access, we have not only to invest in more accessible infrastructure, but into didactic scenarios with digital tools that support learners with special needs. Multimodal AI-powered visualization tools like Mysimpleshow might be a first step.1 Digital tools can often act as catalysts for knowledge transmission especially in intercultural learning environments (Häikiö 2018). These culturally connotated domains of learning can often be found in the language learning classroom. Due to the dynamic and often non-linear nature of web-based technologies, specific methodologies often change quickly. AI-powered technologies are usually good at performing one special task (e.g. Siri language assistant, AI-based translation) and are constantly elaborating mainly from a technological viewpoint. However, we need to focus on the methodological exploitation of these tools, so that innovative technology does not overrule the original intention of the communicative language teaching classroom, which is the egalitarian and visual facilitation of learning processes that are determined to elaborate on (language and learner) diversity (Hockly and Dudeney 2018). This chapter seeks to explore the methodological potentials of narrow AI-based visualizer tools in the EFL-classroom. Since there is not enough empirical research that examines the significant effects of digital tools towards an improvement of language skills especially for students who do not perform well in the foreign language learning classroom, I share how AI-powered visualizer tools can support educational justice for language learners.

 he Power of Visuals in Foreign T Language Teaching Representation of Lexical Items Visual facilitation is a method of great interest in language teaching. Especially for the (re)presentation of lexical phenomena or items, language learners tend to negotiate the meaning of these more easily. Using

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visual thinking can help learners to explore challenges in the language learning classroom (Orav 2021; cit. Roam 2013). While visual facilitation seeks to work with holistic images (Comi and Eppler 2011; Orav 2021) the approach of image production in language teaching/learning seems to be different. Here, the aim is to create/generate images that are detailed to some extent and match the learners’ pre-determined imaginative mindsets to process a certain lexical item in a more sustainable way. Therefore, visual facilitation “is the organization, simplification, and support of learning and collaboration through text, images, and symbols” (Orav 2021).

Videos as Visual Facilitators Recent studies indicate that over 50% of 11–17-year-old learners in German-speaking countries learn with tutorials, DIY, or explainer videos (Krämer 2016). Among the many dubious videos with less educational content, YouTube still offers a wide range of explainer videos in the fields of language, arts, technology, medicine, health and lifestyle, and many more. In an extensive study of the explainer video provider Mysimpleshow (Krämer 2016), 71% of the respondents (Germans between 11–65 years) have already watched explainer videos. Besides that, 52% said that it was easier for them to remember content from videos rather than from text. This can be considered a first, generic hint that visualization per se offers interesting potentials. Especially in the segment of the under 30-year-­ olds, this study clearly reveals that over 60% prefer the explainer videos over the text. But what are these explainer videos? And what is their link to visual facilitation?

Explainer Videos as Multi-channel Visual Facilitators Explainer videos are short (mainly self-produced) films that define or explain certain topics or phenomena. The short films often explain how things work or how abstract concepts and correlations can be visualized (Brehmer and Becker 2017, p.  1). An explainer video is distinguished from instructional videos, since the latter is usually professionally

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developed and created by publishers (ibid.). In certain cases, explainer videos are preferred over classic, analogue-instructivist methods of mediation (ibid.):2 • quick help for self-help: if you want to know quickly how “something works” → good, visualized information preparation on a certain topic area. • in face-to-face teaching → to illustrate something that is difficult to explain in words and pictures, or to take the load off as a teacher → for a change. • Creation of a learning video to learn something and deal intensively with the content. • Online teaching → blended learning: before the actual face-to-face teaching, the learners are provided with good learning videos to then discuss questions and content intensively during the face-to-face time (inverted classroom, flipped classroom, reversed classroom). Considering the methodological or pedagogical characteristics of explainer videos, the primary goal of this medium is to increase knowledge among recipients or learners. Learning effects must be measured to create evidence for the potentials of this technology. The study mentioned above is based on an experimental design approach and aimed at measuring the knowledge acquisition of the test persons after exposure to explanatory videos. This involved administering a knowledge test (seven questions, single choice) about the U.S. presidential election to five randomized groups. Then, different explainer video platforms with similar instructive storyboards on U.S. elections were chosen to play them to the respondents. Then, the same knowledge test was administered again. Unsurprisingly, almost all respondents indicated a significant (Krämer 2016, p.  43) increase in knowledge (increased number of points). However, what was striking in the context of these dynamic explanatory videos is the fact that especially those respondents who indicated little knowledge in the pre-test performed the strongest increase in knowledge after the explanatory video exposure. In the qualitative questioning of the test persons with the highest increases, it turned out that above all the

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dynamics and colour of the animated explanatory videos in combination with a duration of approx. 2–4 minutes were very much appreciated. Besides the visual potentials of multimedia artefacts for knowledge transfer and development mentioned in Mayer’s Theory of Multimedia Learning (Mayer 2014), explaining complex issues per se is one of the most important components of an explainer video. The question here is how to measure or specify explainer quality. Lindl et al. (2020, 131) state in their paper: instructional explaining by a teacher is a complex, prepared, or situationally arising and interactive communication process that aims at a skill transfer and the initiation of an understanding process in addressees. In their FALKE project (Lindl et al. 2020), which addresses the explanatory quality of videos they agreed on four constructs that can be used as central quality indicators of explanatory quality: 1. A significant characteristic is the structure regarding the content structure and the internal organization of an explanatory process, for which a clear material delimitation, a logically stringent procedure, or a focus on core content appears to be conducive. 2. Addressee orientation is also considered an essential quality aspect, which is understood to mean the best possible adaptation of an explanation to the volitional, motivational, and cognitive characteristics of recipients. 3. Another criterion is linguistic comprehensibility. It includes components of the semantic and syntactic arrangement of a statement such as conceptual awareness, attentional markers, syntactic complexity, or idiolectic characteristics of individual speakers. 4. Speech and body expression include the areas of articulation, with features of prosody and voice quality, and facial expressions and gestures.

Deductive Versus Inductive Facilitation Teaching grammar has been in the centre of ELT for more than five decades (Thornbury 2011; Scrivener 2012; Larsen-Freeman 2014). Both Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and foreign language didactics agree that a recognition of grammatical regularities can facilitate the learning of

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a foreign language (cf. Scrivener 2012). There is still a lively discourse, especially in language learning and teaching at school, whether the deductive (starting from the rule) or the inductive (from the example to the rule) is the more efficient or outdated way to present grammar. Of course, this cannot be answered immediately, since it always needs the context of practicing or learning the grammatical form. Teaching or learning grammar thus correlates strongly with whether it is a matter of learning new structures, in which communicative context the grammar can be applied, or whether it is a matter of remedial or consolidating practice of already known structures. Especially with the repetition of known structures, deductive visual facilitation with AI-powered video tools can support the learning process. Didactically reflective teacher grammars are constantly striving to optimize instructional processes (Scrivener 2012; Larsen-­ Freeman 2014). The focus is mainly on didactic simplification but not over-simplification of certain complex grammatical facets and didactic principles similar to those of animated explainer videos focusing on the visual representation of lexical artefacts.

Artificial Intelligence AI “is now widely used for spam filtering, speech recognition, credit card fraud detection to face recognition” (Mitchell et al. 2018, 103). The most prominent usage scenarios of Artificial Intelligence are face recognition (security checks at airports), image and movement detection (alarm systems in office buildings or self-driving cars), or language processing (Alexa, Siri). In foreign language teaching, machine learning, deep learning, and AI-powered natural language processing are key issues (Schmidt and Strasser 2022). Machine learning refers to systems, applications, and software programs which generate knowledge based on data and experience (e.g. Netflix and Amazon recommendations) (Alpaydin 2014). Deep learning uses neuronal networks, computer programs, and algorithms that resemble the human brain. Deep learning is a certain elaboration of machine learning since it analyses a larger data set and puts the information into a context (e.g. chatbots in customer support).

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AI-supported natural language processing lies conceptually between machine learning and deep learning (Strasser 2021). NLP is primarily about interacting with intelligent systems by using a natural language (such as English) to perform a task.

Narrow AI-Powered Visualizer Tools AI-powered tools may be good at doing a certain thing, for example translating text, correcting text, or communicating with learners, but are not generalizable. Narrow AI-tools share the potential to visualize certain language learning performances, whether these are colour-coded corrections suggestions or visual incentives (badges) when the learners performed well in certain chatbot-driven app scenarios. Importantly within AI-powered language learning applications, the algorithm engages a database to convert the linguistically closest pattern into a semantically coherent image. Such performances are not new, but include: –– Text/image interface with search range field. –– Semantic-generic search compatibility (i.e. if certain terms are not found as an image, conceptually suggest the closest possible terms). –– Media versatility for artefact search (image, video, GIFs, animation). –– Extra feature: entire manuscripts/storyboards are created as an explainer video or interactive presentation (applications: Mysimpleshow, Powtoon cartoon software, Design.ai presentation tool).

Visual Facilitation with AI-Based Explainer Videos One of the most productive AI-visualizer tools is Mysimpleshow.3 Mysimpleshow is a browser-based application that auto-generates explainer videos based on a large linguistic and visual corpus. The learner or teacher types in a certain text type (pro/con essay, presentation of a historical fact, description of a city) and the system auto-generate an animated explainer video with narrated voice and corresponding images based on the input. Seen from a technological point of view, the big advantage here is that the learners/teachers do not have to spend too much time on settings and adjustments; they can fully focus on language

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production. The tool’s most evident potential in terms of visualization and facilitation is the fact that the algorithm automatically generates contextualized images and a coherent storyboard so that the learner not only actively produces a text but also receives visual encodings of lexical artefacts. In terms of a Theory-of-Multimedia Learning approach, this multi-­ channel production of language objects helps learners to recap a specific topic-based, lexical, or grammatical phenomenon from the language classroom curriculum. Furthermore, the learners can practice pronunciation by listening to native-like voice overs generated by the algorithm. There is an integrated spell check when typing in the manuscript and the provided text templates (how to write an essay, how to write an argument, etc.) Visual explainer videos have numerous potentials especially when they follow the rules of good explaining. However, it has to be stated that visualizations and animations per se do not mean better explaining or learning. An AI-powered explainer video with an overload of animated images can be counterproductive when the information to be processed exceeds the processing capacity of the information processing system, for example, when related pictorial and verbal information is not coordinated in time and space (Roche and Scheller 2004). Furthermore, experts claim that in the design of grammatical formand structure-based content, developers have to refrain from visual redundancies, meaningless accompanying visualizations, and stimulus overload from visual action. When it comes to the teaching of grammar with AI-powered visualizers, it is of great importance that the learners know about a certain topic in advance (cf. ibid.). Here, AI-powered explainer videos act as facilitation tools. Even if the presented grammar videos (difference between past simple and present perfect simple) appear to be quite instructivist and deductive, several aspects of a visual facilitation can be found in the methodological design of the videos. The videos were designed in a way that supposed to be dry grammatical remedial drills are presented in a graphically appealing yet methodologically coherent way so that they also support knowledge broking and sharing (Comi and Eppler 2011). The first chapter of the project’s4 explainer video is called “awareness.” Here, contextualized sentences from everyday life are presented with visual facilitation anchors (text-image-association) including displayed

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signal words that are relevant for the correct use of a certain tense. For example: presentation of a visually interdependent anchor => the signal word last night appears as text AND image (moon, stars, and calendar entry of yesterday). The second chapter “explaining” focuses on a visual representation and presentation of a certain grammar structure displaying visual representations of temporal sequences. For example: presentation of a visually interdependent anchor => the form of the verb form appears as text AND image (contextualized sentence: Anne watched Netflix yesterday). Chapter 3 of this visual artefact focuses on example sentences explaining the tense providing situations that refer to the young learner’s zeitgeist (visual representations of tech-topics, like Netflix, example sentence: last month TikTok became the world’s most popular video platform). Chapter 4 provides a brief recap of the most important rules and phenomena concerning a specific tense focusing on images (not too much text) that visualize cause, temporal interdependence, and effects of a tense. For example, bullet point recap with text and visually corresponding images.

Effects of AI-Powered Visual Facilitation Tools There has been little empirical data that examines the positive effects of AI-powered tools on foreign language learning. To empirically demonstrate how AI-powered visual facilitation tools can improve the grammar skills (past simple/present perfect) of young language learners, I would like to shed light on a forthcoming study I conducted and which will be published in early 2023.5 I explored to what extent learners with a lower language level (based on C-test surveys) performed better on post-tests after the exposure to the AI visual explainer videos than those learners with a similarly low language level who received the analogue teacher input. The AI group (two focus groups) was presented with three AI-supported explainer videos produced with Mysimpleshow at similarly timed intervals, while the control group (two groups, A group) received three scripted teacher inputs identical to the explainer video. Learners with a lower language level (based on C-test surveys) achieved a

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significantly better post-test score after the exposure to the AI explainer video than those learners with a similarly low language level who received the analogue teacher input.6 The aim of this study was to explore the possible potentials of AI-powered visualization tools especially for learners with lower language skills. Due to the multi-sensory text-visual representation of complex grammar structures (in comparison to instructivist teacher-­centred mainstream grammar drills), AI-powered visualizer tools have the potential to be a useful, yet impartial contribution to educational justice in terms of higher test scores for those learners with poorer linguistic prerequisites.7

Conclusion Taking these limitations into consideration, some interesting insights and potentials concerning the aspect of AI-powered visual facilitation within the context of creating educational justice for weaker language learners show up. Due to the fact that the videos can be watched also outside the classroom (on the bus, tram, couch, etc.) on the learner’s smartphone, tablet, desktop PC, the aspect of ubiquity is evident which creates space for continuous lessons in which the teacher can explain specific linguistic phenomena in a more detailed, individualized, and communicative way after the learners had watched the AI video before. The empirical tendency that visual facilitation tools support especially weaker language learners with specific grammatical domains should be considered an interesting starting point to elaborate the egalitarian characteristics of AI-powered visualizer tools. Using visual methods is facilitated by the ability to create diagrams, concept and idea maps, moving images, and contextualized images (cf. Orav 2021): The future potential of visual facilitation is mainly seen in a conscious, more systematic, and methodical approach. Visual facilitation is a possible method of developing goal-setting skills and should be a recognized method in our educational landscape, systematically learned, taught, and based on supportive materials. (Orav 2021)

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It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. When it comes to learning a foreign language, this statement remains true. Visual aids have been shown to promote better understanding and retention of information. Now, with the assistance of AI-powered visualization tools, equal opportunities can be given to all learners, regardless of their level. These tools provide support to those who might find monotonous grammar drills difficult by making the learning process multimodal.

Notes 1. For a more detailed discussion on visual inclusion with digital tools, see Häikiö (2018). 2. Translated from German. 3. https://videomaker.simpleshow.com/, last access 26.09.2022 4. A detailed project description with an extensive empirical discussion will  be published in 2023  in a special issue of the Zeitschrift für Fremdsprachenforschung. 5. Only fragments will be presented here. For a more detailed discussion of the findings, see Strasser (2023 forthcoming). 6. Based on a repeated Analysis of Variance methodology. 7. For more potentials and limitations of this study, see Strasser (2023 forthcoming).

References Alpaydin, E. 2014. Introduction to machine learning. In Adaptive computation and machine learning, 3rd ed. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Bauer, R., and T. Strasser. 2019. Digital Ist (Nicht) Egal: Über Den Sinn Einer Umfassenden Bildung Über, Mit, Durch Und in Medien. In Ökonomisierung Und Digitalisierung: “Sargnägel” Der Bildungsreform!? ed. G.  Scheidl and H. Schopf, 208–231. Wien: Löcker. Belshaw, D.A.J. 2011. What is ‘digital literacy’? 274–277. Brehmer, J., and Becker, S. 2017. Erklärvideos … Als Ein Andere Und/Oder Unterstützende Form Der Lehre. Website. Erklärvideos (blog). https://www. uni-­goettingen.de/de/document/download/5d0fa49e220547bded74a21f2 1d44fc0.pdf/03_Erklärvideos.pdf.

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Comi, A., and Eppler, M. 2011. Assessing the impact of visual facilitation on inter-organizational collaboration: An experimental study. https://lib.jucs. org/article/29997/. Cunningham, U., S. Rashid, and T. Le. 2019. The effect of learner training on the use of digital tools to support English writing skills. Asian EFL Journal 21 (2.1): 27–49. Garone, A., B. Bruggeman, B. Philipsen, B. Pynoo, J. Tondeur, and K. Struyven. 2022. Evaluating professional development for blended learning in higher education: A synthesis of qualitative evidence. Education and Information Technologies 27 (6): 7599–7628. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-­022-­10928-­6. Grünberger, N., K. Himpsl-Gutermann, P. Szucsich, G. Brandhofer, E. Huditz, and M. Steiner. 2017. Schule neu denken und medial gestalten. E-Learning. Glückstadt: vwh, Verlag Werner Hülsbusch. Häikiö, T.K. 2018. Cultural participation for, with and by children–enhancing children’s agency through art pedagogy, visual knowledge-building and learning. Nordic Journal of Art and Research 7 (1): 19. https://doi.org/10.7577/ information.v7i1.2630. Hautopp, H., and M. Buhl. 2020. Teaching visual facilitation and sketching for digital learning design in higher education. Proceedings of the 19th Conference on E-Learning (19): 235–242. Hockly, N., and G. Dudeney. 2018. Current and future digital trends in ELT. RELC Journal 49 (2): 164–178. https://doi.org/10.1177/0033688218777318. König, J., D.J. Jäger-Biela, and N. Glutsch. 2020. Adapting to online teaching during COVID-19 school closure: Teacher education and teacher competence effects among early career teachers in Germany. European Journal of Teacher Education 43 (4): 608–622. Krämer, A. 2016. International study on the use of explainer videos and effects of different video formats. Simpleshow exeo strategic consulting AG. https:// simpleshow.com/wp-­content/uploads/International-­study-­on-­the-­use-­of-­ explainer-­videos-­and-­effects-­of-­different-­video-­formats-­2016.pdf. Larsen-Freeman, D. 2014. Teaching grammar. In Teaching English as a second or foreign language, ed. M. Celce-Murcia, 4th ed., 256–270. Boston: National Geographic Learning. Lindl, A., Gaier, L., Weich, M., Gastl-Pischetsrieder, M., Elmer, M., Asen-Molz, K., Anna-Maria, R., et  al. 2020. Eine ‘gute’ Erklärung Für Alle?! Gruppenspezifische Unterschiede in Der Beurteilung von Erklärqualität-­ Erste Ergebnisse Aus Dem Interdisziplinären Forschungsprojekt FALKE. Mayer, R.E. 2014. Cognitive theory of multimedia learning. In The Cambridge handbook of multimedia learning, ed. R.E. Mayer, 2nd ed., 43–71. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139547369.005.

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Mitchell, T., B.  Kisiel, J.  Krishnamurthy, N.  Lao, K.  Mazaitis, T.  Mohamed, N.  Nakashole, et  al. 2018. Never-ending learning. Communications of the ACM 61 (5): 103–115. https://doi.org/10.1145/3191513. Orav, K. 2021. My research about visual facilitation in education. https:// katiorav.medium.com/my-­research-­about-­visual-­facilitation-­in-­education8ad49a72965a. Pachler, N., and K. Turvey. 2016. Problem Spaces: A Framework and Questions for Critical Engagement with Learning Technologies in Formal Educational Contexts. In The Wiley Handbook of Learning Technology ed. N. J. Rushby and D. W. Surry. Wiley-Blackwell. Roam, D. 2013. The back of the napkin: Solving problems and selling ideas with pictures, expanded edition paperback. New York: Penguin. Roche, J., and J.  Scheller. 2004. Zur Effizienz von Grammatikanimationen Beim Spracherwerb. Ein Empirischer Beitrag Zu Einer Kognitivben Theorie Des Multimeddialen Fremdsprachenerwerbs. ZIF 9 (1): 1–15. Schier, A. 2022. Digitalität. Digitalität Statt Digitalisierung (blog). http:// digitalität-­und-­identität.de/?page_id=447. Schmidt, T., and T.  Strasser. 2022. Artificial intelligence in foreign language learning and teaching. A CALL for Intelligent practice. Anglistik 33 (1): 165–184. https://doi.org/10.33675/ANGL/2022/1/14. Scrivener, J. 2012. Teaching English grammar: What to teach and how to teach it. Vol. 1. Ismaning: Hueber verlag. publ., [Repr.]. Macmillan Books for Teachers. Strasser, T. 2021. AI in the EFL-classroom. Clarifications, potentials and limitations. In Digital teaching and learning: Perspectives for English language education, ed. C. Lütge and T. Merse, 85–102. Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto. ———. 2023. Schwache KIs, starke Performanz? Form und Wirkung von KI-gestützten Erklärvideos im Englischgrammatikunterricht der Unterstufe. In Zeitschrift für Fremdsprachenforschung., Nr. ZFF Themenheft, ed. Maria Eisenmann and Jeannine. NN: Digitalisierung. Thornbury, S. 2011. How to teach grammar. 15th ed. Harlow: Longman, Pearson Education. Toh, Y., H.-J. So, P. Seow, W. Chen, and C.-K. Looi. 2013. Seamless learning in the mobile age: A theoretical and methodological discussion on using cooperative inquiry to study digital kids on-the-move. Learning, Media and Technology 38 (3): 301–318. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.108 0/17439884.2012.666250?scroll=top&needAccess=true.

6 (In)Visible Youth: Considerations for Visual Research in Rural New Brunswick’s Queer Spaces Melissa Keehn

Introduction How does rurality shift queer research facilitation practices? Within the ongoing landscape of systemic 2SLGBTQIA+ exclusions in Canadian schools (Peter et  al. 2021), recent visual research with queer and trans youth reveals its efficacy as a methodology in pushing back against dominant cis-heteronormative narratives (Burkholder et al. 2022). At the centre of this research facilitation lies the actual research space, which can both empower and constrain youth participants (Barker and Weller 2003). Given that the social structures of small towns in particular make queer visibility difficult (Schweighofer 2016) and that schools and family homes often act as sites of tension for queer youth (Valentine et al. 2001), thinking about the actual spaces of visual research facilitation in rural communities calls for close attention.

M. Keehn (*) University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Burkholder et al. (eds.), Facilitating Visual Socialities, Social Visualities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25259-4_6

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Rural youth negotiate queer embodiments under different logistical realities than their urban counterparts (Gray 2009). I resonate with this statement—from my own positioning as a cis-gender, lesbian woman who teaches at a rural school, and from my 2SLGBTQIA+ students, whom I have observed expressing their queer sensibilities in surprising ways, outside urban queer spaces. Thus, this conceptual chapter puts forward considerations for conducting visual research with queer, trans, and non-binary youth in rural areas of the Atlantic Canadian province of New Brunswick (NB). To do so, I briefly review existing scholarship on 2SLGBTQIA+ rurality. Then, drawing from limited visual research projects situated in queer localities, I set out to imagine how such scholarship might unfold in a rural space and how it could also work to resist and (re) shape dominant narratives of queer rurality in the province. In the chapter, I ask, what considerations are needed when visual researchers move to support and build solidarity with queer, trans, and non-binary youth in rural New Brunswick? How does the rural landscape shift ethics in visual research facilitation within queer youth communities? Given that youth-­ centred research continues to be embedded within and influenced by researcher positionality (Barker and Weller 2003), I acknowledge my positionality here as an “out” lesbian woman and urban outsider in the rural community where I work, and how these separate identities create feelings of tension and liberation as I negotiate through this space of inquiry.

Rural New Brunswick: A Queer Space? The framing of rural New Brunswick as a queer space is a relatively unconventional concept. When the Village of Chipman made national headlines in 2018 by flying a straight flag outside their town hall (Fraser 2018), on the surface it revealed that heteronormativity was alive and well in the region. While the event itself was short-lived, it may have confirmed, for many, the stereotypical image of the homophobic rural space. Indeed, rural queer communities still struggle to create spaces within which 2SLGBTQIA+ people thrive and feel safe (Latchmore and Marple 2005), including in NB (see: Burkholder and Thorpe 2019).

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With 49% of New Brunswick’s population residing in small towns (Statistics Canada 2022), rurality here is marked by high rates of youth exodus and relatively low immigration levels (New Brunswick Population Report 2021)—with the rural/urban divide in the province, as Batt and Green (2022) note, making it challenging to foster “educational inroads in rural communities” (153). Within this context, given that literatures surrounding queer rurality in the province are relatively limited, Chipman’s straight flag leaves space to think through whether the event was indicative of a common rural queer struggle across the region. However, we can pull from the text Len & Cub (see: Batt and Green 2022)—a photobiography which documents the relationship between two queer, rural New Brunswickers named Leonard Keith and Joseph Coates during the early twentieth century—to establish the existence of queer communities moving through rural spaces in complex and dynamic ways. In acknowledging this, I am not suggesting an absence of oppression in rural NB—settler colonialism has long established a system of violence towards gender and sexual minorities in this territory (Wesley-­ Esquimaux 2009). Rather, I am interested in perceptions which suggest that 2SLGBTQIA+ lives are worse here, and how this may inform queer work done in these spaces. Despite an education system operating within urban and rural localities, there is an absence of literature regarding the specific experiences of the province’s rural 2SLGBTQIA+ youth. Local research points more broadly to a heteronormative public schooling system (Burkholder et al. 2021), with schools themselves becoming dichotomic spaces of queer tension and liberation: Emerging 2SLGBTQIA+ school policies (see: EECD 2020) work alongside systemic queer erasures within curricula (Burkholder 2021); a general growth of Gender Sexuality Alliances (GSA) has provided places for queer, trans, and non-binary folks to gather (Peter et al. 2021)—and in NB, this accounts for about 68.5% of high schools (EECD 2014–2016)—but despite their need (Burkholder and Rogers 2020), GSAs cannot be invested with the power to solve exclusion in totalizing ways (Gilbert 2014); moreover, provincial policy changes to help 2SLGBTQIA+ students thrive in school sports (NBIAA 2019) have not prevented physical education classes and change rooms from remaining particularly unsafe (Peter et al. 2021). However, given that schools

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can act as sites where compulsory heterosexuality and homophobia can be reproduced but also challenged (Pascoe 2012), I acknowledge that rural queer, trans, and non-binary youth have the capacity to push back against these tensions, and this recognition informs what follows.

Theoretical Frameworks I am situating this study within queer metronormative critique (Halberstam 2005). Highlighting a historical preoccupation with the urban queer, the critique draws attention to the devaluation of the rural space in queer research and challenges the idea that large city centres provide 2SLGBTQIA+ individuals with opportunities that rural spaces cannot (Podmore and Bain 2020). This study is also informed by critical queer theory. As Watson (2005) reminds us, early forms of queer theory are grounded in Foucault’s (1978) The History of Sexuality, which recognizes the possibilities for discursive reversibility in any relationship where power operates. Under this logic, I am reminded that queer youth living in rural spaces are not passive dupes, they also possess agency. I also draw from Muñoz (2009), who has identified the term “queer world-making” as a process in which 2SLGBTQIA+ people claim their identities in places where they are traditionally silenced.

Queer Ruralities Over the past several decades, queer scholarship around social geography has reinforced the idea that identity and community are largely framed by and reflected in space (Gray 2009). Yet, this scholarship has historically prioritized large urban centres (Podmore and Bain 2020), with rurality being marked by notions of sexual conservatism (Marr 2020) and enduring gender stereotypes (Little 2002). Conversely, the urban space is often positioned as being more tolerant (Hanhardt 2013) and more accessible (Lindhorst 1997) for the 2SLGBTQIA+ community—implying a dichotomic relationship which highlights the paucity of the rural

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space (McGlynn 2018). Moreover, when it comes to rural 2SLGBTQIA+ youth, literature has also pointed to themes of systemic exclusion and victimization (Palmer et  al. 2012): When compared with urban 2SLGBTQIA+ youth, studies have shown rural queer, trans, and non-­ binary youth facing higher rates of identity-based violence (Palmer et al. 2012) and increased anti-2SLGBTQIA+ discourse tied to religious conservatism (Poole and Gause 2011). Alternatively, there is a body of knowledge situating the rural space outside of one which is aggressive to 2SLGBTQIA+ difference (McGlynn 2018)—revealing how the tightknit structures of rural communities can also provide resources and comfort for queer-identity work (Gray 2009). For instance, Baker’s (2016) work on queer life in rural Nova Scotia reveals many rural 2SLGBTQIA+ folks finding and promoting acceptance within their communities. This literature extends into rural 2SLGBTQ+ youth spaces as well (see: Gray 2009; Schey 2021).

Visual Socialities Alongside Queer Youth Visual research methodologies offer an alternative to an area of knowledge—that is, queer youth moving through rural NB—which is largely dominated by wide-scale quantitative data sets (see: EECD 2020–2021). As an underrepresented population, visual research could provide a much-needed outlet for these rural youth to describe their social lives and histories (Pink 2007) beyond statistics and surveys. The frameworks embedded in this methodology work to recognize participants as experts in their own lives (Glaw et  al. 2017) and may uncover ways in which 2SLGBTQIA+ youth are shaped by shifting experiences related to rural life. Moreover, local visual research with queer, trans, and non-binary youth has revealed its efficacy in providing powerful knowledge to researchers, students, and educators (see: Burkholder et al. 2021), but has tended not to exclusively differentiate between urban and rural spaces (exceptions include: Burkholder and Thorpe 2019).

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Spaces for Doing Research Below, I build off knowledge produced by Barker and Weller (2003), who draw attention to three distinct, yet overlapping, spaces in youth-­ driven research: The spaces where research data is collected, the representation of these spaces during the research process, and their cumulating dissemination. Barker and Weller (2003) note the “need to consider the spatiality of [these] research relations” (p. 211) which can both empower and limit youth participants.

Spaces of Research: Rural Possibilities With scholarship involving youth, Barker and Weller (2003) articulate the significance of the research space, which both limits and creates possibilities for youth-centred research. Within this logic, the rural school as a research space is complex: It can act as the sole source of support for 2SLGBTQIA+ youth (Rand and Paceley 2022) or as a barrier rife with educational gatekeepers (see: Burkholder and Rogers 2020). Likewise, limited public transportation (Marple 2005), religious influence (Page 2017), and the (in)visibility of the rural queer space itself (Marple 2005) can also influence the research process. As Marple (2005) articulates in her work on queer ruralities in Nova Scotia, a queer space is often understood as one which embodies a visibility that identifies a space as queer— like a 2SLGBTQIA+ community centre or a Pride parade. Under this logic, rural queer spaces must find alternate ways to exist—lacking the population needed to create this visibility (Marple 2005)—which can render both queer youth and their queered spaces largely invisible (and inaccessible). Again, I draw here from experience working at a rural school, having observed my 2SLGBTQIA+ students maintaining and transforming unconventional queered spaces in exclusionary landscapes (Cockain 2022; De Certeau 1984)—a cafeteria table or a locker—within the systems rendering them invisible (and although lacking the pomp of an intentionally visible queer space, they are queered spaces, nonetheless).

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I now turn to a study which presents a potential backdrop for rural visual research. In a recent project titled Pride/Swell, Burkholder et  al. (2022) use a digital framework to engage 50 2SLGBTQIA+ youth across Atlantic Canada in the co-production and co-archiving of do-it-yourself masks, zines, and collages. The researchers originally planned an in-­ person project (prior to the COVID-19 pandemic) but adapted it into a digital platform—providing a research space which ultimately negated some of the challenges created by, as Barker and Weller (2003) note, educational gatekeepers. Connections in the project were maintained through social media, drawing youth into a much larger community beyond their own physical localities. Further, the digital format created room for researchers to consider its potential in reaching more isolated communities in the region, meaning that the broad scope of Pride/Swell creates room for expansive engagement from rural queer youth. Although literature on visual research facilitation with queer youth in digital spaces is limited (exceptions include: Burkholder et al. 2022), we can draw from a cluster of studies to shed light on its ability to offer a valuable research space. For instance, Lucero’s (2017) study reveals that queer youth are more comfortable using social media as a tool to explore their identities. Fox and Ralston’s (2016) work finds that youth, particularly those from rural communities, use social media as a safe way to access offline supports. Indeed, digital technology has blurred the lines between urban and rural spaces (Baker 2016), allowing 2SLGBTQIA+ youth to build community and access resources beyond their rural hometowns. There are challenges to the digital format: The Pride/Swell researchers acknowledge the complexity of using a mail-based system to deliver participant materials, which required them to negotiate the larger complexities of the home, including those which were not affirming spaces. Indeed, the family structure is central to rural life (Baker 2016) and can act as a significant site of tension for 2SLGBTQIA+ youth (Valentine et  al. 2001). Further, a lack of broadband access may also act as a barrier, given that 36% of rural New Brunswick households do not have access to high-­ speed internet (Auditor General of New Brunswick 2021). Finally, I remain concerned that a completely virtual format may act to remove community-specific realities—including the interconnected fabric of

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rural community, work, family, and faith (Cramer 2016)—influential to rural queer youth identity formation. However, we can draw upon work by Bliss, a Pride/Swell participant who designed a diorama featuring an environmentally friendly, rural queer café and nightclub called The Queer Room. Bliss created this space in response to a 2SLGBTQIA+ hangout they had previously co-founded in their own small town, acknowledging the difficulty of “sustain[ing] places like that in a rural community” (see: Bliss n.d., 0:35). The Queer Room Bliss imagines in this diorama draws in community-specific subtleties—like offering locally sourced drinks and food—which speaks to rural youth’s ability to integrate community-­ specifics into online queer spaces. While the online version of the Pride/Swell project was designed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, it may have also created a feasible framework for the rural research space, albeit with its own set of ethical challenges to consider: To what extent do researchers draw in  local, community-­specific intricacies into an online space? What happens when the physical complexities and nuances of a rural community are removed completely from the research space? Does an online format foster further devaluation of the rural space?

Researched Spaces: Rural Beyond Urban How a space is represented in research requires close attention. In this context, these spaces are socially constructed (Barker and Weller 2003) and carry meaning, histories, and culture embedded within the places where researchers and participants gather (Low and Lawrence-Zúñiga 2003). Here, Barker and Weller (2003) highlight the ethical issues created when youth are asked to create meaning of their lived experiences within these spaces without researchers first carrying out ethnographies of the localities themselves. It is worth noting here that most research on sexual and gender minorities has an urban bias (Detamore 2016), with urban 2SLGBTQIA+ communities at times receiving the lion’s share of scholarly attention—effectively implying a positioning of urban sexual enlightenment (Gray et al. 2016). What may be needed then is a reconsidering of rurality beyond “metro-centred conceptions of queerness”

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(Crawford 2017, 192), with project participants determining how their own spaces are represented (de Montigny and Podmore 2014). From this position, we can pull from a local visual research project situated in rural NB to conceptualize how the methodology itself may make room for rural youth to (re)define their own narratives. In a project conducted by Burkholder and Thorpe (2019), researchers co-produced a cellphilm—titled Nackawic Needs a GSA Now!!—with youth participants from a rural NB middle school in response to the absence of a GSA at one participant’s school. The researchers guided participants through representing oppressive landscapes in the cellphilm, revealing that school hallways, gendered classroom spaces, and homes acted as sites of tension—despite narratives coming from the school’s administration suggesting a different reality (Burkholder and Rogers 2020). The cellphilm itself—which is now publicly shared on YouTube (see: Queer 2018, 2:14)—features hand-drawn stick figures moving through oppressive and homophobic scenes, until they encounter an imagined inclusive classroom space. The researchers engaged youth participants in group discussions throughout the duration of the project, including a post-production discussion, where both researchers and participants analysed the cellphilm to further interrogate the landscape of inclusion in school spaces. The cellphilm finishes with the camera panning over a stencil titled Nackawic Needs a GSA Now!!—pointing to an overall lack of 2SLGBTQIA+ support in the school, but also revealing youth pushing back against ongoing localized erasures. Further, given the principal’s perception which erroneously minimalized the population of queer, trans, and non-binary students in the school and dismissed the need for a GSA, the study illuminates how rural youth can challenge adults to rethink how queerness might transpire in a rural town. The facilitation practices of the Nackawic Needs A GSA Now!! project make visible the renegotiating of space that can happen in queered visual research—and in the context of this study, offer a lens to consider how the queer sensibilities of youth can be written into rural scenes which may not be, by definition, queered spaces. I suggest here a need for intentional reflection from visual researchers to challenge popular perceptions of rurality—including those framing it as monolithically hostile next to the reprise of urbanity—which places limits on what might be possible in

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these spaces and situates, as Marple (2005) articulates, urbanity as the sole solution to rural queer challenges. In fact, local visual research in the region (see: Burkholder 2021) contradicts these perceptions, and reveals that oppression operates in these urban spaces. Furthermore, Gray’s (2009) research reveals that rural queer youth do craft viable queer spaces for themselves using the places available to them, including public libraries, churches, and local stores—and as illustrated by the Nackawic Needs A GSA Now!! project, rural youth can queer their school communities as well. Within this lens, thinking through the structure of rurality itself— the tightknit communities and the deep connections to place (Cramer 2016)—can invite opportunities for 2SLGBTQIA+ youth and researchers to envision how community-specific nuances can shape how scholarship may transpire a small town. Barker and Weller (2003) highlight the importance of researchers carrying out their own ethnographies of the spaces they are investigating, particularly when moving from an urban locality to a rural one. Marple (2005) echoes this thought, drawing attention to the interconnectedness of the rural space, and suggesting that ethnographic rural projects involve individuals from the local community. The risk, she articulates further, is of the potential damage created when urban organizations conduct queer work in rural spaces and then leave participants to “deal with the fallout” (Marple 2005, 73). The ethical implications here give me pause and I am left wondering about circumstances beyond the scope of this inquiry: In communities without designated queer spaces, where do 2SLGBTQIA+ participants turn to for support in the wake of a visual project? Or do visual researchers have an ethical responsibility to support their participants in more sustained ways?

 paces of Dissemination: Rural as a Reframed S Queer Space The spaces in which data is interpreted and disseminated rarely involve the voices of youth (Barker and Weller 2003), and under this logic, I draw attention here to how official knowledges on rural 2SLGBTQIA+ youth in the province reinforce simplistic narratives of the rural space.

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The victim trope persists as a powerful framework for the queer youth experience (Marshall 2010), with research on 2SLGBTQIA+ youth often framed by discourses of risk (Leung and Flanagan 2019) and victimization (Driver 2008). In the context of New Brunswick, this trope is reinforced within the large-scale administrative data sets used by policymakers and schools to gather information, including the Report on Student Outcomes and School Climate (see: EECD 2020–2021). The report uses data drawn from an expansive student survey, in which middle and high school students select from a list of pre-determined reasons for exclusion, including sexual orientation and gender identity. Results of the survey give schools a macro-level understanding of risks faced by 2SLGBTQIA+ youth (Leung and Flanagan 2019), and while beneficial in that sense, does little to move understandings beyond a categorization of victimization. Can the textured dissemination practices of visual research present better possibilities for a reframed queer rural space? Here, I draw from scholarship by Boatwright (2019), which brings attention to the role of queer black youth as culture producers and knowledge disseminators in the creation of a zine titled Flux Zine. Alongside two queer black youth from San Francisco, the trio worked on the zine’s design, artwork, and conceptual pieces for one year—distributing 100 booklets and debuting the final project publicly. Emphasizing queer black youth agency through anecdotal stories, critical texts, and images, Boatwright (2019) contends that Flux Zine serves to disrupt a cultural fixation on queer black youth victimization. In one example, the zine features a photo documentary of black queer individuals in a variety of “warm embraces and commanding poses” (392)—asking of readers to consider ranges of queerness, outside of those held up by dominant sociocultural contexts. Indeed, the zine itself works to interrupt the formal structures mediating queer knowledge dissemination (Boatwright 2019)—which often situates queer youth identities within whitewashed and cisgendered frameworks—and presents other possibilities for a reframed queer black youth space. When disseminated data becomes limited to simplistic understandings of exclusion and victimization, emerging practices may continue to reinforce the expectation that rural 2SLGBTQIA+ youth should adapt to systemic inequalities, rather than resist them. However, Driver (2008)

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argues, queer, trans, and non-binary youth in fact do the opposite by challenging these categorizations while constructing new sites of resistance—as evident in the creation of Flux Zine. Under this logic, the dissemination practices embedded within visual research socialities may offer spaces to express these acts of resistance, where rurality could be associated with “condensed queer strength” rather than “empty spreads of space” (Crawford 2017, 916) and discourses of victimization. In acknowledging this, I suggest that visual researchers consider Marple’s (2005) work, in which she proposes a reframing of rural queer reality—where the rural queer becomes interwoven into the much broader rural community. This logic is echoed by Baker (2011), whose case studies on rural queer Nova Scotians draw attention to the embedded sense of familiarity in a rural space, where queer visibility depends on a balance of “queerness and localness” (50). Such a suggestion asks researchers to consider various ranges of queerness and I am left wondering: How might visual researchers negotiate through the disseminated versions of rural queerness (where queer identities may be woven into a much broader network of community-­specific nuances) which do not fit within the framework of urban queer existence (where queerness may take on a more centralized form of identity formation)? What possibilities might emerge when rural queer youth are articulated beyond sanitized notions of victimization?

 oncluding Thoughts: Ethics in a Queer C and Rural Space Rural NB as a queer space may be a novel proposition. But within these small towns, queer youth are already living out their lives, whether scholarship is present to frame their lived realities or not. When national headlines broke in 2018 around Chipman’s straight flag, many must have dismissed the event as just another stereotypical rural trope in small town New Brunswick. Yet, interwoven within this display of discrimination were rural acts of resistance and activism (see: Fraser 2018), establishing the vibrant presence of queer communities moving through the province’s rural spaces in transformative and dynamic ways. There are

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challenges for researchers here, and those revealed in this study—including discourses of victimization, articulations of rural queerness, and the ease at which the dichotomic spaces of rural and urban move alongside one another—may be somewhat negated by the existing methodological frameworks of visual research itself, but nonetheless requires consideration.

References Auditor General of New Brunswick. 2021. Funding for rural internet–regional development. Corporation and opportunities New Brunswick report of the Auditor General. Service New Brunswick. https://www2.snb.ca/content/ dam/agnb-­vgnb/pdf/Reports-­Rapports/2021v1/VIC2OPE.pdf. Baker, K. 2011. Conceptualizing rural queerness and its challenges for the politics of visibility. Platforum 12: 38–56. ———. 2016. Out back home: An exploration of LGBTQ identities and community in rural Nova Scotia. In Queering the countryside: New frontiers in rural queer studies, ed. M.L.  Gray, C.R.  Johnson, and B.J.  Gilley, 25–47. NYU Press. Barker, J., and S. Weller. 2003. ‘Never work with children?’: The geography of methodological issues in research with children. Qualitative Research 3 (2): 207–227. Batt, M.J., and D. Green. 2022. Len & Cub: A queer history. New Brunswick: Goose Lane Editions. Bliss. n.d. The queer room (day), 35. Pride/Swell. https://www.prideswell.org/ dioramas?pgid=khuxcjxb1-­e2b8c3a9-­b221-­4c92-­8c8a-­dbfe90f31ff8. Boatwright, T. 2019. Flux zine: Black queer storytelling. Equity & Excellence in Education 52 (4): 383–395. Burkholder, C. 2021. Cellphilming and building solidarity with queer youth to speak back to historical erasures in New Brunswick social studies classrooms. The Councilor: A Journal of the Social Studies 0 (1): 113–132. https://thekeep. eiu.edu/the_councilor/vol0/iss1/10. Burkholder, C., and M. Rogers. 2020. Screening participatory videos and cellphilms (cellphone + film production) in live-audience and online spaces: Tensions, contradictions, and opportunities. Visual Methodologies. 8 (1): 1–15.

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Burkholder, C., and A.  Thorpe. 2019. Cellphilm production as posthuman research method to explore injustice with queer youth in New Brunswick, Canada. Reconceptualizing Educational Research Methodology. 10 (2–3): 292–309. https://doi.org/10.7577/rerm.368. Burkholder, C., K. Hamill, and A. Thorpe. 2021. Zine production with queer youth and pre-service teachers in New Brunswick, Canada: Exploring connections, divergences, and visual practices. Canadian Journal of Education 44 (1): 89–115. Burkholder, C., K. MacEntee, A. Mandrona, and A. Thorpe. 2022. Coproducing digital archives with 2SLGBTQ atlantic Canadian youth amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. Qualitative Research Journal 22 (1): 24–41. https://doi. org/10.1108/QRJ-­01-­2021-­0003. Cockain, A. 2022. Making spaces in exclusionary places: The spatial tactics/ stories of disabled people and their families in Hong Kong. Disability & Society: 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2022.2061331. Cramer, K. 2016. The politics of resentment: Rural consciousness in Wisconsin and the rise of Scott Walker. University of Chicago Press. Crawford, L. 2017. A Good Ol’ country time: Does queer rural temporality exist? Sexualities 20 (8): 904–920. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460716674930. De Certeau, M. 1984. The practice of everyday life (trans: Rendall, S.). Berkeley: University of California Press. de Montigny, J., and J.  Podmore. 2014. Space for queer and trans youth? Reflections on community-based research in Montreal. Global Studies of Childhood 4 (4): 298–309. https://doi.org/10.2304/gsch.2014.4.4.198. Detamore, M. 2016. Queer(y)ing the ethics of research methods: Toward a politics of intimacy in researcher/researched relations. In Queer methods and methodologies: Intersecting queer theories and social science research, ed. K. Browne and C.J. Nash, 167–182. London: Routledge. Driver, S. 2008. Queer youth culture. State University of New York Press. EECD. 2014–2016. Development promoting diversity and respect in New Brunswick Schools. ———. 2020. Policy 713: Sexual orientation and gender identity. https:// www2.gnb.ca/content/dam/gnb/Departments/ed/pdf/K12/policies-­ politiques/e/713.pdf. ———. 2020–2021. Reports on achievement. https://www2.gnb.ca/content/ gnb/en/departments/education/k12/content/anglophone_sector/reports_ on_achievement.html.

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Foucault, M. 1978. The history of sexuality (trans: Hurley, R.). New  York: Vintage Books. Fox, J., and R.  Ralston. 2016. Queer identity online: Informal learning and teaching experiences of LGBTQ individuals on social media. Computers in Human Behavior 65: 635–642. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.06.009. Fraser, E. 2018. New Brunswick village removes ‘straight pride’ flag amid backlash. CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-­brunswick/ straight-­pride-­flag-­1.4872572. Gilbert, J. 2014. Sexuality in school: The limits of education. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Glaw, X., K. Inder, A. Kable, and M. Hazelton. 2017. Visual methodologies in qualitative research: Autophotography and photo elicitation applied to mental health research. International Journal of Qualitative Methods 16 (1): 1609406917748215. https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406917748215. Gray, M.L. 2009. Out in the country: Youth, media, and queer visibility in rural America. In Intersections: Transdisciplinary perspectives on genders and sexualities. New  York: New  York University Press. https://doi. org/10.18574/9780814733103. Gray, M.L., C.R.  Johnson, and B.J.  Gilley. 2016. Queering the countryside: New frontiers in rural queer studies. In Intersections: Transdisciplinary perspectives on genders and sexualities. New York: New York University Press. Halberstam, J. 2005. In a queer time and place: Transgender bodies, subcultural lives. Vol. 3. New York: New York University Press. Hanhardt, C. 2013. Safe space: Gay neighborhood history and the politics of violence. In Perverse modernities. Durham: Duke University Press. Latchmore, V., and L.  Marple. 2005. LGBTQ activism: Small town social change. Canadian Woman Studies 24 (4): 55–58. Leung, E., and T. Flanagan. 2019. Let’s do this together: An integration of photovoice and mobile interviewing in empowering and listening to LGBTQ + youths in context. International Journal of Adolescence and Youth 24 (4): 497–510. https://doi.org/10.1080/02673843.2018.1554499. Lindhorst, T. 1997. Lesbians and gay men in the country: Practice implications for rural social workers. Journal of Gay & Lesbian Social Services 7 (3): 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1300/J041v07n03_01. Little, J. 2002. Rural geography: Rural gender identity and the performance of masculinity and femininity in the countryside. Progress in Human Geography 26 (5): 665–670.

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Low, S., and D. Lawrence-Zúñiga. 2003. The anthropology of space and place. Malden: Blackwell. Lucero, L. 2017. Safe spaces in online places: Social media and LGBTQ youth. Multicultural Education Review 9 (2): 117–128. https://doi.org/10.108 0/2005615X.2017.1313482. Marple, L. 2005. Rural queers? The loss of the rural in queer. Canadian Woman Studies 24 (2/3): 71–74. Marr, G. 2020. Crafting a heteronormative haven: Representations of sexuality on the Canadian margin. Journal of Canadian Studies 54 (2–3): 245–265. https://doi.org/10.3138/jcs-­2019-­0030. Marshall, D. 2010. Popular culture, the ‘victim’ trope and queer youth analytics. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 23 (1): 65–85. McGlynn, N. 2018. Slippery geographies of the urban and the rural: Public sector LGBT equalities work in the shadow of the ‘Gay Capital’. Journal of Rural Studies 57: 65–77. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2017.10.008. Muñoz, J.E. 2009. Cruising Utopia: The then and there of queer futurity. In Sexual cultures. New York: New York University Press. NBIAA. 2019. Transgender policy. NBIAA–Section 15.12 B. https://nbiaa-­ a s i n b . o r g / 2 0 1 9 -­2 0 2 0 % 2 0 Up l o a d s / H a n d b o o k / E N % 2 0 2 0 1 9 / Section5Part1EN2019.pdf. New Brunswick Population Report. 2021. NB jobs. https://www.nbjobs.ca/ sites/default/files/pdf/LMI%20reports/2021-­0 3-­1 5-­L MI-­Population-­ Report-­EN.pdf. Page, M. 2017. From awareness to action: Teacher attitude and implementation of LGBT-inclusive curriculum in the English language arts classroom. SAGE Open 7 (4): 2158244017739949. Palmer, N., J.  Kosciw, and M.  Bartkiewicz. 2012. Strengths and silences: The experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students in rural and small town schools. GLSEN. https://www.glsen.org/sites/default/files/2019-­11/ Strengths_and_Silences_2012.pdf. Pascoe, C. J. 2012. Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School. Berkley: University of California Press. Peter, T., C. Campbell, and C. Taylor. 2021. Still every class in every school: Final report on the second climate survey on homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia in Canadian schools. Egale Canada Human Rights Trust. https://egale.ca/awareness/still-­in-­every-­class/. Pink, S. 2007. Doing visual ethnography. 2nd ed. London: Sage Publications.

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Podmore, J.A., and A.L. Bain. 2020. No queers out there’? Metronormativity and the queer suburban. Geography Compass 14 (9): 12505. https://doi. org/10.1111/gec3.12505. Poole, J., and C.P. Gause. 2011. Sexualities in rural spaces: Conservativism and fundamentalism. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science 1 (15): 39–45. Queer CellphilmsNB. 2018. Nackawic needs a GSA now!! YouTube. Cellphilm 2: 14. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8hg8Qzf1U4. Rand, J.J., and M.S.  Paceley. 2022. Exploring the lived experiences of rural LGBTQ youth: Navigating identity and authenticity within School and community contexts. Journal of Gay & Lesbian Social Services 34 (1): 21–39. Schey, R. 2021. A queer youth’s challenges to normativities of time, space, and queerness: Pedagogical encounters in a small town christian youth group. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 42 (3): 471–486. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2020.1715921. Schweighofer, K. 2016. Rethinking the closet: Queer life in rural geographies. In Queering the countryside: New frontiers in rural queer studies, ed. M. Gray, C. Johnson, and B. Gilley, 223–243. New York University Press. Statistics Canada. 2022. Population counts, population centre size groups and rural areas. Government of Canada. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv. action?pid=9810000801. Valentine, G., R. Butler, and T. Skelton. 2001. The ethical and methodological complexities of doing research with ‘vulnerable’ young people. Ethics, Place and Environment 4 (2): 119–125. Watson, K. 2005. Queer theory. Group Analysis 38 (1): 67–81. https://doi. org/10.1177/0533316405049369. Wesley-Esquimaux, C. 2009. Trauma to resilience: Notes on decolonization. In Restoring the balance: First nations women, community, and culture, ed. G.G. Valaskakis, M.D. Stout, G. Éric, and Gibson Library Connections, Inc, 13–34. University of Manitoba Press.

7 Pivoting Online in a Pandemic: Facilitating Object Elicitation Interviews with Canadian Craft Vendors Kaylan C. Schwarz

Introduction My research investigates the ways Canadian craft vendors support international development causes through the sale of handmade and handcrafted objects. Many of these initiatives fall under the umbrella of “social entrepreneurship” and exemplify the types of crafting projects popularized within “maker culture.” Methodologically, I employed object elicitation techniques: craft vendors brought a selection of items and reflected on their meanings during the interviews, similar to show-and-tell. I had intended to conduct the study in-person, but then pivoted to online video calls due to restrictions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. In this chapter, I address the methodological aspects of the study and discuss the ways object elicitation techniques may be facilitated in an online setting. I describe my process of pivoting from in-person to online interviews, and craft vendors’ parallel pivot from in-person to online craft

K. C. Schwarz (*) University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, AB, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Burkholder et al. (eds.), Facilitating Visual Socialities, Social Visualities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25259-4_7

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vending. I then introduce three categories of objects—spontaneous objects, pandemic objects, and wearable objects—to illustrate methodological insights relating to space and location, time and context, and embodiment and attachment. Object studies are one subset of visual research methods (Mitchell 2011) that encompass their own diverse terminologies and procedures, including “object interviews” (Woodward 2016), “object-based interviews” (Hannan et al. 2019), “object-oriented interviews” (Owen et al. 2021), “object probes” (De Leon and Cohen 2005), “third object prompts” (Dumangane Jr 2022), “materially oriented qualitative interviews” (Abildgaard 2018), “artifactual interviews” (Rowsell 2011), and “artefact tours” (Mannay 2020), among others. Across these techniques, researchers utilize objects to elicit verbal narratives: “the aim of the research interview is to obtain the participants’ responses, descriptions, associations, and/or memories that emerge in connection with the material they have brought” (Willig 2017, 220). In object elicitation studies, the objects that comprise the dataset can be researcher-selected, participant-selected, or both. In Dumangane Jr’s (2022) interviews with Black men attending Russell Group universities, the author assembled an assortment of cufflinks to prompt wider conversation about participants’ relationships with significant family members. The author chose a researcher-selected approach because, during a pilot study, more than half the sample ignored a request to bring an object of their own choosing. In Harrison and Ogden’s (2021) study of women’s knitting circles, the authors asked participants to bring their own knitting materials to a focus group discussion. The authors chose a participant-­ selected approach because, during a pilot study, some participants complained about the quality of the needles and yarns the researchers had provided. In both cases, the researchers flipped their methodological protocol based on feedback from a previous experience, a clear indication that researcher-selected and participant-selected approaches can be useful, depending on the research context. Owen (2021, 2022) was interested in individuals’ reasons for renting self-storage units, such as moving to a new house or grieving a deceased relative. The author conducted initial interviews in a public setting to establish trust and rapport, and follow-up interviews at participants’

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self-­storage units to review and reflect upon their contents. The author advocates for an “in situ” research design—studying objects in the spaces and places where they reside (Owen et al. 2021, 2). Object elicitation interviews are also a “hands-on” data collection technique: “the tactility of picking up and viewing objects as part of a tour or task, means that objects can be examined, touched, and even smelt” (Owen et al. 2021, 3). This latter point—that object elicitation interviews offer researchers and participants an interactive and embodied research encounter—is further exemplified in Abildgaard’s (2018) study of historical telephones, which the author facilitated in a museum setting, utilizing an exhibit of landline and mobile devices. Here, participants’ physical engagement with the objects enabled them to recall vivid “body memories” from their youths (such as cradling the receiver between ear and shoulder), which may not have been possible in “a situation in which the interviewer and interviewee are engaged in mere theoretical reflection” (2). In other words, objects serve as a prompt for storytelling, and create space for storylines that may not come forward in response to direct interview questions.

Methodology Over the last decade, craft scholars have witnessed a resurgence of “small, independent, artisanal businesses making bespoke, handmade, handcrafted, small-batch products” (Bell et al. 2019, 3). Craft work forms part of the contemporary “maker movement,” an ethos promoting self-­ directed production (do-it-yourself ) in tandem with participatory collaboration (do-it-together) (Elliott and Richardson 2017; Rentschler 2019). I was interested in a particular subset of craft objects— “humanitarian handicrafts” (Malkki 2015)—which are made and sold “to support humanitarian aims or fund-raising initiatives” (Gill et al. 2021, 1). Luckman and Andrew (2020) conducted interviews with established and emerging craftspeople in Australia, and their research “clearly demonstrates the ongoing strength of face-to-face markets as key retail sites for the handmade, in line with the larger trend to ‘buy direct’” (152).

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Here, the authors stress the notion of proximity: despite the availability and accessibility of e-commerce platforms, most participants preferred to sell “hand-to-hand.” Dawkins (2011), who undertook ethnographic fieldwork at craft fairs in Detroit, paints a picture of the interactive and interpersonal nature of these events: The crafters’ goods are set up in front of them on a four-footlong table along with business cards, signage, and other promotional material; it is almost impossible to interact with the “goods” without in some ways interacting with the vendor who made them. (272)

Thus, pairing the method of object elicitation with the topic of crafting seems fitting, as both prioritize “embodied, enacted and sensuous practices” and consider the “affective relations between [knowledge producers] and the ‘objects’ they engage with” (Bell and Willmott 2020, 1372). I identified craft vendors through an internet search and contacted them through the email address listed on their public website or social media platform. Similar to Kipp and Hawkins’ (2019) approach, I searched for initiatives that were “transaction-based, [supported] an international development cause, and [targeted] consumers in North America” (5). I also searched for small-scale initiatives selling handmade/ handcrafted items—in effect, the type of craft vendors one might encounter at a community craft fair. The 19 craft vendors who chose to participate were all based in Canada and supported international development causes in a variety of locations: Uganda, Kenya, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Côte d’Ivoire, DR Congo, South Africa, Columbia, India, Nepal, Thailand, Philippines, and Australia. Some participants personally made crafts and donated the proceeds to an international development cause, some participants sold crafts on behalf of international artisans, and some participants employed a hybrid approach, purchasing materials from international artisans but assembling the final product themselves. The sample included women (17) and men (2), who identified as white (15), Black (2), Arab (1), or mixed-race (1), and who ranged in age from mid-­ 20s to mid-70s. I have replaced all participant names with pseudonyms.

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Prior to the interview, I asked participants to bring one or more humanitarian handicrafts to our meeting. This participant-selected approach “allows the participant to shape the focus and structure of the interview because their choice of objects (e.g., their size, the number of objects selected, and their social significance) will determine what and how their experience is talked about” (Willig 2017, 212). During the interview, I made a purposely broad request—“Tell me about the item(s) you have brought to share with me”—so that participants could decide how and in what order they wished to introduce their objects.

Pivoting from In-Person to Online Interviews I had planned to conduct all interviews in-person. I was compelled by the idea that object elicitation methods could foster “an active engagement with materiality, an understanding that something else is made possible when interview participants [and researchers] are able to physically interact with material objects” (Abildgaard 2018, 2). I found similar sentiments expressed in craft scholarship, such as Harrison and Ogden’s (2021) reflection that “the sensory, emotive nature of discussions about knitted objects present in the room infused the focus groups with a soft cosiness that was unlikely to have been achievable without the material presence of textiles” (645). I too hoped to combine the strengths of “face-­ to-­face” interviews with “hands-on” approaches. I conducted one in-person interview with Linda in February 2020. At the café where we met, Linda spread out an assortment of accessories she had created using paper beads purchased from a women’s cooperative in Kenya. Throughout the interview, Linda and I pointed to the objects on the table, picked them up, and passed them back and forth, taking time to rotate them in our hands and inspect them at close range—we were simultaneously “talking about and with objects” (Owen et al. 2021, 2, emphasis added). The audio recording captured a sensory record of these engagements—rustling through bags to retrieve each item, knocking them against the table, and sliding them across its surface. At the conclusion of the interview, when I readied my camera to take a photograph,

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Fig. 7.1  Linda’s selection of paper bead items (Author photograph)

Linda artfully arranged the objects in front of us—staging the scene and inserting some ownership over the aesthetic (Fig. 7.1). In the following weeks, as concern over the spread of COVID-19 rapidly escalated, I postponed my plans to conduct further in-person interviews. I monitored the situation for several months, reluctant to resume the research project online. However, by the summer of 2020, it became clear that physical distancing protocols would remain necessary for the foreseeable future, and qualitative researchers like myself began to consider how “to replace their immersive in-person interactions with more hands-off approaches” (Howlett 2022, 5). I chose to proceed with the remaining interviews through a video call. In preparation, I turned to the pre-pandemic literature on video calls, which alerted me to the practical upsides of mediated approaches. Namely, since there is no need to arrange for and commute to a physical interview location, video calls tend to be cost-effective, time-saving, and

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logistically uncomplicated (Lo Iacono et al. 2016). Video calls also “facilitate access to geographically dispersed research populations,” provided those research populations have access to an internet-enabled device and a stable connection (Deakin and Wakefield 2014, 607). Indeed, pivoting from in-person to online interviews meant that I could open recruitment to craft vendors across Canada, and interviews could be flexibly scheduled during the daytime, evening, or weekend. To reduce privacy and security concerns while using a third-party platform, I used my institutional Microsoft Teams application, which allowed me to send an individual meeting link to each participant and ensure no one else could bypass the lobby. I informed participants that they could join the meeting using only their first name or a pseudonym. I used a separate voice recording device, as I would have in any in-person interview setting. Pivoting to video calls required an amendment to the study procedure: rather than take a photograph of the objects myself, I had to rely on participants to send me photographs at the conclusion of our interview. This modification led to some unexpected compositional and representational benefits. Notably, a few participants sent a photograph of their craft booth display, illustrating the types of in-person craft fairs that partly inspired the study. Stephanie’s craft booth display (Fig. 7.2) showcases the woven baskets, beaded necklaces, and fabric handbags she sells, but also portrays these items in a relevant setting, providing an “in situ” feel that would not have been possible had I photographed her objects in a café. This is a primary example of how “photography also allows for context to be drawn into the research, since photographs capture background scenes as well as the foreground ‘subject’, which may lead to ‘unintentional’ but important data being made available for later analysis” (Shortt et al. 2014, 292). On the flip side, one participant did not send any photographs despite two reminder emails. This participant had expressed enthusiasm and appreciation for the research project during our interview, so I suspect they were simply busy with other priorities, but it is also possible that they had changed their mind about contributing visual data. In effect, non-submission is a way of gently revoking one’s consent to the analysis or publication of one’s images. There is an ethical advantage here: asking participants to send photographs after the interview gives participants more time to decide what and whether to submit.

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Fig. 7.2  Stephanie’s craft booth display (Photograph provided by Stephanie)

While ‘t Hart (2021) found it more difficult to build rapport with participants in a mediated setting during COVID-19, in part because “our pre-interview chit chat was centred around the technological problems that we were facing: access, quality of picture, quality of sound and ability to record” (8), I found that pandemic-related small talk eased our capacity to connect through shared experience. Our initial introductions often dovetailed into observations about the work-from-home transition and its accompanying “new normals.” With these acknowledgements in place, the occasional frozen screen or interruption from pets, children, or delivery services prompted laughter rather than frustration. At the same time, participants seemed equally keen to talk about something other than the pandemic. Contributing to a study about craft vending offered participants a welcome distraction and a reminder of the creative/charitable practices they enjoy.

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Pivoting from In-Person to Online Craft Vending When I asked participants about the role of community events in the context of their work, most positioned in-person markets as indispensable, a point encapsulated by Lisa’s comment: “I only sell under a white tent.” The appeal of “face-to-face” selling is partly rooted in its perceived sociality, having “meaningful interactions with people” (Nicole) and meeting “people who like very meaningful products” (Erica). Participants also valued in-person markets for their sensory affordances—customers can hear the stories associated with the products and their makers. Jessica, who purchases handicrafts from women artisans in Uganda and reinvests the proceeds in microfinance projects, recognized the importance and function of imparting these narratives: People love hearing the story. We often find that we start with the story, and obviously the colours and everything on the table jump out at customers and they’ll just come and look at the products. But then as soon as we’ve caught their eye and they’re looking we say “Have you heard about us? Have you heard the story?”

Other participants highlighted the significance of seeing and touching the products. At in-person markets, Erica’s customers can engage both visually and physically with her collection of woven baskets: People like to see, touch, feel—there’s definitely a very tactile aspect of everything that’s made or handmade. And I think you really see the beauty when you hold them or see them in person. … But I feel like it’s not the same when you haven’t seen them.

Heather made a similar remark about customers’ responses to the woven baskets she sells: People want to come in, they want to touch the baskets, they want to feel the baskets. And there’s something that happens when they hold those baskets in their hands. And they’re like “Holy crow, this was from Ghana,

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and [now] I’m holding it.” … So it loses that. You just don’t get the same quality when you see it online.

Both Erica and Heather suggest that customers are unable to establish “the same” connection with craft objects in mediated settings, since “online sales sites [lack] the personal touch and the opportunity for potential customers to ‘try on’ the highly tactile, handmade product” (Luckman and Andrew 2020, 156–157). With in-person markets cancelled, participants were forced to find creative avenues to continue their work. A couple adopted strategies resembling their usual face-to-face events: Angela began “selling out of our parking lot” and Jessica “did a pop-up thing in a garage.” The majority had resorted to online sales, but like Heather, issued a caveat: My passion is talking to people and meeting face-to-face. So my strength is not social media, it’s not the online platforms. … So I think those shows are vital and I’m really hoping that we can get back to them sooner than later.

Likewise, Lisa described herself as “a people person” and expressed a strong preference for in-person sales: I am terrible at social media. If you’ve visited my Facebook group, you know this. One of my biggest challenges is I’m not tech-savvy. I still don’t have a website yet. My Instagram page is disgraceful. I am really good—I can speak passionately from the heart in person when somebody’s in front of me, about what I do and why. I find it really hard—I feel fake and I don’t feel authentic when I try to do this through social media. So that is one of my personal barriers that I have to fix. Because especially with the time of COVID it’s been, you know, there was nothing else but that.

While participants’ comments about their web presence and technological capabilities were generally light-hearted and self-deprecating, Danielle spoke about the serious financial consequences of pivoting online: This year has been very challenging because we don’t have the space to show [our products] in person. I was basically selling 90 per cent of every-

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thing during these market events. … So not being able to have this potential opportunity has been devastating. I’ve actually started working [a second job] for somebody else because I had no option. It’s been extremely difficult. Without the physical shows, I see it very difficult to make it work. Why? Because people prefer to see things. Mostly the people that buy from me, they tend to be into the handmade culture. … So online, they don’t buy.

By extension, the artisans who Danielle purchases crafts from were facing a standstill: “I can only give them so much work. And everyone else canceled orders. The whole industry collapsed. … So these people who rely on this work are left, during a pandemic, with no work.” Even in pre-­ pandemic times, craft vending could be viewed as a precarious venture, where “external factors like weather, seasonal attendance, and market reputation mean that vendors deal with constant uncertainty about their sales” (Kovesi and Kern 2018, 175). However, a global crisis such as COVID-19 represents an unprecedented challenge for craft vendors and the international development initiatives they support.

Object-Related Insights Pivoting from in-person to online interviews called my attention to the methodological significance of space and location, time and context, and embodiment and attachment. In this section, I introduce three categories of objects to help elucidate these insights: spontaneous objects (in-the-­ moment additions brought from participants’ immediate surroundings), pandemic objects (new items made in response to COVID-19 and craft market closures), and wearable objects (clothing or jewellery presented on and narrated through the body).

Spontaneous Objects While the “location” of an online interview is in one sense virtual, participants largely joined the video call from their own homes. As Lo Iacono et al. (2016) note, being at home “means that [participants] can have access to a variety of artefacts and objects that may emerge as relevant

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during an interview” (8). The authors provide an illustration from their research on travel routes, wherein one participant paused the interview to better explain her trip itinerary: “Let me show you the maps. Hang on a second [Vivienne physically goes to grab the paper maps]. I just plotted these” (8). In the present study, participants had pre-selected objects to show-and-tell, so these items were within arm’s reach from the outset of the call. However, on a couple of occasions, the direction of our conversation sparked a new insight, and participants left to retrieve additional objects. For instance, Danielle and I had been discussing how the majority of the beaded jewellery and crocheted bags she sells are made by women, but she then recalled a counter example: Actually, I want to show you one bag that’s made by a man. [Danielle leaves to find bag]. So these bags are 100 per cent made by men, these clutches, because these are made with an old technique of tapestry, which involves hammering the different fabrics to create the shapes. So it’s very labour intensive. So only men make this type of product.

Here, Danielle uses a spontaneous object to make a point about gendered divisions within craft labour. Had we met in a public setting such as a café, it would not be possible for participants to respond to narrative threads in an impromptu fashion.

Pandemic Objects Had I conducted the interviews a few months earlier, one object would have been completely absent from the dataset: face masks. These face masks—brought by Samantha, Terry, Robert, Angela, and Donna— exemplified the kind of collaborative or co-authoring practices that were common within the study. For example, some face masks were sewn by Canadian craft vendors using textiles purchased from international artisans, and some face masks were sewn by international artisans using patterns designed by Canadian craft vendors. The face masks also represent a secondary pivot: in addition to moving from in-person to online craft vending, some participants trialled a new product to support themselves

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and their partners overseas through a period of uncertainty. As Angela explained: “I also have to make some money because we need to sustain the project.” Lupton et al. (2021) situate “face mask making cultures” within a particular time and context—the early months of the pandemic—when “rapidly increasing demand, production delays and difficulties with cost and accessibility together limited the supply of [personal protective equipment]” (57). In response to these shortages, the authors note that many independent craft vendors pivoted to selling “artisan masks” through e-commerce platforms such as Etsy, while amateur and novice crafters learned to sew “home-made masks” for family and friends, assembled “makeshift masks” from t-shirts, socks, and pillowcases, and donated “community drive masks” to people in need. Pandemic objects such as face masks are a clear reminder that events unfolding outside the research project can change the types of data brought into the research project.

Wearable Objects While Linda’s objects were visible to me for the duration of our in-person interview, my ability to view objects in the video calls tended to be brief. More often than not, participants held their objects up to the camera, put them down, and continued narrating. There was, however, a notable exception: about half of participants wore one or more of their objects during the call. Lisa, Danielle, and Deborah all joined the call wearing pieces of jewellery and introduced these items explicitly: “I’m wearing a copper wire bracelet. … I’ll try and hold it up close, have a look” (Deborah). Lisa and Janet both brought scarves, and both wrapped them around their necks when they described the fibre qualities and weaving processes. As discussed previously, five participants had begun to sell face masks, and Samantha, Terry, and Donna put them on during the interview to demonstrate their design or fit (such that face masks could be double coded as pandemic objects and wearable objects). In these moments, the online interview seemed to retain some of the embodied interaction typically associated with in-person interviews. Additionally,

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the act of wearing was an effective way of presenting objects in context— as this subset of craft items is meant to be worn. Ashley mentioned that she would be wearing a beaded bracelet made by artisans in Kenya, but it had disintegrated from overuse: “I mean there was a time in my life, not even that long ago, that this was on my wrist 24/7. Until it rusted out and became a little bit unwieldy with certain sweaters.” Jessica, who was wearing a headband made from African textiles said she would have also worn some paper bead jewellery, but as a new mother: “I don’t wear the necklaces as much anymore because the baby pulls, but otherwise the last ten years of my life I’ve had a necklace on everyday.” Here, wearing is a way for craft vendors to communicate their emotional connection with and personal endorsement of the items they sell, exemplifying Elliott and Richardson’s (2017) notion of “attached ownership.”

Conclusion Qualitative researchers have begun to share their experiences “pivoting” interviews (‘t Hart 2021), ethnographic fieldwork (Howlett 2022), and participatory video (Marzi 2021) to online settings during the pandemic. This chapter contributes an account of virtual object elicitation to the literature base. While I had been committed to conducting the study in-­ person, the onset of the pandemic necessitated a methodological shift— from a “hands-on” approach (Owen et al. 2021) to a “hands-off” approach (Howlett 2022). The craft vendors I spoke with had also modified their practices, moving from in-person to online sales. In both cases, flexibility was paramount as we sought to reimagine the social and sensory aspects of facilitating research and selling crafts. I elaborated upon three object categories: spontaneous objects, pandemic objects, and wearable objects. The first two categories are directly related to the pandemic pivot: participants could not have included spontaneous objects had I conducted interviews in a café, and participants would not have brought face masks had I conducted interviews in the months preceding physical distancing measures. In other words, changing the methodological approach changes the data, but also, the

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changing world context changes the data. The third category—wearable objects—may have emerged regardless. However, the act of wearing is pertinent to include here because it challenged my preconception that the embodied aspects of the research encounter would be lost in an online setting. I am now inclined to agree with Deakin and Wakefield (2014) that “the online interview should be treated as a viable option to the researcher rather than as an alternative or secondary choice when face-to-face interviews cannot be achieved” (604). While video calls were certainly my “secondary choice,” I came to embrace the research story that unfolded instead, and as I have shown, these “mediated approaches can be immersive in ways not typically discussed or even previously realized” (Howlett 2022, 5). Moving forward, scholars can draw upon these “pivoting” experiences to make informed decisions, and choose the facilitation methods that best align with their project aims and research questions. Acknowledgements  This research was supported by a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

References ‘t Hart, D. 2021. COVID times make ‘deep listening’ explicit: Changing the space between interviewer and participant. Qualitative Research. Online ahead of print. Abildgaard, M.S. 2018. My whole life in telephones: Material artifacts as interview elicitation devices. International Journal of Qualitative Methods 17: 1–9. Bell, E., and H. Willmott. 2020. Ethics, politics and embodied imagination in crafting scientific knowledge. Human Relations 73 (10): 1366–1387. Bell, E., M.L. Toraldo, S. Taylor, and G. Mangia. 2019. Introduction: Understanding contemporary craft work. In The organization of craft work: Identities, meanings, and materiality, ed. E. Bell, G. Mangia, S. Taylor, and M.L. Toraldo, 1–19. Abingdon: Routledge. Dawkins, N. 2011. Do-it-yourself: The precarious work and postfeminist politics of handmaking (in) Detroit. Utopian Studies 22 (2): 261–284. De Leon, J.P., and J.H. Cohen. 2005. Object and walking probes in ethnographic interviewing. Field Methods 17 (2): 200–204.

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Deakin, H., and K. Wakefield. 2014. Skype interviewing: Reflections of two PhD researchers. Qualitative Research 14 (5): 603–616. Dumangane Jr, C. 2022. Cufflinks, photos and YouTube: The benefits of third object prompts when researching race and discrimination in elite higher education. Qualitative Research 22 (1): 3–23. Elliott, S., and M. Richardson. 2017. Maker culture and possibilities for attached consumption. Arena 47 (48): 213–231. Gill, R., C. Barber, and B. Taithe. 2021. Humanitarian handicrafts: Testing the relationship between archival history and hands-on craft making. FormAkademisk 14 (2): 1–11. Hannan, L., G. Carney, P. Devine, and G. Hodge. 2019. ‘A view from old age’: Women’s lives as narrated through objects. Life Writing 16 (1): 51–67. Harrison, K., and C.A. Ogden. 2021. ‘Knit ‘n’ natter’: A feminist methodological assessment of using creative ‘women’s work’ in focus groups. Qualitative Research 21 (5): 633–649. Howlett, M. 2022. Looking at the ‘field’ through a Zoom lens: Methodological reflections on conducting online research during a global pandemic. Qualitative Research 22 (3): 387–402. Lo Iacono, V., P. Symonds, and D.H.K. Brown. 2016. Skype as a tool for qualitative research interviews. Sociological Research Online 21 (2): 1–15. Kipp, A., and R. Hawkins. 2019. The responsibilization of ‘development consumers’ through cause-related marketing campaigns. Consumption Markets & Culture 22 (1): 1–16. Kovesi, C., and L. Kern. 2018. ‘I choose to be here’: Tensions between autonomy and precarity in craft market vendors’ work. City & Community 17 (1): 170–186. Luckman, S., and J. Andrew. 2020. Craftspeople and designer makers in the contemporary creative economy. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Lupton, D., C. Southerton, M. Clark, and A. Watson. 2021. The face mask in COVID times: A sociomaterial analysis. Berlin: De Gruyter. Malkki, L.H. 2015. The need to help: The domestic arts of international humanitarianism. Durham: Duke University Press. Mannay, D. 2020. Artefacts, third objects, sandboxing and figurines in the doll’s house. In The SAGE handbook of visual research methods, ed. L. Pauwels and D. Mannay, 2nd ed., 322–332. London: Sage. Marzi, S. 2021. Participatory video from a distance: Co-producing knowledge during the COVID-19 pandemic using smartphones. Qualitative Research. Online ahead of print.

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Mitchell, C. 2011. Doing visual research. London: Sage. Owen, J. 2021. Distancing material effects to reconcile loss: Sorting memories and emotion in self-storage. Emotion, Space and Society 38: 1–7. ———. 2022. ‘It became an anchor for stuff I really want to keep’: The stabilising weight of self-storage when moving home and away. Social & Cultural Geography 23 (7): 990–1006. Owen, J., A. Barron, and L. Pottinger. 2021. Object-oriented interviews. In Methods for change: Impactful social science methodologies for 21st century problems, ed. A. Barron, A.L. Browne, U. Ehgartner, S.M. Hall, L. Pottinger, and J. Ritson, 1–9. Manchester: University of Manchester. Rentschler, C. 2019. Making culture and doing feminism. In The Routledge handbook of contemporary feminism, ed. T. Oren and A.L. Press, 127–147. Abingdon: Routledge. Rowsell, J. 2011. Carrying my family with me: Artifacts as emic perspectives. Qualitative Research 11 (3): 331–346. Shortt, H., J. Betts, and S. Warren. 2014. Visual workplace identities: Objects, emotion and resistance. In The Routledge companion to visual organization, ed. E. Bell, S. Warren, and J.E. Schroeder, 289–305. Abingdon: Routledge. Willig, C. 2017. Reflections on the use of object elicitation. Qualitative Psychology 4 (3): 211–222. Woodward, S. 2016. Object interviews, material imaginings and ‘unsettling’ methods: Interdisciplinary approaches to understanding materials and material culture. Qualitative Research 16 (4): 359–374.

8 Facilitating Ethical Participatory Visual Research in Taboo Spaces Mathabo Khau

Introduction Different communities across the globe have certain phenomena that are labelled as taboo because of their sensitivity, or the discourses used in constructing such phenomena. In some African countries including Lesotho, examples of the taboo phenomena include death, gender, sexuality, and witchcraft (Dehm and Millbank 2019; Kgatla 2020; Okonkwo et al. 2021; Singh and Msuya 2019). Witchcraft has been constructed as extremely taboo because it is constituted by gender, sexuality, and death. According to Okonkwo et al. (2021) witchcraft has always been negatively skewed against females in many African communities, thus enabling the adoption of “…gendered constructs in witchcraft beliefs in African history” (446). The gender and sexuality discourses used to shape witchcraft are driven by unequal power dynamics that support a patriarchal gender order (see also Khau 2012).

M. Khau (*) Nelson Mandela University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Burkholder et al. (eds.), Facilitating Visual Socialities, Social Visualities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25259-4_8

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The Basotho have been noted as believing in witchcraft since precolonial times (Moteetee 2017; Semenya and Letsosa 2013). They constructed witchcraft as a practice that was evil and harmful to society. This is attested to by Semenya and Letsosa’s (2013) argument that the Basotho believed in the power of witchcraft to bring evil, poverty, curses, and death amongst communities. Because of this belief, Semenya and Letsosa (2013) stated that Basotho communities treated witchcraft allegations with contempt and violence due to their fear of the consequences of witchcraft. Moteetee (2017) posited that any unexplainable accidents or events, untimely human death and misfortune, or deviant behaviour were associated with witchcraft. This confirms Kgatla’s (2020) notion that the phenomenon of witchcraft was taboo among the Basotho because what was labelled as witchcraft could not be easily explained nor easily understood. Interestingly, Letsosa and Semenya (2011) noted that despite the inevitability of death or deviant behaviour within a society, the Basotho believed that there was always a cause behind their occurrence. Thus, any unexplainable incident among the Basotho was blamed on witchcraft. As noted by Rakotsoane (1996), the Basotho seldom accepted the naturality of human death or deviant sexual behaviour, and thus always blamed these on those community members alleged to practice witchcraft. To support his point, Rakotsoane (1996) brought forth the Basotho proverb which was used to explain any death as “lekoko la motho ha le thakhisoe faats’e [a human skin can never be tanned like that of an animal].” This proverb was used to argue that there was always someone responsible for any human death. The Basotho have deep-seated fears regarding witchcraft and thus they are unwilling to talk about it for fear of being cursed or facing immediate death (Rakotsoane 1996). These fears have led to the persecutions and murders of those deemed to be practising witchcraft or bewitched (Dehm and Millbank 2019). However, the violence directed at those alleged to practice witchcraft has been reduced due to international initiatives to monitor and criminalize it. Dehm and Millbank (2019) argued that the emergence of activism and scholarship on witchcraft, including the documentation of witchcraft-related violence, has provided a rationale for nation states and individuals to act against the discrimination and

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stigmatization of people with deviant identity markers or practices. Igwe (2020) has also pointed out that African countries have developed strategies to combat witchcraft-related violence so as to address the gendering of witchcraft. This step is important towards the attainment of the United Nations Agenda 2030's imperative of addressing gender inequalities. In this chapter, I use my personal reflections of how I engaged in research with ten Basotho elders within a rural community in the southern district of Lesotho called Quthing. I present how I facilitated ethical participatory visual research on taboo issues within the cultural spaces and highlight the challenges and opportunities such engagement had for the research team. Using artefacts and visuals as entry-points, I facilitated narrative storytelling with elderly participants to explore constructions of gender and sexual identities within their society, to understand the connections between such constructions and the practice of witchcraft. I kept a journal in which I recorded educative moments during the research process, based on Clandinin and Connelly’s (2000) statement that journaling is often used by narrative researchers to generate data during educational research. Based on this engagement, I present the inhibitors and enablers to ethical research practice, while also highlighting the best practices learnt within the research engagement.

Setting the Scene of the Research Research that touches on or challenges people’s belief systems and ways of being does not usually meet with positive responses from the knowledge producers or participants. Thus, it is important to understand the context of the research and its people so that research does not become a voyeuristic endeavour (Khau 2021). Issues of sexuality are still taboo in Lesotho, especially when it comes to constructions of and beliefs about witchcraft. It is therefore important for the reader to understand the intricacies of gender, sexuality, and witchcraft among the Basotho. According to Ghorbani (2015), certain sub-Saharan African communities continue to oppress women through allegations of witchcraft. She highlighted that countries like Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Ghana, Tanzania, and Ivory Coast are in the top ten sub-Saharan

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countries with widespread beliefs in witchcraft. Ngalomba and Harpur (2016) argued that many elderly African women do not enjoy their long life due to societal prejudice and being targeted as witches. Müller and Sanderson (2020) also added that prejudices against elderly and deviant women make them vulnerable to accusations of witchcraft practice. Such women face different forms of violence, sometimes resulting in death (Bello 2020). According to Ngangah (2020), there are no written records of witchcraft in African countries because of reliance on storytelling. Despite the lack of written records on witchcraft from precolonial Africa, Ogbomo (2005) argued that there was evidence highlighting instances of torture and persecution against those alleged to practice witchcraft. Mace (2018) argued that deviance by both men and women was constructed as evidence of witchcraft and was punished accordingly. However, the majority of punishments were meted against women. Patriarchy within communities enabled the double standard of women’s persecution while men were let be. Mace (2018) also pointed out that women who performed deviant femininity scripts were accused of witchcraft, thus confirming Rowlands’s (2013) argument that “as long as the overall power of patriarchy remained firm, ruling male elites could countenance the executions of a minority of men, along with a much greater number of women, in their endeavour to rid society of witches” (449). According to Gill (1997), in precolonial Lesotho, chief Mohlomi was quoted saying “sorcery only exists in the mouths of those who speak of it. It is no more in the power of man to kill his fellow by mere effect of his will, than it would be to raise him from the dead” (35). Chief Mohlomi’s chiefdom was active in eradicating witchcraft beliefs and allegations because he believed that they were mostly unfounded and usually targeted the vulnerable and marginalized members of society (Mofuoa 2021). According to Mokotso (2015), despite being a diviner himself, Chief Mohlomi condemned witchcraft allegations and he did not trust those who could supposedly “smell out” witches. Thus, he made it illegal in his chiefdom for anyone to be put to death on an accusation of witchcraft (Hincks 2017). Chief Mohlomi passed his activism onto his protégé King Moshoeshoe 1 who became the founder of the Basotho nation in modern day Lesotho.

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Despite this, many Basotho communities still believe in witchcraft and sorcery as part of their traditional beliefs (Gill 1997). However, the colonial regime and the arrival of Christianity in Lesotho challenged many of Basotho’s traditional beliefs to an extent that community members became afraid of being associated with practising such traditional beliefs (Rosenberg and Weisfelder 2013). Thus, modern day Lesotho straddles the two belief systems and one has to be careful how they approach research that touches on either of them, to avoid vilifying any of the beliefs (Epprecht 2000). I was aware of the belief systems within the research setting and how these may have a bearing on knowledge producers’ freedom of participation. I was also aware that the ethical clearance certificate I had received from my university might not assist me in navigating this terrain due to its sensitivity. The belief in witchcraft, which is usually associated with “magic” or “quackery,” is part of people’s daily lives in Lesotho. Hence anyone known to be participating in a research project exploring this phenomenon could be labelled, shamed, silenced, or even persecuted despite a researcher’s attempts to protect their anonymity and confidentiality. Thus, I had to be open to negotiating the ethics of the study as it unfolded in the field to cater for incidental occurrences.

Researching Ethically Within Universities My university is based in South Africa and like many other countries, it uses The Belmont Report: Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research (1979), which is based on a biomedical framework. While it has been in effect for decades as a guideline for research ethics, The Belmont Report with its positivist roots does not cater for assessing the ethicality of other epistemologies and methodologies (Clark 2013). Scholars like Romm (2018) and Castro-Reyes et al. (2017) have critiqued The Belmont Report and argued for amendments that would accommodate studies within the transformative paradigm and community engagement research. Continuing the discussion, Clark (2013) argued that “…ethical decision-making in visual research should be considered with regard to epistemological approaches, specific research

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contexts, and in relation to researchers’ and participants’ own moral frameworks” (2). The arguments raised by these scholars validate the need for researchers working within other paradigms and methodologies not represented in The Belmont Report to rethink their research practice. This would be important in addressing the inherent ethical issues that come with conducting research in marginalized spaces with people on the periphery of society (Smith 2013), while using participatory and visual methodologies. While I did my best to adhere to the guidelines provided by the Research Ethics Committee in accordance with The Belmont Report, the context of my study, my participants, and the research phenomena could not fit the tick-box mechanism created for evaluating the ethicality of research projects. This created challenges for me to convince the ethics review board that my study was and would remain ethical. Clark (2013) also faced similar challenges based on the statement that there was “a lack of familiarity among ethical review panels with regards to methods and methodologies, the nature of the data they collect and analyze, and the inappropriateness of existing, normative ethical frameworks” (19). Despite these challenges and eventually convincing the ethics review board, I was not prepared for the situated challenges during the fieldwork!

In the Field My study was conducted in the district of Quthing in the southern part of Lesotho. This district was chosen because of my knowledge of the villages, the people, and their chiefs. The village chief had to give permission for me to talk to the elderly participants in his village. Thus, I had to ensure that I was dressed respectably or ethically, in accordance with Basotho (people of Lesotho) ways of female dress. This was critical for me because having grown up with two brothers and working in the city, I mostly wear clothing deemed as masculine. I was aware that I could not address the chief or the participants in my typical jeans and t-shirt. I had to wear dresses that would cover up my chest and go below the knee in length. Such dress style is a sign of respect for women, especially in the presence of authority figures or men.

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I needed to have a sponsor or a respected member of the community vouching for me and my intentions within the village. I was fortunate to have relatives of high standing within the village who accompanied me to the chief. They also told me what to bring to the chief as an offering for his beneficence. Once the chief accepted me and my research, he informed me of the possible elderly people I could talk to. According to Research Ethics Committees in universities in line with The Belmont Report, a researcher should maintain anonymity. However, in the context of my research, the chief and his council knew who I would be talking to as they were the ones who selected the participants. The topics that I wanted to talk to the elders about were sensitive topics that required me to win their trust before engaging in the research. Thus, I arranged the research process into three phases: preparation, engagement, and debriefing phases. The purpose of the preparation phase was to create rapport between myself and the participants so that they could understand the purpose of my inquiry. This phase was crucial because it enabled the participants to ask questions about me and the study. The participants wanted to know how they could relate to me and thus asked questions regarding my relationships to people they knew within the village. For example, they asked me: “Remind me again; whose child did you say you are?” or “How are you related to Motalingoane at Likolobeng?” Acknowledging that I was one of their own made it easier for them to engage with me and they realized that I meant them no harm. While this was an important part of facilitating ethical practice in the research process, not much is said by Research Ethics Committees about the importance of relationality and the ethics of care within projects. The trust created by the knowledge that I belonged within the community allowed the participants to feel comfortable to talk about taboo and sensitive topics with me. I was left wondering what would have happened if I were researching such sensitive topics in a context with which I could not relate. What challenges would I have faced, and would I have been granted access into the field? During the engagement phase, I was always aware that the participants were my elders and I had to show them respect. In Basotho culture, children should respect (ho hlonepha1) their elders. To show respect (hlompho2), a child could never question an adult nor negate their orders

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(Sekese 2002). Thus, I was always aware of my tone and questioning skills so that I did not appear confrontational or disrespectful. In every aspect of the engagement phase, I ensured that the participants knew that I was asking questions to gain further knowledge about my roots as a Mosotho woman, and not to antagonize them. My interest in knowing more about the traditional practices of the Basotho regarding gender and sexuality seemed to endear me to the elderly participants who claimed that young people were no longer interested in their cultures. The engagement phase was rather tricky because I used a church hall in the village, and we often had uninvited visitors who wanted to see what was happening. It was challenging to tell them that they were not welcome, without offending their sensitivities or appearing aloof and disrespectful. It became crucial to keep the doors locked to avoid interruptions and to protect the participants’ anonymity and data confidentiality. However, I was uncomfortable doing this as it felt like the participants were prisoners. It also felt as if I was doing something illegal or wrong with the participants. One great challenge that I faced during this phase was when I had to refuse entry to the church hall for a member of council who wanted to listen to the discussions. My dilemma was how to practice the principle of respect for elders while also practising ethical research with my participants. I explained that I was not allowed to let any member of public enter the hall if they were not participating. To make the councillor understand, I gave an example of pitiki (a feast to celebrate the birth of a child in a village, attended only by married mothers). While the whole village would know that there was such a celebration, not everyone was allowed into the celebration room. This example worked for me because the councillor did not pursue his request. This became another proof that familiarity with the research context and culture is crucial for ethical research practice. I used traditional artefacts and visuals with the participants to prompt their discussions regarding traditional practices on gender and sexuality. Examples of the artefacts used included bead-skirts for young girls, spears, shields, clay pots, and a grass-sieves for traditional beer. When participants saw and touched the different artefacts, they were able to recall stories and events about Basotho culture. It was interesting to note that the male participants were not comfortable with touching the girls’

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bead-­skirts or other feminine pieces of traditional clothing. It would have been difficult to understand why the men behaved this way, had I not been raised within the same society. This enabled me to engage ethically with both men and women because I understood their ways of being and doing things. I understood what it meant to be respectful of traditional practices and people. The visuals that I used included some photographs of coming-out ceremonies for boys and girls during their traditional initiation school graduation. These were photographs that I had downloaded from the internet and were in the public domain (see Figs. 8.1 and 8.2). I used these photographs to solicit information regarding the traditional initiation school as a rite of passage. However, due to their age, some participants thought they could recognize the people in the photos. Thus, I had to assure them that the region of the country where the photographs were taken from was not theirs, to convince them that the photographs were not of their children. Using visuals in research like I did could be useful in eliciting conversations

Fig. 8.1  Female initiates (https://www.google.com/search?q=traditional+initiati on+ceremonies+Lesotho&tbm)

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Fig. 8.2  Male initiates (https://www.google.com/search?q=traditional+initiation +ceremonies+Lesotho&tbm)

about sensitive topics with participants. However, they can also prove challenging if research participants do not understand the purpose of using them and how they are to be used. I had to promise the elderly participants that I would not take their photographs without their consent, nor would I use any of their visuals without them knowing. Some participants loved the printed photos of the coming-out ceremonies so much that they asked to keep them. I promised they could keep the photos once the research engagement was done. I felt I could give them the photos because they were not copyrighted and were in the public domain. What would I have done if the photos were not publicly available? When we were done with generating data for the study, I arranged a debriefing session for the participants, in which I asked them of any anxieties which could have arisen due to their engagement in the study. The debriefing session proved essential in getting the participants to acknowledge the difficulty they had had, talking about sensitive and taboo topics that touched on their belief systems. While the participants had been

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selected by the chief ’s council as the most knowledgeable people regarding Basotho traditions and cultural practices, the participants had fears of being labelled as deviant, or witches, by talking about topics regarded as taboo and sensitive. They explained their discomfort in talking about the connections between gender, sexuality, disease, witchcraft, traditional beliefs, and death. Some participants asked me to vouch that the community would never know what each one had said during the discussions, despite having talked about confidentiality of the data produced. While I understood their discomfort, I was aware that the chief could want to know how the study went. So, in preparation for reporting to the chief, I asked the participants what information they would like me to share with him. I was fortunate that the chief did not ask for details, because I would have been bound by respect to tell him whatever he wanted to know.

What Does It Mean? In this section I draw meanings from the narrative presented in the fieldwork and discuss what I learnt along the way. I discuss my learning under two themes namely, informed consent and anonymity and confidentiality.

Informed Consent As discussed in previous sections, my university uses The Belmont Report as a guideline for ethical research practice. This report is underpinned by three key principles: beneficence, justice, and respect for people. Thus, I was bound by these three principles to ensure that I respected my participants, treated them with respect and justice, while also ensuring that no harm came to them due to participating in my study. As indicated, the phenomena for the study are constructed as taboo and sensitive. Thus, my participants were at risk of being labelled and blamed if the community got to know what they had said about any of the topics. Among the Basotho, knowing about cases in which witchcraft was alleged to have been practiced or being knowledgeable about certain deviant practices

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would have made my participants vulnerable to punishment and violence (Mace 2018; Mofuoa 2021; Mokotso 2015). I was also at risk of being labelled as a witch due to my interest in the intersection of gender and sexuality with witchcraft. While the research phenomena were interesting for me and for the knowledge-producers to talk about, I had to keep reassuring the community and the chief that my search for knowledge was for purposes of research and gaining better understanding. According to The Belmont Report’s informed consent, participants are supposed to be informed about the purpose of research and consent voluntarily to being part of it. They should also be informed of their duty to provide the researcher with information relevant to the study, which the researcher could use to generate findings which might be disseminated to different audiences. What was problematic for me in terms of informed consent was that the participants did not necessarily volunteer. They were chosen and ordered by the chief and his council to take part in the study. To address consent issues, I ensured that I communicated the aims and scope of the study and asked the participants whether they still wanted to participate. The consent given after being given information was taken as informed consent. However, as stated by Clark (2013), consent could have different meanings in different cultural contexts. I could not guarantee that the consent given by my participants was voluntary or whether they participated out of respect to the chief. Despite all these challenges, I had no option of selecting a different set of participants or advertising the study for people to volunteer. Doing this would have been tantamount to disrespecting the chief and his council. While I was grateful to the chief and his council for identifying older people in the village who had the necessary knowledge, I was worried that this identification could create vulnerability for the participants if the information about the study got leaked. Thus, to protect the participants against this, I never mentioned my interest in the connection of witchcraft to the other concepts. I was wrong to hide the full story of the study, but I had to protect my participants from possible stigmatization and persecution (Gill 1997; Rosenberg and Weisfelder 2013). Another challenge was that as stated by Ngalomba and Harpur (2016), many African women who manage to grow old are targeted and stigmatized as witches. Working with elderly women in this study was problematic in that I was

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working with people who were already suspect by virtue of their age. Despite this challenge, I could not work with younger women because they would not have the richness of knowledge that I needed. This strengthened my resolve not to mention witchcraft as one of the phenomena of interest in the study. I kept reassuring the community members and the chief that I only wanted to learn more about Basotho culture. The use of feminine artefacts with male participants proved problematic as well. Could I assume that they had consented to touching all artefacts? What did they consent to and what was not included in their consent? I asked myself these questions when I realized that the male participants were extremely uncomfortable in handling or touching some artefacts that were historically feminine. To eliminate their discomfort, I placed such artefacts on a table for them to look at. While this also proved problematic, it was better received. The Basotho have very strong beliefs in the power inherent in feminine sexuality (Mofuoa and Khau 2022), and thus female clothing artefacts of an intimate nature like the bead-­ skirts were taboo among the men. The participants consented to providing information and for me to disseminate the findings from their data. Despite their trust that I would represent their stories and views positively, I was always aware that they could represent their stories better than I could. This challenge was also identified by Chilisa (2009) and de Lange (2021) regarding the often deficit representation of knowledge-producers’ stories by researchers. According to de Lange (2021), such representations perpetuate deficit discourses about the participant communities. I have not been able to address this challenge because my participants did not want to be known, and thus they could not be asked to present their stories in dissemination activities. What I could do was to ensure that I represented their stories as authentically as possible.

Anonymity and Confidentiality According to The Belmont Report, researchers are expected to maintain anonymity of participants and the data they share. They are also expected to ensure that the produced data remains confidential so that it could not

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be traced back to its producer. However, in my study, the participants were not anonymous as they were known to the whole village. The knowledge they produced was kept anonymous by removing their names and any identifying information so that I was the only one who knew what each person had said. However, this could not guarantee that the participants would not be known if the villagers read the findings of the study, because village living made it possible for people to know each other thoroughly (Khau 2012). Keeping the produced knowledge confidential was made easier by the participants opting not to have their experiences and knowledge credited to them. They were comfortable with me representing the findings of the study in any dissemination activities, without acknowledging their names. Copies of the data were also anonymized and kept locked to avoid unwarranted access. The two practices of anonymity and confidentiality have been questioned by Clark (2013) who argued for “…the questioning of taken-for-­ granted practices such as anonymization and confidentiality…” (6). I am not sure how I would have protected the participants from harm had they opted to have their names attached to the knowledge they had produced. I would not have been able to protect them from the stigma and discrimination attached to those deemed as deviant within the village.

Conclusion In this paper I have presented how I facilitated ethical participatory visual research on taboo issues such as gender, sexuality, death, and witchcraft within cultural spaces. I have highlighted the challenges that I faced in dealing with such phenomena and how I addressed them during the course of the study. I have discussed how I facilitated narrative storytelling with elderly participants to explore constructions of gender and sexual identities within their society, to understand the connections between such constructions and the practice of witchcraft. Based on this engagement, I have discussed the lessons I have learnt about ethical research practice. This research engagement allowed me to understand the importance of knowing the research context thoroughly in terms of the discourses,

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culture, and practices. This proved useful in my study because it enabled me to handle the participants with care while also being true to the aim of the study. I have learnt that one could learn about a context even if they are outsiders. Taking time to create rapport and understand the needs of the participants together with their practices is an invaluable resource that is not necessarily engraved in The Belmont Report, nor is it emphasized by university Research Ethics Committees. Thus, I would add to the voices arguing for a rethinking of using The Belmont Report, such that researchers and institutions see the need and value of “taking a cup of tea” with the participants before engaging in knowledge production.

Notes 1. “Ho hlonepha” (verb), to respect 2. “Hlompho” (noun), respect

References Bello, O.S. 2020. The accusation of elderly women as witches in Nigeria. Master’s research paper, International Institute of Social Studies, Netherlands. https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/55496/RP_S._Bello_pdf. Castro-Reyes, P., J.  Cooks, E.  Drew, K.  Edwards, E.  Freeman, M-L.  Isaacs, A. Park, L. Sablan-Santos, S.D. Seifer, N. Shore, and E. Wat. 2017. Research ethics reconsidered in the context of community-engaged research: Proposed revisions to the Belmont report and federal regulations guiding the ­protection of research participants. https://www.ccphealth.org/wp-­content/ uploads/2017/10/Research_Ethics_Reconsidered_final.pdf. Accessed 9 Oct 2020. Chilisa, B. 2009. Indigenous African-Centered ethics: Contesting and complementing dominant models. In The handbook of social research ethics, ed. D.M. Mertens and P.E. Ginsberg, 407–425. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Clandinin, J., and M. Connelly. 2000. Narrative inquiry: Experience and story in qualitative research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Clark, A. 2013. Visual ethics in a contemporary landscape. In Advances in visual methodologies, ed. S. Pink, 16–37. London: Sage.

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De Lange, N. 2021. Going public? Decolonizing research ethics with girls and young women. In Visual research with girls: Transnational approaches, ed. R. Moletsane, L. Wiebesiek, A. Treffry-Goatley, and A. Mandrona, 21–42. Berghahn Books. Dehm, S., and J. Millbank. 2019. Witchcraft accusations as gendered persecution in refugee law. Social & Legal Studies 28 (2): 202–226. https://doi. org/10.1177/0964663917753725. Epprecht, M. 2000. “This matter of women is getting very bad”: Gender, development, and politics in colonial Lesotho. Durban: University of Natal Press. Ghorbani, M. 2015. Witchcraft accusations perpetuate women’s oppression in sub-Saharan Africa. AWID. https://www.awid.org/news-­and-­analysis/ witchcraft-­accusations-­perpetuate-­womens-­oppression-­sub-­saharan-­africa. Accessed 23 Sept 2021. Gill, S. 1997. Introductory essay: A brief sketch of the life and times of Eugene Casalis. In The Basutos, ed. E.  Casalis, 5–48. Morija: Morija Museum and Archives. Hincks, C.W. 2017. Exploring African mysticism through a transcendental theology: A Rahnerian reading of Sotho spirit possession. Unpublished master’s thesis, University of St. Michael’s College, Canada. Igwe, L. 2020. Ending witch persecutions and gender-based violence in Nigeria. Sahara Reporters. http://saharareporters.com/2020/06/20/ending-­witch-­ persecution-­and-­gender-­based-­violence-­nigeria-­leo-­igwe. Accessed 25 Sept 2021. Kgatla, S. 2020. Addicts of gender-based violence: Patriarchy as the seedbed of gendered witchcraft accusations. Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae 46 (3): 1–18. https://doi.org/10.25159/2412-­4265/7729. Khau, M. 2012. Sexuality education in rural Lesotho schools: Challenges and possibilities. Sex Education: Sexuality, Society and Learning 12 (4): 411–423. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681811.2012.677210. ———. 2021. Being and becoming a woman in Lesotho: An autoethnography of belonging. In Women and fairness: Navigating an unfair world, ed. E.  Lambertsson-Björk, J.  Eschenbach, and J.  Wagner, 177–192. Munster: Waxman. Letsosa, R., and K. Semenya. 2011. A pastoral investigation of the phrase ‘go tloša Setšhila’ [traditional purification] as the last phase in the process of bereavement mourning amongst the Basotho. Verbum et Ecclesia 32 (1): 1–7. https://doi.org/10.4102/v32i1.489.

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9 Facilitating a “Virtual Space” for Social Change During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Working with High-Risk Population Using an Arts-Informed Method Zehra Melike Palta

Introduction With the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments across the world have tried to contain the spread of the virus through implementing various public health measures including the closure of borders and institutions. These measures have also impacted academic research since studies requiring face-to-face interactions for data collection were deemed too risky. In Canada, researchers were required to find alternative ways of working with the participants while respecting the public health measures and orders. Given the restrictions, digital tools and virtual platforms became potential spaces to access and conduct research with participants.

Z. M. Palta (*) University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Burkholder et al. (eds.), Facilitating Visual Socialities, Social Visualities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25259-4_9

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As participatory methods place an emphasis on “collaborative research practices…to produce knowledge in collaboration” (Bergold and Thomas 2012, 195), a transition to virtual platforms created challenges in effectively facilitating these collaborations. Because participatory approaches to digital methods are still emerging (Archibald et al. 2019), there is limited information on best practices for working remotely with “vulnerable” individuals from refugee backgrounds using participatory methods. Given the unexpected requirement to transition to remote research practices because of the pandemic, in this article, I reflect on my experiences navigating my university’s institutional ethics process, transitioning my participatory visual research project with Turkish and Kurdish asylum seekers to a virtual platform, and the challenges that I have encountered in facilitating digital focus groups. This reflection aims to demonstrate that although participatory arts-informed methods are usually done in-­ person, virtual platforms can also provide an alternative way of carrying out research with transformative possibilities. Engaging virtual platforms for research also brings up new complexities surrounding issues of ownership and the representation of participants’ visual artefacts, marginalized group participants access to digital research platforms, and struggles relating to maintaining power balances between the participants and the researcher due to the researcher’s (in this case, my) multiple identities. Using my own experiences navigating both the institutional research ethics board and participants’ expectations, I argue for the inclusion of participants’ voices in the institutional ethics framework to mediate the disjuncture between ethics board requirements (e.g. ideas around anonymity) and the principles of participatory visual methods (e.g. participant ownership of knowledge produced). Lastly, I argue that although participatory methods have the intention of fostering transformation in the lives of participants, participants’ trauma and a researchers’ own positionality and experiences may impact opportunities for conflict resolution during tensions that may arise in the research. In my work, I explore how this happened in the case of virtual focus groups.

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Research Context In the last ten years, at least 100 million people have been forcibly displaced, either inside or outside of the borders of their country, due to various conflicts and crises in various parts of the world (The United Nations Refugee Agency 2020). There has been an upward trend in the number of displaced individuals between the years 2010 and 2019, respectively, from 41.1 million to 79.5 million in the span of 9 years (The United Nations Refugee Agency 2020). Since 2015, Canada has received significant numbers of Kurdish and Turkish asylum claimants arriving from Turkey to seek protection in Canada; however, the post-migration experiences of Kurdish and Turkish individuals from refugee backgrounds are not well explored in the literature. Furthermore, individuals from refugee backgrounds have been often labelled as dependent, vulnerable, or “Other” and presented as a national threat to Canadian values and its economy (Olsen et al. 2014). Media discourses displaying stereotypical representations and the criminalization of migrants lead to negative views of migrants in the host communities (Eberl et al. 2018). My arts-­ informed, participatory study with Kurdish and Turkish young adults from refugee backgrounds aimed to provide them with a platform to produce artefacts to represent and interpret their own post-migration experiences in Canada as counter-narratives to these discourses.

Positioning the Researcher Our lived experiences shape and inform our ideas and beliefs about political and social issues. This awareness is particularly important as researchers as it allows us to question what we are bringing to our inquiry. Having arrived at age 9 in Canada after being separated from my father for close to 4 years due to forced migration, I experienced several challenges: language barriers, separation trauma, cultural conflict, discrimination, and navigating an unknown space in life and an academic world on my own. I grew up observing my parents’ struggles to provide us a comfortable life and ensuring that we completed post-secondary education. I also observed their silence and inability to resist exclusionary acts within society when

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they worked so hard to exist and to be seen. Growing up, I internalized these three concepts: silence, exist, and be seen. As I became aware of how discriminatory and racist discourses continue to restrict marginalized communities in accessing spaces to raise their “voice” and produce counter-narratives, I aimed to disrupt these silences in my research study. I positioned the study within a transformative paradigm which encourages researchers to advocate action to bring about change in the lives of marginalized groups. Within my project, participants were not seen as passive but rather as co-constructors of knowledge and transformation. Participants worked with me as co-­ researchers and co-facilitators and engaged in different aspects of the study, such as guiding focus group session discussions, determining the number of sessions that we should meet, and engaging in participatory data analysis through critical group dialogues. Thus, I resisted the notion of working on individuals from refugee backgrounds and embraced the notion of working with them, as creating a space to share their stories “in collaborative, co-productive, and genuinely participatory ways, is an ethical and a political act” (Lenette 2019, vii). This perspective also allowed me to take the position of listener rather than main facilitator in charge in the focus groups as the platform was theirs to share, inquire, and resist their experiences of marginalization through producing counter-­ narratives. My personal experiences of forced migration and trauma, the conflict between my role as a researcher, and my positioning as an insider-­ outsider shaped the design of my study and the ways I facilitated the virtual focus groups.

 dapting My Methodological Approach A in the Pandemic Over the last few decades, the nature of research has changed as “the tools we employ to collect data and display findings have been diversified to include artistic as well as traditionally scientific methods” (Cahnmann-­ Taylor 2008, 3). Arts-based methods became widely used in recent years through the acceptance of postmodern approaches to research (Cahnmann-Taylor 2008) and the recognition of different forms of

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knowledge (Daykin 2004). Leavy (2015) argues that there are similarities between qualitative research and artistic practice as both qualitative researchers and artists “aim to illuminate something about the social world, sensitively portray people and their circumstances, develop new insights about the relationship between our sociohistorical environments and our lives, or disrupt dominant narratives and challenge biases” (17). It is important to distinguish arts-informed research from arts-based research as arts-informed method is “influenced by, but not based in, the arts” (Cole and Knowles 2012, 60) and has the purpose of “[enhancing] understanding of the human condition through alternative (to conventional) processes and representational forms of inquiry, and to reach multiple audiences by making scholarship more accessible” (Cole and Knowles 2012, 60). As I positioned my research within a transformative paradigm, the use of participatory arts-informed methods allowed me to work collaboratively with participants to illuminate their experiences through their own representation and interpretation while advocating for social change. Coemans et al. (2015) explain that arts-based methods originated from “the practice of creative arts therapy” (33). Arts therapy has the intention of using “drawing, painting, collage, and sculpting to shape and express feelings, thoughts and memories…[and] elicit a process of change, development, and acceptance…” (Schouten et al. 2014, 220–221). Arts-­ informed methods are being widely used by qualitative researchers to explore the experiences of individuals from refugee backgrounds. For example, Robertson et al. (2016) explored the settlement experiences of refugee youth in Australia by engaging youth in capturing photographs of their environment and reflecting on the photographs. This process provided youth the chance to visualize their experiences and provide “a more nuanced perspective of [the] migration process” (Robertson et al. 2016, 46). Other scholars have used visual methods to explore the identity construction and trauma of refugee children (Beauregard et al. 2017), resilience of Sudanese refugee women (Pearce et al. 2016), learning and migration experiences of refugee women (Brigham et al. 2018), and psychosocial adjustment of young refugee youth (Kim et al. 2015). The use of arts-informed methods with individuals from refugee backgrounds not only provides participants the opportunity to share their experiences

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through multimodal representations, but it also “[connects] the work of the academy with the life and lives of communities through research that is accessible, evocative, embodied, empathic, and provocative” (Cole and Knowles 2012, 61). My research study included ten Kurdish and Turkish participants, aged between 18 and 30 years, who had arrived in Canada in the last five years as asylum seekers. I did not have difficulty with participant recruitment as I volunteered with asylum claimants at a community centre in Toronto and I had already established a trustworthy relationship within the community. Being a community member, speaking the same language (Turkish), and having the same cultural background as my participants were important factors in establishing this relationship. After one-on-one interviews to learn about their personal backgrounds, participants participated in seven focus group sessions occurring digitally twice a week between the months of April and May 2020. At these digital focus groups, participants shared artefacts and accompanying reflections on their post-­ migration experiences in Canada. At the end of the focus group sessions, participants were individually interviewed to explore their experiences in the study. The participants were involved in not only producing artefacts to represent their experiences and share them with the focus group members to open up critical dialogue about their experiences, but they also decided on the number of workshops needed to cover their experiences and engaged in participatory data analysis. Although originally eight sessions were planned, they decided to eliminate one of the sessions on their future aspirations as they agreed that they already had plentiful discussions about their future goals in the previous focus groups. Participants also engaged in participatory data analysis through two different ways. Using Wang and Burris’ (1997) foundation for participatory data analysis, participants engaged in the data analysis through selecting the artefacts, such as photos, that are representative of their experience to open door for dialogue, contextualizing the artefacts in which they discuss the meaning behind their artefact, and codifying artefacts for prominent themes that they want to highlight as there may be different interpretations attached to artefacts. Secondly, participants identified main themes that emerged from each workshop, compared each other’s experiences to

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highlight similarities and differences, and discussed how the findings of the research can be brought to wider audiences. As a result of closures and social distancing measures due to the pandemic, I had to adapt my research design to conduct the interviews and facilitate the focus group virtually. As the population that I worked with is considered “vulnerable,” I had to ensure that my choice of virtual platform was able to have the necessary functions for me to protect participants’ privacy. To ensure that only participants accessed the virtual platform, the meetings were password-secured and participants were only admitted into the meeting room through my permission. Other functions included the ability to disallow automatic screen sharing, to mute speakers, to engage the chat function for transfer of artefacts to the host or share their artefact via a screen share function, and to remove participants’ names. Another adaptation that had to be done to the study was the transition from a photo-based data collection to a multimodal project. Originally, I wanted to conduct a photo-based study to get participants to document their lives in multiple contexts. As the photo-based component of the study required participants to be out in public to take their photographs, there was a potential risk of being exposed to the coronavirus. Although I could have discontinued the visual component of the study and carried out only interviews, this decision would have gone against the study’s objectives to provide a platform for participants to represent for themselves their post-migration experiences. I decided that I could not remove the visual component which allowed participants to produce counter-­ narratives through the use of images and narratives when they may have been previously dismissed from such platforms as they are often positioned in visual media as the subject and rarely “as the photographers of their own journeys” (Robertson et al. 2016, 34). It was with this intention that I explored other research tools that might still provide the opportunity to represent their experiences and their reflections. Upon reflecting, I decided that giving participants the choice of mode of representation, whether they want to share poetry, music, photographs, sculpture, or dance, should be left to the participants as their choice is not only a reflection of their experiences, but also their identity. Furthermore, with the shift to a virtual platform for the focus groups and interviews, the

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artefacts (such as lyrics with music, sculptures, videos) they shared on screen were saved as “screenshots.” These screenshots became “digital images” reflecting not only their experiences but also the process of facilitating research during a pandemic. This shift in method also provided for me the opportunity to reflect on my approach to the study and brought up new ways of thinking about participant agency in the creative process and the meanings associated with “images” in research conducted over a virtual platform.

 avigating Institutional Ethics Process: Making N Them (In)visible? Media discourses “[establish] refugees as the picture, and they remain positioned at the immutable and silenced end of the camera lens” (Robertson et al. 2016, 35). The production of images in research, in particular those that are taken by refugees themselves, allows them to reposition themselves and expose how they see the resettlement society, as “…the images portray a view that is directly related to how they see the world around them, and they make their own worldview visible” (Alpers 1983; Latour 1986 as cited in Robertson et al. 2016, 35–36). Visual artefacts played a key role in my study as participants were asked to capture and document their experiences related to various resettlement topics using tools such as photography. Participants interpreted and reflected on their artefacts, which were mainly photographs captured by them, representing their experiences in Canada. The use of visual material played a key role in the focus groups as the group dialogue took form and was shaped by the artefacts shared. Although providing opportunities to individuals from refugee backgrounds allows them to produce artefacts, such as photographs, to make their world and worldview visible, it also creates challenges in seeking approval from the institutional research ethics boards as they are seen as a “vulnerable” population. Due to the “vulnerability” of the participants, institutional research ethics boards require researchers to protect the privacy and confidentiality of participants. The level of vulnerability is

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determined using a risk matrix which considers participants’ legal and socio-economic status, their pre-existing physical and mental health conditions, and emotional factors at my institution. Arts-based research designs face the requirement of anonymizing the participants to protect “vulnerable” refugee participants (Lenette 2019). I had to go through months of protocol revisions as I was asked to provide explanations on how I would be addressing legal and psychological risks, as well as the privacy of my participants. Perry’s (2007) questions about these processes reflect my thoughts as I tried to navigate the encounter of vulnerability, anonymity, and arts-informed research in working with individuals from refugee backgrounds in the digital realm: Why is anonymity the ‘default’ assumption in research? What is privacy, and who really is being protected by current guidelines for anonymity? What does it mean to ‘protect’ participants? Why is anonymity truly necessary, and when does it actually silence participants’ voices? …Who should have control over issues in naming and anonymity in research-researchers, IRBs, or the participants themselves? (138)

Although visuals are used widely in research, one of the main questions I received from the institutional ethics board was on how I would be removing the identifiers from the photographs that were captured by the participants given their level of “vulnerability.” Despite expressing that this research is participatory and that I will be giving participants the option to choose whether they want to be displayed and make themselves be “visible” to the public, I had to make the decision to conform and blur the faces of participants to receive the protocol approval. Hence, even before discussing the anonymity requirement with participants, the decision was made for them due to the requirement. When I first met with the participants and expressed that I would be blurring their faces in publications and for research dissemination, they indicated that they did not fear being identified. They were more engaged with the idea that they will take the spotlight and share their experiences to encourage systemic change so that asylum seekers arriving in the future will not go through similar experiences of marginalization and exclusion. During the focus groups, they chose to share their visual materials with each other without

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anonymizing their faces and agreed to not share the visual materials and reflections shared with third-party individuals. Nevertheless, although they wanted to be visible outside of the focus group, the anonymity requirement took away their choice and silenced their consent around their own visibility.

Making Them (In)audible? The transition to a virtual platform required participants to have certain technological and logistical tools to ensure full participation in the study. For my study, logistical and technological requirements included having a functioning microphone and camera, access to the internet, access to a telephone or computer that is compatible with the communication app (Zoom), and familiarity with these tools. As seen in other studies (Taftaf and Williams 2020; Halkic and Arnolds 2019) and as I observed while recruiting participants, individuals from refugee backgrounds may face difficulties in accessing resources, such as access to technology. During the recruitment stage, I was contacted by two participants who were refugee claimants and who were very enthusiastic about participating in the project and sharing their experiences. I set up a time and date for one-on-one interviews with them via email. On the day of the interviews, I started the digital meeting and waited for the participants to join. They soon got in contact over email to share that they did not have access to a laptop and their cellphones were not able to open the app. Over email communication, we identified that the problem was due to the incompatibility of their phone with the communication app. As the focus groups were going to take place over this communication app, as accepted by my REB, these participants expressed that they had no other option but to withdraw from the study. This situation made me reflect on the inclusivity of virtual research. Being a graduate student, I did not have the financial means or funding to be able to purchase required technology to ensure that all participants are able to participate in the study. Although virtual communication apps provide an alternative way of conducting research while adhering to the pandemic measures, these apps can lead to the exclusion of marginalized participants who are unable to

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access the required technological and logistical tools to fully participate in the study.

Facilitation Around Trauma Once all participants were recruited and had engaged in one-on-one interviews, they were placed in focus groups to share artefacts and explain what they wanted to portray about their experiences as Turkish and Kurdish refugees through the artefacts. Within these focus groups, I mainly acted as the listener and allowed the participants to facilitate and shape the discussion. After each individual presented and reflected on their (art)efact related to the session, participants initiated and maintained conversations by posing questions about each other’s experiences that were captured through the (art)efact. These conversations allowed them to reflect on the similarities and differences between each other’s experiences, identify their needs and concerns, and propose ways to overcome the issues. At the beginning of the focus groups, I explained that participants could comment on each other’s experiences, ask questions, or remain silent if they did not want to discuss certain topics. Participants took on the facilitator role and ensured the continuity of the discussion. Sometimes participants got disconnected from the app or their audio malfunctioned. Without me interfering to provide solutions to overcome these technological barriers, participants offered solutions so that individuals would be able to reconnect. They were patient with each other and ensured that the individual was able to establish a better internet connection, and that they would be able to continue where they left off in their narrative. When participants wanted each other to elaborate on their experiences, they asked permission to follow up with questions. I later learned that before asking questions publicly, some participants used the private chat function to ask each other whether their question would be appropriate to ask in the focus group. For example, two of the participants, Amed and Met, had a pre-existing relationship, and already knew each other. Met did not want to disclose his sexual identity at the beginning of the focus groups as he had previously experienced discrimination within

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his community. I was later informed that Amed used the private chat function to see whether Met would consent to him asking a question about how his sexual identity shaped his experience in Canada. Met gave him permission to ask this question out loud in the larger group. By respecting individuals’ lived experiences and gaining their consent before asking questions, participants were able to open up more about their experiences as well as display their emotions without the fear of being discriminated against or humiliated. As participants were able to demonstrate that they were both active listeners and facilitators, they established an inclusive virtual environment. These kinds of strategies—like asking for consent within a private message—were some of the affordances of the digital focus group. This high level of comfort in the group led some individuals to display their emotions about how difficult it was for them to be separated from their family and about the trauma of losing family members. When participants’ voices started to shake, I immediately tried to look into their image on the screen to figure out whether they were experiencing any psychological triggers. This was one of the challenges of carrying out research with individuals who experienced trauma over a virtual platform, as I could not read into their body language, see their facial expressions clearly, or react immediately to see whether they might need assistance. For example, at one point, participants were sharing about their social relationships and one of the participants shared an image of her parents. While she was explaining her relationship to her parents to the group, her voice started to shake. By the time I was able to figure out if she was crying, she started to apologize for crying, and shared that she could not hold back her tears as she missed her family. I then intervened and told her that she did not need to continue if she felt distressed, and later checked on her and provided a list of counselling services that she could attend. At the same time, other participants took on the role as a “support person” to provide comfort for her and to share their experiences in an attempt to uplift her mood. Although I share a similar lived experience of separation, I remained silent and did not disclose my experiences. As participants shared their stories of separation, longing, and passing of family members, I remember the firmness in my chest each time as I tried to hold it together and refrain from displaying my

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emotions. I did not feel comfortable disclosing my childhood trauma of separation at the moment. I felt that I was responsible for the participants’ wellbeing and that I needed to set my emotions aside to make sure that I provided them with support and resources. I reminded myself that I need to keep my emotional invisibility intact. As I stood at the intersection of being an individual from a refugee background with trauma and also a researcher, I tried to navigate the impact of shared lived experiences on myself and the participants. How could I remain neutral and invisible when I shared similar experiences of being separated from parents and loved ones? While self-disclosure might have strengthened the trust and weakened the power differentials between me and the participants, I was concerned with the psychological implications of my own story for the participants.

Tension Amongst Participants Participants had diverse experiences of oppression and discrimination in Turkey because of their identities. Due to the socio-political context in Turkey, Kurdish participants expressed that they experienced a heightened level of discrimination in Turkey compared to the Turkish participants. As a result, some participants revealed that they had to hide their Kurdish identity. Women’s movements in Turkey have been organizing to resist linguistic sexism, for example, the use of the word “bayan” (lady). They want society members to use the word “kadın” (woman) instead. These struggles were also reflected in the dialogues that took place in the focus groups. For example, this dialogue between two female participants—who were both Kurdish—took place: Cassandra: Because of the repressive environment in Turkey, I couldn’t even tell my identity…being Kurdish and Alevi…I was exposed to an immense level of racism…Only 1–2 people close to me knew it…That big of a repression. Clara: But why?…Why did you only say to those who were close to you? I am sorry but… (with raised eyebrows) It seems weird to me why we can’t tell our identity. Am I being wrong?

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Cassandra expanded on how the region she was studying in was very racist and violent towards Kurdish individuals. Clara: Did you then introduce yourself as being Turkish? Cassandra: No. I wouldn’t say anything. I would run away from explanation… Clara expanded on how she resisted the need to hide her Kurdish identity. Me: Dear peers, can I intervene? Clara: Do so. Do so. I am getting pissed off. Cassandra: Especially being a bayan (lady) in TurkeyClara: Kadın. Kadın. (Woman.Woman). Cassandra: Yes, being a woman. I am thinking in English and translating to Turkish. Clara: Let’s not do that. Let’s translate correctly. Cassandra: No, I am not going into the meaning. Clara: I believe meaning is important. Cassandra: Yes, I agree but it was because I was translating from English. —[translated from Turkish by author]

Although both Clara and Cassandra identified themselves as Kurdish women, Clara resisted the discriminatory perceptions of Turkish society and the need to hide her Kurdish identity. Although Cassandra did not declare herself to be a Turkish individual, she preferred to not disclose her Kurdish identity to Turkish people. As a result of their choice of disclosure of identity, a conflict arose between the two participants. For Clara, being visible and vocal as a Kurdish individual in the Turkish society was a form of resistance against racist and discriminatory policies and acts towards Kurdish people. For Cassandra, visibility meant that she could be exposed to violent acts. Furthermore, as can be seen in the dialogue above, the word choice between bayan and kadın also caused tension between Clara and Cassandra as Clara resisted linguistic sexism. Despite Cassandra explaining that her choice of words does not support linguistic sexism and that it was a result of language interference, the tension did not subside within the focus group. Reflecting on my responsibilities to the participants as a researcher, I had to ensure the participants’ wellbeing. I decided that I needed to intervene to cool the tension and release Cassandra from the pressure to

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continue the conversation. I decided to intervene in the dialogue. Seeking permission allowed me to affirm both participants’ agency in making the decision to continue the conversation or change the topic. Although at this moment Clara wanted me to intervene to change the topic, Cassandra herself decided to change the topic and expand on her experiences as a woman in Turkey. This resulted in the conflict of word choice between Clara and Cassandra. As I noticed that Cassandra did not want me to intervene by continuing to provide explanations, I went back to my position as a listener. After the session, Clara reached out later to me to forward her apologies to Cassandra for her statements. I forwarded her apology to Cassandra and checked on her wellbeing. She accepted the apology and told me that she felt safe to continue in the focus groups. While the conflict was occurring between Clara and Cassandra on identity, I chose to be silent at first and waited before trying to intervene. Firstly, the platform was provided to the participants to share their experiences of marginalization and discuss strategies to resist and transform this. Although Clara started her questioning with a tense voice, I decided to let her continue to seek answers to understand Cassandra’s perspective. Secondly, being an insider with knowledge on the sociopolitical context and the struggle of Kurdish minorities in Turkey, I knew the importance they placed on being visible and vocal about their Kurdish identity. I noticed that Clara’s reaction was a form of resistance to the oppressive politics that they had experienced in Turkey. As I am not a member of the Kurdish community, at that moment, I remained silent and reflected on the impact of what my intervention might cause because of my Turkish background. If I were to intervene and end the dialogue, would that have silenced her resistance? As I read Sugiman (2020)’s reflection on the silence of white Canadians to the racism towards Japanese-Canadians and Indigenous peoples, I now reflect back on my own positionality as a Turkish individual in the conflict among the participants. Sugiman (2020) expresses that while there is a focus on the “victims” of racist government policies, who are deemed as “objects of repair” (see Coulthard 2014 in Sugiman 2020), “the silence of white Canadians, in comparison, is not problematized, and the onus for understanding racism and racialization is on the ‘victims’ themselves” (78). While waiting for the conflict to end and using “silence” as a

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facilitation strategy, I assumed that my silence was a way of “empowering” the “silent” voices of Kurdish individuals as I was giving them the “space” to “resist.” I failed to reflect further on how the “silence” of Turkish individuals, including myself, has contributed to the deepening of the racism and oppression experienced by Kurdish individuals. I continue to reflect and question where my sense of entitlement to this “space” came from? Or how did I come to the conclusion that their voices were silent and that their silence represented the need to be empowered? While resistance was the action of “speaking out” for me, how did they define resistance? This failure of reflection in the field caused me to further pursue ineffective facilitation strategies. As Sugiman (2020) suggests, I placed the responsibility of understanding racism on participants, rather than problematizing my own understanding and positioning stemming from power imbalances and my privileged background. I was a bystander to their experiences and had the assumption that I was able to understand them as I had wrongfully assumed an insider position to their collective trauma.

Discussion Focusing on arts-informed participatory methods, I aimed to provide space for refugee participants to produce counter-narratives to liberate themselves from stereotypical representations and disseminate the project using the artefacts that they have created to represent their lived experiences. Due to the expectations of the institutional research ethics board related to anonymity and vulnerability, I reflected on how the REB’s expectations challenge participatory research principles. As I was trying to have my research ethics protocol approved, I questioned the extent to how “participatory” a study can be with “vulnerable” populations if the researcher is required to make decisions without the opinion and the agreement of all participants to have the protocol approved. Although I intended to provide them with the space to make their worlds “visible” through their produced artefacts, the institutional research ethics board’s push on “anonymity” made me decide to blur their faces without seeking participants’ views and agreement. By blurring their faces, did they

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become (in)visible in their own narratives and representations of their experiences? As Lenette (2019) states, the requirement to anonymize can “homogenize the lived experiences…completely ignoring Knowledge Holder’s sense of autonomy and agency…especially, in visual-based research, can be dehumanising and are at odds with participatory research principles…” (92). This might be a result of a lack of an “ethics framework framed by justice and human rights agendas and the recognition that research ethics are a dialogical process rather than set of prescribed rules” (Perry 2011, 90 see Lenette 2019, 101). To mediate between the principles of participatory visual methods and the ethics board, Lenette (2019) suggests that “a model of participatory determination of risks and benefits (106)” could be implemented in which participants can develop their own strategies to determine and address the risk and benefit from the research. She argues that this “participatory process would be more ethical than the currently pre-determined ‘compliance’ exercise” (106). Having a knowledge exchange between the participants, the researcher and the ethics board would allow the ethics board to gain a better understanding of visual methods and their complexities to be able to incorporate them to their current procedures and alter their requirements suitably (Cox et al. 2014). Although the development of critical consciousness is seen to be a desirable practice for participatory methods, it is important to note that the tensions might arise because of discomfort from an awakening to their participants’ current or past realities. Looking at the tension between two Kurdish female participants, although they were at different consciousness levels regarding the oppression they faced, the tension reflected the results of the colonial relationship between the Turkish and Kurdish individuals as some chose to remain silent about their identity to be “safe” while others resisted this “silence.” Although the conflict was resolved, my ineffective facilitation strategies were a result of the conflict I had regarding how I wanted to position myself in the colonial relationship between the Turkish and Kurdish individuals. Because of this colonial relationship, I realized it is important to be mindful and engage in trauma-informed research practices (see e.g. Nonomura et al. 2020) to not retraumatize participants while trying to engage them in developing their critical consciousness.

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Computer-mediated communication has logistical and technological challenges associated with it. At the same time, it creates the possibility to carry out transformative participatory research amidst a global pandemic. Digital focus groups provided participants with a platform to engage in critical dialogue and take action to transform their conditions. Nevertheless, researchers need to be aware that the marginalized communities with whom they seek to work might not have access to such technology and resources and therefore risk being excluded from academic research. Thus, while planning an online study which requires technology to access the research platform, consideration should be given to how appropriate resources can be provided to participants to ensure their full participation in the study. Furthermore, the use of online platforms raises different issues that need to be addressed with participants when carrying out visual methods. As participants may be sharing their art on their screen, some may be afraid of their art being reproduced and distributed without their consent by other participants. Clear guidelines and expectations should be established with the participants around copyright and ownership of visual materials. Because I only had access to the artefacts on online platforms, I was bound by using a screenshot to capture the visual materials. Poor internet connection or technological difficulties might cause the screenshot of visual materials to be distorted, therefore, not reflecting the artefact produced or shared by the participant. To ensure that the screenshot is representative of the original visual material, screenshots of the artefacts should be shared with the participant to ensure that it truly reflects the original art produced by the participant. Despite the challenges of carrying out participatory arts-informed research over a virtual platform, we were able to construct a virtual community. Those who were in Canada longer than others offered to share their knowledge on resettlement services, such as different language programmes, both in the focus groups and privately. During the post-focus group one-on-one interviews, participants expressed that they had positive experiences within the study and established relationships that they would want to maintain even after the research has ended. In this virtual community, participants were not passive actors in the process of knowledge construction but rather engaged in praxis (Freire 2011) to reflect on

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their situation and develop critical consciousness (Freire 2011) to identify the reality that shapes their lives and their ability to transform that reality. As they took on the role of co-facilitator of the focus groups, participants were able to shape the dialogue and focus in-depth on systemic barriers, such as limited access to education programmes and resettlement support, and how this shapes their experiences of marginalization. I wanted not only to encourage critical reflection but also give them a platform to collectively propose solutions to address their needs and concerns. Towards the end of each focus group session, I asked each participant to think about ways to change this reality, either through individual or collective action. This created enthusiasm among the participants as some of them expressed that their main intention in joining this study was to fuel “change” to transform their reality as well as the reality of other marginalized community members. As Ova and Hejan expressed: [The] last time we spoke, and I said that I wanted to become a bank employee. And all of you told me that I can work as a volunteer there. This made me feel so good that after that day, I focused more on learning English.—Ova [translated from Turkish by author] I learned a lot. I learned a lot from friends [focus group members]. They have more experience than me because they came early. It helped me a lot really…Especially Cassandra… we were both in the health sector…She came here, she finished [her studies] and she is working. This makes me feel better. It makes me motivated because I can go back to nursing program…Once I pass my hearing, I am going to get in contact for college application.—Hejan [translated from Turkish by author]

Their involvement in the research allowed them to reflect on their conditions and take action to transform their reality. Denzongpa et al. (2020) explain that although community-based participatory researchers aim for community empowerment through collaborative work with the community members, one cannot disregard the existence of power relations among the individuals involved in the research process. Positionality plays a crucial role in participatory artsinformed research as the researcher needs to take on a reflexive approach

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to be able to “identify strengths and limitations inherent to their identities, skills and knowledge, and how these affect research processes” (Lenette 2019, 14). In my study, I took on multiple positionalities: I had a shared social identity with the participants as an individual from a refugee background, and being an individual from Turkey. On the other hand, I was a researcher, a Turkish person, and a “Canadian.” There were a few instances where I was referred to as “Canadian” by the participants because I grew up here and spoke English like a “Canadian.” Even the way I spoke established a hierarchy of power, as speaking English without an accent demonstrated proximity to “whiteness” and the lack of being identified as a “refugee.” I am not white, I have an accent that can be noticed by “white” people, and I have been labelled as an “immigrant” and “refugee.” Thus, although I positioned myself as an insider due to our shared lived experiences and personal and migration backgrounds, I was positioned as an outsider by participants due to my English accent and my experiences in Canada. Even though my multiple positionalities allowed me to establish a meaningful relationship with the participants and build trust, it also cemented power differentials in the study. Participants were often reluctant to pronounce words in English or to comfortably share their knowledge about Canada without seeking my validation through using statements such as “you probably know this better” or “is this correct” or “correct me if I am wrong.” Although I tried to remain in the background during the study and allow participants to decide for the number of sessions, questions to ask each other, and facilitate the conversations, they positioned me in a place of authority whose knowledge was “valid” and can be acted upon. These were particularly evident during the one-on-one assistance sessions that I provided to my participants as an incentive for participating in my research as participants requested me to decide on their behalf on which language school programmes or post-secondary programmes they should attend. Thus, despite trying to balance power differentials, the way participants positioned me disrupted the balance of power in the research. Furthermore, in his article, Milner IV (2007) indicates that “How education research is conducted may be just as important as what is actually discovered in a study” (397). He argues that it is important for researchers to consider the way their cultural and racial backgrounds affect their

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experiences and how these experiences influence their interpretation of participants’ realities. Although one might consider that being from the same cultural and racial background as the participants has advantages for the researcher, it is crucial to acknowledge that there can be differences in the realities experienced. While I am considered as an individual from a refugee background like my participants, our experiences and realities in Canada are different due to our different roles and positions in the society. Hence, we may interpret realities differently. This acknowledgement becomes especially important as the portrayal of individuals from refugee backgrounds can be stereotyped to fit with the dominant discourses that promote the political environment. At this point, the use of visual methods becomes important as visual artefacts produced by the participants represent their realities without the researcher attributing his or her own interpretation. In my study, participants produced their visual artefacts and provided an explanation of what they intended to capture. I did not attach a meaning to their artefacts as my interpretation would have emerged from my own vantage point and my own interpretation of their experiences. Hence, visual methods allow participants to (re)gain their agency to disrupt stereotypical representation of their experiences and identities. It (re)centres the experiences of participants by providing an alternative space to represent and interpret their own reality and produce counter-narratives.

References Alpers, S. 1983. The art of describing: Dutch art in the seventeenth century. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Archibald, M.M., R.C. Ambagtsheer, M.G. Casey, and M. Lawless. 2019. Using zoom videoconferencing for qualitative data collection: Perceptions and experiences of researchers and participants. International Journal of Qualitative Methods 18: 1–8. Beauregard, C., G. Papazian-Zohrabian, and C. Rousseau. 2017. Making sense of collective identity and trauma through drawing: The case study of a Palestinian refugee student. Intercultural Education 28 (2): 113–130.

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10 Facilitating Gender-Affirming Participatory Visual Research in Embodied and Online Spaces Casey Burkholder , Amelia Thorpe and Pride/Swell

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Introduction How might participatory visual research with queer, trans, and non-­ binary youth be facilitated in gender-affirming ways across physical and digital spaces? What do these practices look like, and how might research facilitators adapt their practices in response to cisnormative language and binary physical spaces? This article describes the opportunities and challenges to facilitating visual research through the example of two projects with 2SLGBTQ+ youth. The first project, Where Are Our Histories (2018–2020), was a face-to-face participatory visual research project addressing the erasure of 2SLGBTQ+ people, experiences, and histories from the New Brunswick Social Studies curricula and classrooms. We also co-created media to interrupt these erasures with youth (aged 14–17) (Burkholder and Thorpe 2019) and later with teachers (Burkholder et al.

C. Burkholder (*) • A. Thorpe • Pride/Swell Faculty of Education, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Burkholder et al. (eds.), Facilitating Visual Socialities, Social Visualities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25259-4_10

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2021). The second project Pride/Swell is a distance, mail-based art, activism, and archiving project with 2SLGBTQ+ youth (aged 14–25) across Atlantic Canada (New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia and PEI). We ask, what are the opportunities and tensions to facilitating gender-affirming participatory visual research with queer, trans, and non-binary youth, including the archiving of participant produced art in embodied and online spaces? Sarah Switzer (2019) highlights the ways in which facilitation must be centred in an alignment between the participatory visual research aims and the communities which the research products seek to speak to. Switzer argues: To achieve greater congruence between paradigm and practice, it may be important to return to fundamental questions about the role of facilitation and the process of crafting and exhibiting images… in relation to one’s study aims. (Switzer 2019, p. 1)

We situate our own facilitation practice with a variety of visual methods—including cellphilm production (mobile film production in response to a prompt, see MacEntee et al. 2016, 2019), collage (Culshaw 2019), doll making, and participatory archiving (Burkholder 2018)—in the context of working with queer, trans, and non-binary youth within Atlantic Canada. Although a breadth of qualitative methodological literature—especially within counselling (see, e.g., Griffith et al. 2017a, b) and psychology (see, e.g., Johnson and Martínez Guzmán 2013)—considers ways of providing gender- and identity-affirming spaces within research, less is known about how participatory visual researchers facilitate research in gender-affirming ways. In the article, we look back on two projects located in Atlantic Canada to consider the ways that we have attempted to facilitate gender-affirming participatory visual research by resisting tokenism and structural violence through DIY (do-it-yourself ) strategies. We also describe the ways in which the experiences of facilitating Where Are Our Histories have shaped the co-facilitation strategies employed in a distance-based participatory visual research project, amidst COVID-19. Pride/Swell is a mail-based art and activism project

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facilitated at a distance with 50 2SLGBTQ+ youth (aged 15–25) from the Atlantic Canadian provinces as co-researchers to design, organize, and implement a youth-focused archive of youth-produced activist art. Pride/Swell was originally conceived of as a three-day workshop that would culminate in the co-curation of a travelling exhibition of youthproduced media (zines, stencils, cellphilms) about 2SLGBTQ+ youth-led political activism (see Burkholder et al. 2022). However, when COVID-19 restrictions prevented our in-person meeting, the research team adapted the methods for creating art, sharing political concerns, and building community at a distance. The primary goal of Pride/Swell is to bring 2SLGBTQ+ youth together across distances to create digital communities of Atlantic Canadian 2SLGBTQ+ art and activism through these online interactions. In this article, we describe how both projects required engaged attention to facilitating the public-facing visual outputs (zines, collages, facemasks, dioramas, dolls, postcards, stickers) in public spaces, both embodied and online. We offer strategies for facilitating affirming research spaces and negotiating cisnormative, transphobic, and homophobic discourses in person and online. We do not suggest that we know what is best for gender-affirming research, but we offer some strategies that have worked (and failed) in our context.

Context Drawing on the work of Gaztambide-Fernández (2013), Sarah Switzer (2018) writes that participatory visual researchers are in the strange position of having to “defend the use of the visual in our work” (194), while overstating what Gaztambide-Fernandez calls “discourses of effects” (214), including the ways that participatory visual researchers regularly claim that using the visual can lead to social change (see, e.g., Mitchell et al. 2017). Switzer argues that in defending the use of the visual, participatory visual researchers may risk minimizing the social and political contexts they are co-producing. Switzer notes that participatory visual researchers should think about the “claims we are making in the name of PVMs that might otherwise ‘curtail such complexity’?” (194). Cowan and Rault refer to José Esteban Muñoz’s (1996) discussion of “the

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conservative scholarly ‘ideology called rigor’—that is, the attack based on the accusation that queer scholarship is never rigorous enough—familiar to those of us who might have some experience working in a transmisogynist, homophobic, white supremacist, and patriarchal academic culture” (Cowan and Rault 2018, 128). Facilitating participatory visual research, and disseminating these co-produced visuals as rigorous scholarship, is sometimes met with raised eyebrows or discussions of the work as unserious and inconsequential. We facilitate with queer, trans, and non-binary youth in the face of these critiques, and argue that co-producing and co-­archiving work with participants is deeply rigorous work: concerned with temporality, relationality, language, power, ethics, and representation in the moment of production and over time. In order to make our social context transparent, and in an effort to complexify our facilitation practices, we situate the two participatory virtual research projects discussed in this piece. The first project, Where Are Our Histories, was held in Fredericton, New Brunswick, on unceded and unsurrendered Wolastoq land. The capital city of New Brunswick, Fredericton, held its first pride parade in 2010, over 30 years following the first marches and parades recorded in other Canadian cities like Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver (Warner 2002). Fredericton is a city with a fraught history when it comes to 2SLGBTQ+ rights and advocacy. 2SLGBTQ+ social and advocacy groups have come and gone in this city, the first recorded in 1974 and lasting under a year (Everitt 2015). Local 2SLGBTQ+ organizers have noted the fractured nature of community in Fredericton, as well as the dearth of queer and trans resources and spaces (Thorpe Forthcoming). In the 1990s, requests for a recognition of pride week were repeatedly refused by the municipal governments, prompting the New Brunswick Human Rights Commission’s involvement. In 1998, after being cited for discrimination by the Commission and compelled to read the proclamation, then-Mayor Brad Woodside elected to turn off his microphone, ensuring the speech was unintelligible (Everitt 2015). While the city now hosts an annual Pride festival, there remain few regular opportunities for 2SLGBTQ+ community-building and no dedicated spaces designed with youth in mind.

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The Where Are Our Histories project was developed to address these gaps along with the ongoing erasure of 2SLGBTQ+ individuals in pro­ ride/ vincial schools and curriculum (Burkholder and Thorpe 2019). P Swell was intended to be an extension of this work, bringing youth together from across the Atlantic provinces. However, 2020 marked a year of profound sadness for the local community as COVID-19 forced community programmes and Pride events to grind to a halt, the only surviving gay bar, BOOM, closed its doors, a prolific 2SLGBTQ+ artist and writer in residence at the local university passed away, and the ongoing fight to save our local queer and trans health clinic was lost, leaving more than three thousand 2SLGBTQ+ individuals from across the province without access to affirming care (Bell 2020). In response, Pride/Swell was redesigned to create opportunities for 2SLGBTQ+ youth to connect virtually during a time of increased isolation and speak back to their circumstances through art and digital archiving as political activism. In what follows, we situate ourselves in relation to how our identities have influenced the ways that we facilitate the two projects and our commitments to queer art making and political activism more generally.

Positionality We come to the project as facilitators as two white cis femmes, one queer and one bi. As facilitators, we are transparent with our identities. For example, participants know that Casey is bi and out at work and in her social life, but not (yet) to her family (though through her engagement with a Pride/Swell prompt Casey came out to her immediate family). Participants know that Amelia is queer and heavily involved in local 2SLGBTQ+ advocacy and community organizing, as she is the former co-chair of Fredericton Pride and Executive Director of ConneQT NB. Sharing our identities is fundamental in working with queer, trans, and non-binary youth. We acknowledge that while we are experienced participatory visual research facilitators, we don’t assume to know what participants want or need from a project. We seek to attend to the needs and wants of the participants with whom we work. Filax notes that “action research

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informed by queer theory makes it possible for participants to interrogate their own identifications and, as importantly, the significance of these identifications to social hierarchies of oppression” (Filax 2006, 144). Working with participatory visual methods, Johnson and Martínez-­ Guzmán note that researchers often employ deficit discourses attributed to “specific identities or traits (of vulnerability, precariousness, dependence, or disadvantage) that make the intervention project relevant and justifiable” (2013, 416). They suggest that problematizing a particular community in order to justify intervention (e.g. engaging in a research project) may contribute to the solidification of these discourses. In his work on the curation of a critical trans pedagogy, Harper Keenan notes that increased trans visibility in mass media and in politics has led to public attention and a growing awareness of trans bodies and identities. Keenan notes, “yet for many queer and trans people, our lives tell us something different: our identities and lived experiences are far more complex and fluid that the dominant ‘just like everyone else’ narrative of LGBT identity” (2017, 538–539). In our work, we seek not to problematize participant identities, or to recentre “just like everyone else” narratives, but we do seek to criticize the spaces and systems within which we are working for calcifying heteronormativity and transphobia, and being surprised when folks call for spaces, programmes, and curricula that fit them better. What kinds of implications do these practices have on research facilitation within embodied and digital spaces?

Power Relations As Harper Keenan and Little Miss Hot Mess (2020, 7) note in their article on drag pedagogy within early childhood education: Schooling plays a central role in shaping how the public learns the behaviours considered necessary for survival. At the same time as each of us learn gendered scripts, we also learn about the consequences of diverting from them. … Within and beyond schools, gender transgression is policed early in life, taking a range of forms that include social ostracism, psycho-­medical

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pathologization, the denial of access to life-preserving resources, physical violence, or even death. (7)

We acknowledge the very real dangers that schools provide to our participants, as they did in our own schooling experiences. The acknowledgment that schools police gender is not new (Payne and Smith 2016; Snapp et al. 2015; Sykes 2011), but it is something that we keep at the fore as we facilitate visual research in out of participants’ school spaces, but within an art classroom at a university, and through digital spaces (including Zoom). Reflecting on her work as a facilitator working with community organizations that support people living with HIV, Sarah Switzer (2018) notes that: I have learned as much about what not to do when working with the visual from the communities I’ve worked with, as what I ought to do. It has been through these interactions, and the generosity of participants, fellow artists and facilitators, that I have learned about the myriad of ways in which systems of oppression, institutional power and structural forms of violence impact the way in which visual methods get applied, understood, adapted and transformed in different contexts. (190)

Our own experiences are similar to Switzer’s in that we have learned as much from what we have done well as what we have done wrong.

 ueering Language in Facilitating Q Visual Research Language is inextricable from systems of power and a necessary consideration in developing safe(r), affirming participatory visual research. Tre Wentling argues that language “socially constructs that which has meaning and therefore has the potential to affirm or deny personhood” (2015, 470). In our effort to make visible the necessary pedagogical shift in school spaces, policies, and curriculum through these visual research projects, we acknowledge that “investment in negotiating an adequate

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language of self-expression and identity remains an indispensable tool for propagating visibility and understanding” (Nemi Neto 2018, 4). In T. J. Jourian’s work charting the evolutions of queer and trans language, he underscores how “evolving and contextual natures of language require flexibility and a commitment to openness on our parts as educators and practitioners to new and sometimes challenging conversations and terminology” (Jourian 2015, 19). Central to our ability to connect and communicate, terminology including categories, labels, names, and pronouns simultaneously communes much about one’s experiences and position. The language we use signals the knowledge, expectations, assumptions, aims we hold regarding different subjects (Jourian 2015); this awareness informed our use of language throughout the design and implementation of this research. Our choice of language was intentional, recognizing, as Butler asserts, “Concepts, categories, and abstractions (…) can effect a physical and material violence against the bodies they claim to organize and interpret” (Butler 1990, 148). We began with the development of promotional material, including our posters and consent forms. In his work on trans language reform, Zimman argues that “language is one of the primary fronts on which gender is negotiated” (2017, 90). In developing Where Are Our Histories, our recruitment posters included images of different race, ability, and gender identity (see Fig. 10.1) in a specific attempt to create visual space for participants of colour and to disrupt hegemonic whiteness in so much research with queer youth that we have noticed in Atlantic Canada (Burkholder and Thorpe 2019). In our recruitment strategies with Pride/Swell, language has been a central consideration. And we don’t always get it right. For example, in our call for participants materials disseminated for Pride/Swell, we used the acronym LGBTQ+, and we were asked, by Two Spirit participants, to reorient the acronym to 2SLGBTQ+ in order to highlight that Two Spirit identities are different from lesbian, gay, bi, trans, and queer, and should be put up front as a mode of disrupting their erasure. We listened. We adapted. Also, when we sought participants for Pride/Swell, we used the language “New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island” and were chastised for forgetting to include Labrador in our recruitment efforts. We listened. We adapted. As researchers, it is our

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Fig. 10.1  Where are our histories? Poster (designed by coyote watson)

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responsibility to uphold a commitment to listening to participants, and adapting our own practices in all aspects of our lives, both within ourselves and our work, to encourage self-determination and autonomy. To avoid perpetuating the subsumption and erasure of trans and non-binary identities within acronyms or terminology often perceived as pertaining to solely sexual orientation, we considered it necessary to include the terms queer, trans, and non-binary, in an effort to actively recognize and affirm the distinct and intersectional identities included within these overarching categories, while acknowledging that these terms are Anglocentric and do not necessarily reflect the vast spectrum of identities they seek to encompass (Kean 2020; Milani 2018), including our Two Spirit participants. In our subsequent print and virtual documentation we used the terms queer, trans, and non-binary to be explicitly inclusive with regard to participants we sought. Participants were invited to choose a pseudonym or use their chosen name for the research. Pronoun usage was another significant consideration for the researchers. Zimman posits, “treating pronouns more like names—terms of reference that must be asked for rather than assumed—allows us to tap into pre-existing sociocultural linguistic norms in which we regularly tell people how they should refer to us” (2017, 95). Casey and Amelia were already accustomed to sharing their pronouns within academic and community spaces, as an intentional action intended to express respect for individual autonomy and interrupt discourses of gender attribution. In Trans* Disruptions, Wentling explores the ways language can be used productively to acknowledge and affirm the personhood of students. He explains, “Asking all students to explicitly name their pronouns…interrupts beliefs that cisgender identity is essentially normative while trans* subjectivities are socially constructed through discourse and action” (Wentling 2015, 473). For the in-person Where Are Our Histories project, Amelia sourced pronoun buttons for participants and facilitators. During the distanced facilitation of Pride/Swell, facilitators included their pronouns onscreen, along with their names on Zoom. During introductions for all projects, the researchers shared their pronouns. In each project, Casey and Amelia sought to speak openly with participants about their identities and experiences to encourage discussion on these topics. In these projects, we worked to create an affirming and empowering space for participants to discover and play with language to try different identity terms, and

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articulate one’s sense of self without conditions, expectations, constraints, or fear of judgement (Jourian 2015). Importantly, Griffith and her colleagues (2017a, b) suggest that researchers should employ affirming language in all phases of the research, from recruitment to working with participants, to the publication of findings from their studies. Critical to our own project, Griffith and her colleagues acknowledge the over representation of white and affluent LGBTQ+ communities within the existing research literature (see also Singh and Shelton 2011). Our participants, in both projects, are overwhelmingly white and middle class.

Politicizing and Queering Visual Research Spaces “Safe space = queer space” is a sentiment articulated in a participant’s work (see Fig. 10.2) during a drawing workshop as a part of the Where Are Our Histories project. We see art making within these spaces as a mode of world making. We believe this participant-created phrase embodies our desire, as facilitators, to create safer, affirming, queered spaces. One of the ways we sought to create “queer space” was in the

Fig. 10.2  Images from a drawing and screen printing workshop

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explicit pronouncement that these workshops were spaces exclusively created by and for queer, trans, and non-binary individuals. Casey and Amelia believed it was valuable that the facilitators identify as 2SLGBTQ+ along with the graphic artists that designed the posters and imagery for the projects (see Fig. 10.1, designed by coyote watson, a non-binary Black artist and activist), invited artists, and speakers. We also ensured that these queer, trans, and non-binary artists were compensated financially for their labour. As Filax notes, “to queer is to notice, call into question, and refuse heterosexuality as the natural foundation of social institutions” (2006, 140), and in our work, we sought to queer a number of spaces, both embodied and online through what we came to call “DIY-ing the space.” For example, when we began the Where Are Our Histories workshops at our university, the closest gender-neutral washroom was located in the library, a 10-minute walk from the building where we held our workshops. So, we DIY-ed gender inclusive washroom signs that we put up on the binary washrooms closest to our workshop space. We held our workshops on Sunday afternoons, from 1 to 5 pm, and so, the DIY-ed spaces were usually ours alone. However, one Sunday, Casey forgot to remove our DIY signs from the binary washrooms before she left. The next morning, when she arrived back at work, a flurry of “concerned” colleagues came to her office to tell her, in hushed tones, about how the signs were confusing, people were worried about what gender inclusive washrooms could possibly mean, and people weren’t really sure what to do with the DIY-ed space. We are reminded of an excellent satirical piece by poet Lucas Crawford on why he is uncomfortable sharing washrooms with cisgender people, “In short, cisgender people do not understand boundaries” (2020, para. 3). Our DIY-ed space destabilized cisgender hegemony, at least for a few minutes, one Monday morning. In addition to our DIY-ed washrooms, we attempted to foster a sense of co-creation and co-direction in the workshop space. We generally set up a variety of stations in the classroom laid out in different ways. Participants would usually gravitate to a particular station and bring additional materials there, a lead the research team would then follow. When referring to their wishes for an inclusive environment within their school, one of the participants reminded us that snacks go a long way in

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enhancing a space’s atmosphere. We ensured we always had a wide variety of food laid out for all participants to graze on during the workshops. We also provided participants with the option to control the playlist for the space, often resulting in interesting conversations about musical preferences and 2SLGBTQ+ representation in music. This choice also created new friendships, as we saw participants from different schools and different grade levels bonding over a shared love of Green Day, Panic! at the Disco, Carly Rae Jepson, and Robyn.

Online Research Spaces In their work on digital research ethics and ways of implementing care for “risky archives” TL Cowan and Jasmine Rault (2018) suggest that: while [they] began the project with a desire to digitize, share, collaborate, expose, and network—to online these materials—[they] quickly recognized the need to change [their] research habits away from the crowd-­ sourced, user-generated model of Web 2.0 production economies and the extraction-exposure logics of scholarly research economies, and to account for “the labour of being studied.” (Cowan and Rault 2014, 471) (122)

While we seek to resist extractivism in our facilitation practices, we acknowledge that our attempts to queer online archives through sharing the art and activism of queer, trans, and non-binary youth, we may have solidified unequal power relations through our modes of sharing the products, and the ways in which we have had to navigate instances of homophobia and transphobia through YouTube comments, for example (see Burkholder and Rogers 2020).

Archives as a Third Space As articulated by Jamie A. Lee, in their work on queering archival spaces and practices, archives may be understood as “third spaces that are contested and ambiguous through their connections to both community and institution, through their collection of contested stories and practices, as

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well as through the ongoing challenge to notions of ‘proper’ and ‘legitimate’ archival norms and practices” (Lee 2017, 326) We consider our project archives, spread across various media platforms, to constitute an additional space. Lee’s work positions archives as action-oriented spaces with potential to both challenge traditional institutional practices and contribute to world-making, as “spaces that are committed to deploying queer as a practice and a politics to work on and within the archives as an act of intervention” (Lee 2017, 9). They argue that queering archival work and projects “consists of world-making practices—those practices through which individuals might create space where non-normative identities are not expected to conform but where processes of becoming might perform elusive subversions to identities as ways to engage in individual (un)becoming” (Lee 2017, 17). In facilitating Pride/Swell at a distance, we sought to engage youth through art production in response to a variety of prompts. Each month, Casey would compile a series of art materials, and send them directly to participants. Participants would create art pieces, then photograph them, and send a brief write up to Casey. In this write up, participants would share the specific digital spaces that they wanted to archive their work (our website, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram). Then, we would co-­ facilitate a Zoom meeting where participants would co-analyse the month’s art practices and describe the next month’s prompt. We also featured—and compensated—queer, trans, and non-binary artists from Atlantic Canada who worked in the medium we were exploring. Facilitating at a distance and in the digital realm looked quite different than our embodied workshop spaces (see Fig. 10.3). We sought to disseminate participant produced visuals to make a claim to the diverse identities and ideas about queer Atlantic Canada, and co-curate a community-­based archive (Lee 2020), as a third space, that contributes to collective queer world-making.

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Fig. 10.3  The digital workshop space

F acilitating Engagement: Art-Making, Dissemination, and Archiving On her work exploring gender-based violence with girls in a rural community in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, Yamile (2020) suggests that the development of art pieces and tools with which to read these pieces with participants and audiences was key to creating a comfortable environment for girls to speak to and speak back to systems and structures that allow for gender-based violence (GBV) to flourish. Yamile (2020) argues that: creating a generative space allowed the audience the freedom to talk about GBV, to ask and offer advice and emotional support, and to share different experiences regarding GBV…the girls working together to facilitate dialogues with the assembled community makes GBV everyone’s problem, which might “promote continuous dialogue and reflection for social change.” (Mitchell et al. 2017, 12) (10)

Through artmaking both together and at a distance, we also facilitate difficult conversations. Within Where Are Our Histories we have used cellphilming to explore issues how schools perpetuate gendered violence through policies and practices, and how sometimes, leaving school is the

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Fig. 10.4  S/S/S (school/safe/space) cellphilm still

safest option for queer, trans, and non-binary young people (see Fig. 10.4). In a cellphilm called S/S/S (school/safe/space), Raven—a participant— and Casey ask questions about the violence of existing structures and practices in schools. Raven states, “Schools like to say they do ‘this and that’ and they prevent bullying…but in reality, they don’t. I mean, even if they tried harder. It wouldn’t do much. There are too many people who don’t care. People still disagree. People are on the other side saying that they disagree. Whether they are right or wrong is a different story.” Within Where Are Our Histories, we have also created drawings and stencils while discussing the lack of gender-affirming health care and the closure of Clinic 554—a Fredericton-based clinic that was purposefully underfunded by the provincial government as a way to eliminate more accessible and gender-affirming abortion care for folks in the city. In Pride/Swell, we have talked about isolation, mental health crises, loneliness, and despondency while making collages that responded to the prompt, “Finding Community Amidst COVID 19.” By tearing and layering photographs, and supplementing these with found text, Madigan’s collage (see Fig. 10.5) explored these issues in depth. Madigan explained

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Fig. 10.5  Madigan’s collage about “finding community amidst COVID-19”

that, “As I was making the collage, I thought a lot about how my community has changed during COVID-19. I found myself feeling isolated a lot, and this made dealing with the losses I experienced in a healthy way difficult for me. It was very easy to fall into old habits of neglect while I took time to reflect on myself, my own journey, and the ways I want my life to change. A lot of the time this left me feeling fragmented, apart from, and ‘under-developed’ compared to the people around me.” Within Pride/Swell, we have sewed facemasks and discussed systemic violence against Black and Indigenous people in justice, education, and health systems. Ocean’s facemask, titled “Justice For Joyce,” sought to make visible the colonial violence and discrimination within health systems in Canada (see Fig. 10.6). Ocean wrote, I made this mask to stand up for Joyce Echaquan. For those who do now know, she was brutally murdered in the Joliette, Quebec hospital. She went

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Fig. 10.6  Ocean’s facemask, “justice for Joyce”

in for stomach pains, then hospital staff told her she was stupid, only good for sex and better off dead. She was an indigenous woman, and only one of many who face this kind of racism each year. People in protest did so with the colour purple, so I thought it would be very fitting. What happened to Joyce would never happen to someone who was white. Joyce had went live on Facebook, in that video, she was screaming in agony and nobody came to her aid until it was too late. This is unacceptable behaviour of those who are hired and trained to help those who need it. I wanted to portray that through my art project.

Art making has allowed us to connect with participants, and facilitate conversations that identify pressing issues, and importantly, also provide opportunities for us to strategize across identities, age groups, social positions, and with Pride/Swell, also transcending physical spaces. Casey and Amelia also consistently create alongside participants. This is part of our facilitation practices—we too engage in making alongside participants in order to make our understanding of prompts explicit and transparent, and to show that we take these conversations seriously. Also, through art production, we come up with new ideas alongside participants. And, like participants, we also work to co-disseminate the art we produce, archiving our creations alongside participants’.

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Dissemination Chris E. Vargas’ Museum of Transgender History & Art (MOTHA) seeks to collect, explore, and speak back to representations of transness in mass media, and reinterpretations of existing archives through art production and the curation of a traveling archive. Hernández describes Vargas’ work with MOTHA as a deeply important contribution to the stories of trans people of colour as, “many of us are not documented in the [existing] archive due to systemic oppressions, but I’m entranced by how agency can exist in holding our own archives and conjuring alternative modes of historical (self-) preservation, beyond an institution…not simply interested in visibility, but in a reimagination of queer pasts, presents, and futures, we flirt with truth and facts while honoring the precarious nature of history” (2019, 371). By facilitating the creation of digital archives in the Where Are Our Histories project (YouTube and a dedicated project website), we seek to document our experiences, but also highlight the ways in which participants’ racial identities are overwhelmingly white. We see the whiteness of our project as a limitation to the work. On her participatory visual research work with girls with disabilities in Vietnam, Nguyen (2020) reminds us that “at the same time as we commit to unsettling these relations of power, we are institutionalized within the discursive practices that govern our research relations…it seems that these principles and guidance are highly individualized and tend to disregard the social contexts in which the right to consent is highly mediated by existing power structures” (148). In our own work, we have noticed this kind of worry for participants’ anonymity within the dissemination phase of the research. Some participants want to use their real names, especially as they disseminate their own artworks in a variety of spaces (through film festivals and in online archives). We consistently use our own names, which can be complex. As Casey has noted, her artwork takes up her sexuality, including the ways in which she is not out with her extended family, and disseminating these pieces online where familial, personal, and professional networks intersect can be complicated, and require specific strategies.

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 trategies for Disseminating Artworks with an Eye S to Ethical Practice In a discussion on screening videos produced by Indigenous youth on the context of HIV within communities, drawing on an interview with Dr. Sarah Flicker, Pamela Lamb (2020) notes that audiences were surprised that the young people’s videos centred not just HIV, but other social determinants of health including processes of colonization. Lamb argues, “Perhaps it was precisely this discordance between the audience’s expectations and perceptions, and between the films’ explicit and implicit messages, that enabled new questions and discussions to emerge.” Casey has written about audiences’ tendencies to uncritically celebrate participant productions with responses like, “they’re so brave,” but without really hearing the structural critiques put forward by young people (Burkholder and Rogers 2020). We roll our eyes as feminist praxis (Ahmed 2012), as we disseminate the research to audiences outside of the communities with whom we work. Facilitation does not end with the production of the visual product, or the development of the archive, but must also consider modes of negotiating audience feedback to participant produced visuals, within online and embodied spaces, and how facilitation strategies change when participants are within the screening space (e.g. at a community screening), or when they are not (e.g. at an academic conference). The creative products of Where Are Our Histories and Pride/Swell have been disseminated through various social media channels, our project website, and our YouTube channel (Fig. 10.7), prompting virtual engagement with both the creative works and the messages they share. It is necessary to consider dissemination to be an important component of facilitation in participatory visual research. In 2019, the cellphilm “Nackawic Needs a GSA Now!” created during Where Are Our Histories was screened at the Pink Lobster Film Fest in Fredericton, NB (see Fig. 10.7). Casey and Amelia attended the screening alongside participants who co-created the cellphilm. We were invited to speak about the cellphilm before it was screened, but participants were not comfortable talking in front of the audience of mostly adult and mostly queer folks. Casey and Amelia briefly explained what the film was responding to, and

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Fig. 10.7  Queer histories matter YouTube channel and dedicated webpage

then, again asked if participants wanted to add anything. One participant explained that the film was a response to structural violence within their middle school, and later told us that they felt scared but excited to screen the cellphilm for a larger audience. In facilitating this screening experience, we made sure to ask participants how they wanted to be a part of the screening, and then, listened and made space for them to adapt their participation as it went on. For Pride/Swell, the facilitators continue to share participant content across various digital channels, according to their specific requests. While some participants were comfortable with their work displayed on all media, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and our project website, others preferred to limit their work to specific platforms. Further, some participants chose to share their work in its entirety among the project group while sharing only selected portions in these digital archives. For example, in a collaborative piece with the Pride/Swell research team (Burkholder et al. 2022), Casey highlights how she edits her artworks when sharing them on Facebook (which is a space where she encounters her family) but does not edit them when sharing pieces in academic spaces, on her Twitter, or on the dedicated Pride/Swell website. Recently, because of a Pride/Swell prompt where we encouraged participants to practice print making and create a postcard that responds to the prompt, “what do you want to say? Who do you want to say it to? Who isn’t listening?” Casey recently created a piece in response where she shares her desire to be known by her parents by sharing her sexuality with them. Creating the piece wasn’t difficult. But sharing it with her parents has

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been trickier. By being explicit about our co-production of art and co-­ dissemination, we centre these uncomfortable feelings and are attentive to the ways in which participants want to share their artworks with pseudonyms, or with their real names, or only in certain online spaces, but not others.

Archiving In both Where Are Our Histories and Pride/Swell, we explored what affirming facilitation might look like. We have considered our use of language from our project posters to pronoun buttons and our choices in creating safer, collaborative spaces both in-person and online; however, we know that facilitation doesn’t end there. For Casey and Amelia, facilitation extends to ongoing engagement with the archives and online spaces we have co-created with our participants. In Where Are Our Histories, we developed a YouTube channel entitled “Queer CellphilmsNB” (see Fig. 10.8) with our participants to showcase their cellphilms and other creations. The password for this collaborative digital archive is shared between all creators involved, facilitators and youth alike, and participants are permitted to remove or edit their content at any time. Casey

Fig. 10.8  Casey’s zine on her intersectional identities

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and Amelia continue to facilitate engagement with the content created from this project, moderating comments on the YouTube channel or other social platforms to maintain a productive and respectful virtual space. Our ongoing curation of the Pride/Swell archives (see Fig. 10.9) is another form of facilitation. Casey and Amelia have worked to ensure that each project’s participants are comfortable and confident in their autonomous role in creating, disseminating, and archiving their creative works. Participants know they may choose to remove their work at any time and that the digital archives of this work will continue to be monitored and moderated into the future by the facilitators (Fig. 10.10).

Fig. 10.9  Screening Nackawic needs a GSA Now! in a film festival and online

Fig. 10.10  Pride/Swell’s YouTube channel and dedicated website

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Concluding Thoughts In this article, we have considered the ways that participatory visual research can be facilitated with 2SLGBTQ+ youth in embodied spaces that are gender-affirming and resist tokenism and structural violence by employing DIY (do-it-yourself ) strategies. We have highlighted the need to disrupt cisnormative and heteronormative assumptions within language and spaces. We have shown how we learned as much from getting it wrong (e.g. minimizing Two Spirit identities through our recruitment strategies), as we have from the facilitation strategies that have worked (DIY-ing our spaces, encouraging intergenerational artmaking, incorporating explicit consent-focused strategies in working with the digital archives). We have offered that co-producing and co-archiving work with participants highlight the importance of facilitating through strategies that forefront relationality, language, power, ethics, and representation in the moment of production and over time. In our experience working to facilitate participatory visual research with queer, trans, and non-binary youth is one of the most significant considerations that has been imagining the future. As we engage in queer world-making with our participants, focused on imagining queer futures in which 2SLGBTQ+ histories, identities, and experiences are valued, affirmed, and celebrated, we are bound by an understanding that the work of facilitation extends into this future. While our projects come to a close, our facilitation role is ongoing, and our commitment to fostering inclusive and affirming spaces remains. What remains to be seen is how we do this future-focused facilitation as time passes. Thinking through these futures made us realize that an important and undertheorized component of our facilitation practices has to be the notion of participatory approaches to legacies. We have realized that we need to have a legacy plan in place for the archives—and that this plan needs to be discussed with participants. While we have been thinking about what happens to the works after the project ends, we hadn’t yet thought about what happens to the works after we can no longer be in the position as caretakers. With an eye to our imagined futures, we argue that facilitating gender-­ affirming visual research must continue to be responsive to participant needs and desires, today, tomorrow, and after we’re gone.

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Acknowledgments  We wish to acknowledge the experiences, time, art, and consideration of all of the participants in the Where Are Our Histories and Pride/ Swell projects. This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada under an Insight Development Grant [430-2018-00264]; New Brunswick Innovation Fund under the Emerging Projects Grant [2019-005]; and Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada under a Connections Grant 2019-153005. Disclosure Statement  This is to acknowledge that no financial interest or benefit that has arisen from the direct applications of my research.

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11 Researcher Positionality: Reflexivity, Ethnic Identities, and Cultural Lines of Difference in Multicultural Research Eunice Y. M. Chau

and Jan Gube

Introduction In qualitative research, researcher positionality is a practice that draws attention to biases in researchers’ understanding of the world, often expressed in the form of a positionality statement (Takacs 2003). Positionality intersects with ethnicity, gender, cultural identities, and social locations (Kassan et  al. 2020), and shapes research processes between the researcher and participants (e.g. Kapinga et al. 2022), and/ or among research team members (e.g. Kassan et al. 2020). Researcher positionality can therefore shape, direct, or limit the data collected from participants, including the interactions with them. This chapter presents the authors’ reflection on facilitating a visual research project that was part of an informal multicultural teacher education programme for pre-service teachers in Hong Kong. It articulates the vantage points and tensions on fighting familiarities in the research E. Y. M. Chau (*) • J. Gube The Education University of Hong Kong, New Territories, Hong Kong e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Burkholder et al. (eds.), Facilitating Visual Socialities, Social Visualities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25259-4_11

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process arising from the authors’ positionality. Embedded in this positionality are interpretive processes and ethical issues associated with the authors’ ethnic identities. This chapter examines two broad questions: 1. How does researcher positionality facilitate the analysis of visual data in an informal multicultural teacher education programme? 2. How can reflections on the ethnic identity fight familiarity when conducting multicultural research? In the following sections, we will first discuss the multiple and interweaving positionalities of two researchers in an informal multicultural teacher education programme, known as Globally Minded Teacher Learning Programme (GMTLP). Second, we will describe the context of multicultural teacher education in Hong Kong. Third, we will analyse how reflexivity played out in the research process to reveal the challenges of conducting multicultural research where researchers subtly construct cultural lines of difference. We will conclude with implications on initiating culturally sensitive research and education.

Researchers’ Positionalities and Reflexivity Qualitative research enables new insights through rich descriptions (Trafimow 2014). Each research team member with diverse individual and cultural identities could lead to different interpretations of the same qualitative data (Kassan et  al. 2020). Maintaining its rigor thus challenges researchers to “acknowledge the situated perspective, to reflect on and share how the life experiences might have influenced the choice of topics and questions” (McHugh 2020, 212). Researchers can acknowledge how positionalities bias one’s epistemology (Takacs 2003) and co-­ construct knowledge with participants (Bilgen et  al. 2021). Being a researcher involves making decisions on setting questions, conducting analyses, and representing these processes to present a comprehensive picture of informants’ lived experiences (Reich 2021). For example, holding “positionality meetings” that intentionally and repeatedly engage research team members in critical deliberation on their respective

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standpoints without a necessity to reach a consensus can be one way to work through such decisions (Kapinga et al. 2022). Reflexivity involves critically examining the positionality underlying the intersubjective beliefs and assumptions of those designing and conducting the research (Benson and O’Reilly 2022). It refers to “thoughtful, conscious self-awareness” that “encompasses continual evaluation of subjective responses, intersubjective dynamics, and the research process itself ” (Finlay 2002b, 532). Thus, reflexivity helps uncover the ever-­ imperfect representations of participants who might be subject to personal biases of researchers (Kassan et al. 2020), and compels researchers to step out of comfort zones, fight familiarities (Delamont 2020), and embrace discomforts (Skukauskaite et al. 2022). The next section will illustrate these discomforts as the authors reflect on their positionalities as a research assistant and a faculty member who embarked on multicultural research.

Eunice and Jan: The Interweaving Positionalities The work relationship between Eunice, as a research assistant, and Jan, as a faculty member, was crucial to executing the research on GMTLP. This power dynamics underscores a hierarchy between people who have expert knowledge and those who do not but engage in such knowledge domains to gain competence, often as part of their job conditions. We were an example of this. Jan regarded this partnership with Eunice as a way to gain fresh insights into the field, owing to the fact that the project necessitates close collaborations with Hong Kong students, education professionals, and civil society members who may have a varied understanding of fostering culturally inclusive learning environments. Jan must intentionally embrace a more egalitarian work relationship with Eunice to enable research facilitation to work effectively. In contrast to Jan, who is a more experienced, ethnic minority male researcher, Eunice saw herself as a novice in conducting research in the field concerned as her previous academic training was on gender and sexualities and she had little academic exposure to cultural diversity. This positionality was invisible to the participants; some GMTLP

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participants called Eunice “teacher” and presupposed her expertise on the topics covered in the programme. Thus, Eunice intentionally sought Jan’s views through frequent discussions and self-reflections, and positioned herself as a team member who contributed to the research. Moreover, we constantly reflect on our ethnic identities to more readily address the “dangers seen, unseen and unforeseen” in the research process (Milner 2007). Acknowledging that Jan is a Filipino-Hong Konger and Eunice is ethnically Chinese is an important aspect of our working relationship to achieving the above goal. Jan possesses a cultural capital that allows him to gain an “insider’s” perspective on Filipino communities in Hong Kong (Burkholder and Gube 2018). This status equips him with an understanding of being an ethnic minority who is phenotypically different from Chinese people, and the difficulties in adapting to Hong Kong’s Cantonesespeaking society. In contrast, Eunice, as a Chinese who grew up as an ethnic majority in Hong Kong, has little exposure to non-Chinese people. Meanwhile, our positionalities provide us with different perspectives on understanding diversity studies. As a member of minority groups, Jan found it easier to relate to the connotations of the research, such as experiences of being Other-ed while Eunice considered that she could better relate to the participants’ experiences in this majority Cantonese-speaking community. The collaboration between us meant that we interpreted the visual data not from the lens of a single positionality. In qualitative research, dependability is an essential criterion for ensuring the veracity of data interpretation (Williams and Kimmons 2022). Meeting this criterion involves checking the consistency of interpretation of data and the reasoning behind, such as how well a concept might represent a phenomenon observed and how it might be understood differently across racial groups. Researchers are grounded by their racial and cultural backgrounds that require attention to the filtered interpretation of the phenomenon observed from one’s cultural positioning (Milner 2007). We would from time to time interpret the data collectively. The whiteboard with a messy mind map drawn and written in English and Chinese exemplifies our brainstorming process, which also forms the basis of this chapter (Fig. 11.1). This represents the complexity of interpreting data that involves participants and members from different cultural backgrounds.

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Fig. 11.1  Mind map drawn by Eunice and Jan

While reflective questions like “in what ways to my racial and cultural backgrounds influence how I experience the world” are useful as a starting point (Milner 2007, 395, stress is added by the authors), we would go further to reflect on “our racial and cultural backgrounds” as a Chinese woman and a Filipino man. This exercise allowed us to examine the data from our collective experiences, ensuring that we interpret data in the most rigorous way possible (within the time and resource constraints) and accounting for the multicultural context of Hong Kong.

 rospects of Multicultural Education P in Hong Kong In Hong Kong, ethnic minorities (excluding foreign domestic helpers) make up 4.25% of the whole population; of which 32% are South Asian including Indian, Pakistani, Nepali, Bangladeshi, and Sri Lankan (Census

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and Statistics Department 2022). Although white (as represented in Census) comprises 20.4% of the ethnic minority population, they are mostly “transnational expatriates” and are often perceived as superior and more civilized compared to Chinese and other ethnic groups since British colonial times (Fleming 2019). The internalized structural racism urges ethnic Chinese to imitate Western culture, while requiring inferior non-­ White ethnic minorities to assimilate to Chinese culture (Lee and Law 2016; Fleming 2019). In turn, the public education system appears to create a situation in which only working-class ethnic minority children (usually South Asians), but not the middle-upper class expatriates who study in private schools, are required to learn Chinese language. In a community dominated by ethnic Chinese like Hong Kong, though, it would be important to foster a culturally inclusive environment while ensuring students from different cultural backgrounds acquire the host language equitably. Culturally responsive teaching offers an impetus to promote inclusion of minority learners and foster mutual respect of different cultures in classrooms (Gay 2018). While this pedagogical approach is relatively new to Hong Kong schools, some of the teacher qualities it promotes resemble some of the tenets expressed in The Professional Standards for Teachers of Hong Kong (T standard+). It states that teachers are expected to “accommodate students’ diverse and special educational needs to enable them to advance their potential, and mutually affirm and respect each other in a pluralistic society” (Committee on Professional Development of Teachers and Principals 2015, 4). While what teachers understand about this standard and how they might apply it to culturally diverse classrooms are yet to be examined, what is clear thus far is that less than half of the Chinese language subject teachers (46.1%) expressed confidence in teaching non-Chinese students (Oxfam Hong Kong et al. 2020). This lack of confidence parallels the insufficiency of the existing support for teachers to teach in Hong Kong’s diverse classrooms (Equal Opportunities Commission 2019). GMTLP aimed to meet such needs of preparing our pre-service teachers to teach in culturally diverse schools. It adopted Banks’ (1998) metaphors of “to know, to care, to act” as the basis of its goals and programme contents:

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• “To know”: guide pre-service teachers to raise multicultural awareness of everyday teaching practices through two workshops. • “To care”: provide exposure for pre-service teachers to interact with South Asians who are raised in Hong Kong through cultural tours and human library. • “To act”: (a) present the connections of culturally diverse communities, school curricula, and teachers’ pedagogies by inviting two Chinese language teachers who teach in an ethnically diverse school to demonstrate an example of a culturally sensitive classroom; and (b) prompt pre-service teachers to explore the concepts of multicultural and equity pedagogies in the form of video-making competition. Participants were required to produce three to five minutes videos on the topic. The research component of this programme involves evaluating its effectiveness by means of surveys, interviews, and analysis of video contents created by the participants.1 This chapter focuses on visual data drawn from eight successful submissions in a video-making competition. The summary of the videos is in Table 11.1. Seven of these videos embraced cultural differences, and we critically interpreted the underlying cultural lines of difference resulting from our interweaving positionalities.

 onstruction of Cultural Lines of Difference: C How Is Reflexivity Engaged in the Research Process with Ethical Consideration? The concept of cultural line from Milner (2007) elucidates how people’s racial, ethnic, and cultural heritage shape their social experiences. From a constructionist approach, ethnicity and ethnic identity are two interacting concepts. On one hand, a particular ethnicity is constructed “by external force, including not only material circumstances but the claims that other persons or groups make about the group” (Cornell and Hartmann 1998, 80). Ethnic identity, on the other, is inscribed in a set of claims by maintaining, transforming, or redefining the particular ethnicity (Phinney and Ong 2007). It entails a developmental process of

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Table 11.1  Summary of video entries Participants

Place of origin

Languagea Video summary

V01 Apple

Mainland China

M

V02 Bobo

Hong Kong C

V03 Cecilia

Mainland China

V04 Don

Hong Kong E

V05 Elsa

Macau

V06 Fiona

Hong Kong E

M

C

V07 Heather Hong Kong E

Featuring video clips of scenery and people in China, Russia, and Taiwan, themed on multicultural lifestyle A teacher delivering lectures on cultural differences between ethnic Chinese and Muslim/ethnic minority to colleagues A presentation on a Chinese cultural experiencing programme to Japanese and Brazilian students; targeted at GMTLP instructors A teacher delivering lectures on addressing stereotypes of ethnic minorities to the students A teacher delivering lectures on Muslim food culture to colleagues An animation demonstrating the contrast between concepts of multiculturalism and colourblindness in workplaces Featuring video clips of scenery and people from different places, themed “we are one”

C = Chinese; E = English; M = Mandarin

a

meanings and sense of membership (Harris et al. 2017). Under the circumstances, the assigned ethnicity and self-defined ethnic identity may not be exactly equivalent to each other (Booth et al. 2022). This chapter builds on these conceptual arguments to suggest that the discrepancy between researchers’ ethnic identities and their interpretation of participants’ ethnicity constitutes the cultural lines of difference. We uphold our ethnic identities and interpret participants’ ethnicity through social experiences in the research process. This mechanism, as illustrated below, underlies potential biases in teaching and learning as well as the data interpretation. Thus, we engage with the notion of reflexivity to identify researcher positionality explicitly.

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By Classification of English Names Overseen by Jan, Eunice was responsible for the administration of GMTLP.  This role included answering enquiries, liaising with participants, and supporting the research  in GMTLP.  This positionality prompted her to reflect on unconscious categorization of students by ethnicity without knowing them. Thus, “intersubjective reflexivity” allowed Eunice to focus on this unconscious process of structuring relations between researchers and participants (Finlay 2002a, 215). The researcher-participant relations between Eunice and pre-service teachers provided a space to shape the subsequent interaction based on the cultural line of difference constructed between Eunice’s ethnic identity and her interpretation of participants’ ethnicity. While the foundation of ethnicity is the common kinship and cultures, it can also be about what people perceive rather than what is (Cornell and Hartmann 1998, 17). From this perspective, physical appearances, shared cultural practices, or interaction (both in-person or online) can justify one’s assumption and interpretation of others’ ethnicity (Cornell and Hartmann 1998). The discrepancy between one’s ethnic identity and the judgements made on someone’s ethnicity forms the basis of the construction of cultural line of difference. In this case, Eunice’s reading of participants’ English names in the university email system was one way to determine the participants’ ethnicities. When Eunice promoted GMTLP in the university, she started to classify students into ethnic Chinese or non-Chinese (unintentionally at first) by names on the intranet email system. The former were names composed of two to four syllables representing each Chinese character, while the names in the latter cannot be enunciated in Chinese. For example, Eunice’s full name in Chinese 周琬雯 can be Romanized as Chau, Yuen Man (starting with surname). By comparison, Jan’s full name Gube, Jan Christian C., does not resemble the Romanized Cantonese spelling. Further, non-Hong Kong-based Chinese names can be differentiated from those of Chinese people from Hong Kong who align with Eunice’s ethnic identity. The English names can be translated from Cantonese Jyutping (a Romanized Cantonese spelling system recognized by the

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Linguistic Society of Hong Kong) and Mandarin Pinyin (the official language of Mainland China). Eunice regarded students with names translated in the former way as Hong Kongers who shared the same mother tongue of Cantonese while students’ names translated in the latter way were non-Hong Kongers. The way of translation of names became markers of ethnicities that constituted a cultural line of difference. The judgements made on names were evident in the GMTLP workshops. The first difference was in the verbal language. For those who were regarded as Hong Kongers (with Romanized Cantonese names), Eunice started the conversation in Cantonese in the GMTLP and its research. But for those non-Hong Konger (with Mandarin Pinyin names), Eunice switched to Mandarin or English when she first met the participants. Second, the topics discussed also varied. Since Eunice expected Hong Kongers shared similar cultural experiences with her, the discussion and small talks with them during the workshop touched upon Hong Kong’s education system and the participants’ practicum. However, for participants whom Eunice regarded as non-Hong Kong Chinese, the conversation focused exclusively on the contents of the workshops and activities. In this case, although the contents delivered in the programme were the same, the interactions of the students with Eunice differed considerably. This simplistic way of placing students into ethnic categories leads to a potential ethical concern of overlooking the pluralistic nature of culture. This risks misrepresenting participants’ stories without fighting familiarity in the qualitative research process (Delamont and Atkinson 1995). One significant case in GMTLP is that a student from Macau whose name is spelt in Cantonese Jyutping was categorized as ethnic Hong Konger in Eunice’s interpretation until a follow-up interview was conducted. If a researcher was conscious of the cultural lines of difference constructed with reflexivity, s/he can acknowledge the multiplicity of cultures and further think of ways to represent diverse voices of informants, rather than ignoring the differences. While uncomfortable to confess, engaging in reflexive analysis enabled Eunice, the novice researcher, to reflect on her inadequacy in the research process (Finlay 2002a; Skukauskaite et al. 2022).

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By Use of Pronouns Through reflecting on our cultural backgrounds, Othering through the use of pronouns in the videos submitted for competition became apparent in the analysis. “We,” as a first-person plural pronoun, can indicate the Other when it is harnessed together with the third-person plural pronoun “they” (Han and Chen 2019). It pinpoints how the pre-service teachers made sense of the relationship between themselves and the referents (the people and objects they refer to) as they anticipate the experience of teaching ethnically diverse students. It involves noticing the shift of referents of the pronouns (McLeod and Yates 2003). Questions were raised in the discussion between us: who are “we” and who are “they” in the videos? What ethnic identities are the participants representing while Othering people of another ethnicity? The difference in our ethnic identities meant that our interpretation of the pronouns was complex and multi-layered, which resulted in a perspective-taking exercise. The participants produced the videos in Cantonese, Mandarin, and English. As a native Cantonese speaker, Eunice took note of the pronouns of the participants. Jan, as an experienced researcher, provided support on how to look deeper into the data informed by dialogism (Skinner et al. 2001). This concept considers the utterances of individuals to understand how they adopt a position and how they incorporate the voices of others in a cultural setting. It particularly opens up clues for “self-understanding, moral judgments, problem-solving, and other cognitive and affective functions” (para. 33). Our exchanges helped us arrive at the parallels of the pronouns in three languages as listed in Table 11.2. After extracting the pronouns from the transcripts, Eunice annotated the visual elements and referents of each pronoun in an Excel sheet. She Table 11.2  Equivalent pronouns in Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin) and English Chinese (Cantonese/Mandarin)

English

“Ngoh”/“Wo” (我); “Nei”/“Ni” (你) “Ngoh Dei” (我哋)/“Wo Men” (我們) “Kui Dei” (佢哋)/“Ta Men” (他們)

I You We/our/us They/their/them

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Table 11.3  Summary of frequencies of pronouns in video entries I

Personal I (16)

You

Student’s You (9)

We/our/us

They/their/ them

Teacher’s I (18)

Ethnic Chinese’s You (10) Ethnic Chinese’s We Global We (13) (21) Ethnic Hong Konger’s We (7) Muslim’s They (37) Ethnic minority’s They (25) Non-Han They (2) Student’s They (1)

General You (28) Teacher’s We (17)

Global They (1) Specific objects (12)

first categorized the referents of the pronouns (e.g. people or groups that the participants referred to). Jan then cross-checked the meanings assigned with the visual elements. The summary with frequencies (in brackets) is shown in Table 11.3. This step of the analysis revealed how the pre-service teachers construct cultural lines of difference. A significant majority usage of pronouns “we,” which were interpreted by the researchers, constituted people who are Chinese and Hong Konger as aligning with the pre-service teachers’ ethnic identity. In contrast, nearly 80% of “they” represented ethnic minority and Muslim in participants’ videos. An example from the videos produced by Bobo (V02), when she introduced the clothing of Muslim men, she mentioned, “In fact, their clothing is somewhat similar to the Changshan of we Chinese people” (translated by the author). The “their” in the above phrase is representing the interpreted “Muslim’s they” while contrasting “we” Chinese identity. Similar phrases such as “I hope to help the new ethnic minority students to integrate into our lifestyles” (Elsa, V05; translated), or “we should not have any particular stereotypes on them” (Don, V04; with Japanese and South Asian examples in the video). These observations resonate with Lamont’s (2000) argument on distinguishing people with similar identity as “us” and those who do not as Other using “them.” Moreover, the participants constructed cultural line of difference as they anticipate their classroom teaching experience. In the videos, the participants imagined that their audiences were ethnic Chinese students and teacher colleagues. Of which, seven out of nine times of “student’s you” referred to ethnic Chinese (see Fig. 11.2). The intersection of our positionalities allows us to engage in “reflexivity as discursive deconstruction”

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Fig. 11.2  (Bobo, V02; faces are blurred to maintain confidentiality) “What are ethnic minorities in your view? (Title translated)”. The photos shown reflected Bobo’s impression of ethnic minorities are South Asians, while “you” in the title refers to the ethnic Chinese audiences

(Finlay 2002a), such as how the speaker situated her/himself in connection to those s/he refers to. Reflexivity also allowed us to reflect on our own implicit construction of cultural lines of difference. When Eunice had frequent discussions with Jan, “us” and “them” would occasionally surface. Although Jan identified himself as Filipino-Hong Konger, he would unconsciously refer “us” as ethnic Chinese students while “them” as the South Asian minorities (see Gube 2016). Jan’s reflection on his ethnic identity resonates with that of Takacs (2003) who acknowledged the fluidity of positionality.

F rom Researchers’ Positionalities to Reflexivity: Implication on Culturally Sensitive Research and Education The analysis presented above highlights an ethical consideration of how people’s everyday language normalizes the social reality of cultural distinctiveness and the need to foster culturally sensitive research and

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education (Tengelin et al. 2020). Sidestepping the differentiation between “we” ethnic Chinese and “they” ethnic minority can risk reinforcing essentialist views on ethnicity, thereby excluding minority groups’ voices and needs. Reflexivity underscores how cultural lines of difference play out in research, providing a vantage point for researchers to enhance sensitivity when working with diverse cultural groups. Learning to engage with reflexivity is about making conscious choices and embracing the discomforts arising from the research process (Skukauskaite et al. 2022). Similarly, we suggest that researchers and teacher educators adopt a similar “learning” approach with students. By being sensitive to one’s privileges, researchers and educators could take further actions to embrace the diverse perspectives of students and participants (Takacs 2003). Likewise, we became aware of each pronoun used as we wrote this book chapter—do the “we” or “they” or other pronouns underscore cultural differences? This constant reflection could be a step towards promoting cultural sensitivity, appreciating similarities between ethnic groups, and acknowledging differences among each ethnicity. An ideal way of “we” can be in the sense of being a global citizen; that is, including all people regardless of ethnicities and cultural backgrounds. A quote in Heather’s (V07) video captures this point aptly: “Although we may have different skin tones of ethnicities, let’s remember that at the end of the day, We are One.”

Conclusion In this chapter, we elucidate how researchers’ positionality shapes the facilitation of research in an informal multicultural teacher education programme. Embedded in this positionality was how we constructed cultural lines of difference as we led and facilitated the programme. Names became a signifier to decipher participants’ ethnicity to differentiate ethnic Chinese and non-Chinese students, which underpinned the ways in which Eunice, as a research assistant, communicated with the participants. The other aim of this chapter was to discuss how reflexivity can draw greater attention to the nuances of researchers’ ethnic identity. By making

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the “we” and “they” pronouns explicitly, we engaged in a perspective-­taking exercise to contextualize the meanings of cultural lines of difference with multiple ethnic identities. This exercise helped elevate the foregrounding of ethnic Chinese teachers and students as the majority and interpreted minority learners as the Other. Reflexivity adds to this exercise by fighting familiarity and providing a richer interpretation that values multiple vantage points (Delamont 2020).

Note 1. Ethics approval was obtained from The Education University of Hong Kong (Reference No.: A2020-2021-0413).

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12 When I Facilitate, What Do I Make? Revisiting Research Facilitation as Intervention, Opportunity, and Solidarity-Building Auralia Brooke

Introduction This chapter describes a pause between two research projects. In 2013 as a master’s student, I undertook a six-week digital storytelling project designed to promote empathy in a large urban Canadian high school. My facilitation process for the story-sharing network applied youth participatory action research (YPAR) approaches and resulted in a collection of 200 student stories shared via over 7000 text messages, multiple professional reports for school use, and my master’s thesis. Now, a decade later, I am poised to facilitate further work with youth in a different part of Canada. In this chapter, I am taking a reflexive approach to think through how I facilitated a digital storytelling project then and what my

A. Brooke (*) University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Burkholder et al. (eds.), Facilitating Visual Socialities, Social Visualities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25259-4_12

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intervening experience might offer in thinking through facilitation in doctoral work now. The practice of reflexive ethnography has been used by researchers to compare and contrast changes in theoretical perspective and observer/ participant relations. It is often done with the aim of improving researcher practice through deliberate rethinking of research processes and approaches over time (Burawoy 2003; Cunningham and Carmichael 2018; Kleinsasser 2000; Lac and Fine 2018). Kleinsasser describes this process as “learning about self as researcher, which, in turn, illuminates deeper, richer meanings about personal, theoretical, ethical, and epistemological aspects of the research question” (155). In revisiting my approaches to a study ten years after its completion, I deliberately walk backward through my own personal and theoretical learning path with the goal of improving my facilitation practice. I hope to illuminate early scholar learning pathways into facilitating participatory research and discover new approaches to methodological questions that have stayed with me from my early work. Michelle Fine and her colleagues (2018) note that methodological questions that sit within moments of researcher reflexivity often linger to antagonize, inform, and improve praxis over time. My revisit is framed by the questions that remained with me at the close of my last project and that will apply to my future work through the shared context of school spaces. These questions are: 1. How can my modes of facilitation better address accessibility and inclusivity? 2. How can I facilitate new projects in ways that address participant vulnerability? 3. How can my approach to project facilitation adapt to the in-school needs of the youth who co-design the work? I view school-based research facilitation differently today than I did in 2013. My initial choices focused on how facilitation would affect data collection and the research study. In keeping that focus, I missed the opportunity to consider facilitation as its own discrete intervention within school environments, one that carries its own impacts. Revisiting

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my work, I have come to understand research facilitation as a moment of potential intervention within research contexts. As such it carries its own set of possibilities and outcomes that affect the schools that I work within. The goals of participatory action research (PAR) include the purposing of academic projects to further community mobilization, advocacy, and social justice as defined by participant communities (Gubrium and Harper 2016). Now, instead of looking to my finished research as a change agent for school contexts, I look to my facilitation practices to think about how they might function as interventions for change independently, and prior to research results. This chapter begins with an account of the original project’s research facilitation phase. I then reflect on each of the three questions above to understand how a shift in perspective can offer new possibilities for my facilitation practice in school contexts. In particular, I attend to how research facilitation presents opportunities to respond to and stand in solidarity with the daily experiences of the youth I work with.

Facilitating a Story Network My master’s thesis project in 2013 took place in an urban high school in Alberta, Canada, with a population of 2400 students. The study began with a phone call from their student-run space, where youth could design and implement their own projects. One of the students was looking for a project mentor to support “something that will make kids feel less alone.” A core group of youth coalesced around the idea of sharing stories as a pathway for creating empathy and feeling seen and heard at school. The end result was a system that used a blog, SMS (text message) technology, and artwork to create an arts-based conversation in the hallways of the school.

Facilitating Project Design: Creating a Listening Space As facilitator during the project design, I hosted weekly meetings in which aspects of the project were defined and refined. I approached these meetings as a listening process in which my primary job was to be an

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adult outside of school jurisdiction who respected and believed in the work of these students, who attended to their ideas, and who took the project as seriously as they did. At that time, I defined my facilitation partially in opposition to the role of the school’s teaching staff, and worked hard not to impose an outside pedagogy in student-led spaces. Given that the project’s genesis was rooted in students’ perceptions of the school environment as hostile, my identity as “not-school” was important in creating a safer space for them to explore ideas. Introducing myself, youth often defined the importance of my role in terms of what I was not: not a teacher, not the administration, not a parent, not a student. My approach to facilitation was therefore to inhabit the spaces between these roles. At the time, this seemed like the best way to actively respect youth as experts in their project and in the best approaches to their goals. In walking back through this work, I now recognize these meetings throughout the weeks as their own disruption of school routines, hierarchies, and tensions. The listening space we created in which youth enacted ideas and were supported differently is significant as its own contextual change. Ten years ago, I saw this disruption as functional in service of building the story network; I now understand it as its own intervention with a unique set of unmined possibilities and effects.

Facilitating Story Collection: Being “Not-School” For the project to function, project organizers needed to pitch it broadly within the school and see if other youth were interested in sharing their experiences. Some opted to pitch to a class they were taking, others asked teachers for time at the beginning of meetings or events to talk about what they were doing. During these pitches, students usually led by telling the group a story about themselves or their experiences that no one had heard before. Some were funny, some deeply vulnerable. At the end, they’d say why they wanted to tell that story, and how it made them feel to share it. They’d go over the fundamentals of the project and some guidelines. I would then introduce myself as a graduate student, researcher, and project mentor. It seemed important to explain that I

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wasn’t part of the school, that I was an outside resource for this project, and that my job was to take care of the stories. I’d be the first eyes on the stories, and I’d be removing any personal identifiers and making certain that they were as anonymized as possible. I went over the risks—for example that anonymity at school when sharing personal experiences was never 100%. I also went over things the project was not, explaining that as non-school-staff, I also could not respond to calls for help or crisis situations. The project in general functioned within the set parameters of the school environment, linking to in-school resources and following guidance from school staff when addressing unforeseen challenges. Students were invited to share written stories by slipping them into a “story box” on paper, or through the project website. At the end of the gathering phase, we had approximately 100 contributions. Organizers divided them up and created a poster for each with an image, a keyword, and the project phone number. Every week, project organizers would choose ten new stories to put up in the hallways and then we’d wait to see what happened. At the outset of the project, I facilitated the digital aspect of the story network. It was run through an academic research lab that donated the use of their system, and used a free programme called FrontLine SMS (https://www.frontlinesms.com). When texted a keyword, the system would respond with the assigned story. In the spirit of leaving behind the technical knowledge for participants to continue their own work, I brought university lab partners to the school for a series of workshops so that students could use the programme to design and build their own interactive SMS-based systems. I was surprised when youth decided that the story database for the original project should remain off-campus. Keeping the database inaccessible provided reassurance that although this was a student project, stories were first seen and transcribed by a third party who was outside of potentially fraught peer relations, and someone who was also not a teacher. In some ways, the fact that they wanted to retain the positive, facilitated, un-assessed space for listening to students that we had built for as long as possible was one of the greatest successes of the facilitation process.

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Facilitating Stories in Motion Over six weeks, approximately 200 stories were shared, over 7000 text messages were sent to and received from the system, and over 300 individual cellphone users became part of the story network within the school. Students could use a cellphone—their own, or one made available through the school—to access the text messages using the keywords on the posters, or they could read the stories on a project blog. They could share the keywords of stories that they had authored, or not. Participants could selectively share their stories’ keywords with friends or choose to discuss the stories without revealing their participation. My role as a facilitator during this phase was as the first reader and keeper of the stories. This consisted of monitoring the system, adding new stories to the database as they were submitted, and transferring stories, images, and keywords from the hallways to the project blog. I also kept our weekly meeting schedule as a way to hold space for project organizers to process the project’s ongoing results and discuss approaches. Again, I approached this space tentatively when it came to imposing goals and outcomes. My first instinct was to mediate my power and privilege within school settings by stepping back and facilitating participants’ voice and autonomy where possible. At the close of the project, I chose to conduct six 60-minute semi-­ structured interviews and two 2-hour focus groups with 21 individuals from three participant groups. Group 1 was limited to core organizers of the project. Group 2 consisted of youth who engaged with the story network as participants or viewers, but not as organizers. This group was intentionally inclusive of students with a wide variety of engagement levels. Group 3 consisted of school staff and administrators. It was data from these interviews and focus groups that I used to complete my master’s thesis. I turned the stories, images, and keywords into a set of cards for each organizer and a few administrators. The blog became student-run, and the collection of stories was later used by further initiatives to address a variety of in-school initiatives around mental health and student engagement.

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Revisiting Facilitation: Three Questions In taking up participatory methodologies I am part of a community of researchers that intends to support youth in identifying and addressing social issues that directly affect their lives (Bastien and Holmarsdottir 2015; Gubrium et al. 2015; Lac and Fine 2018). Through research facilitation, I stewarded a space for transformation that existed only during the collection of data. In the following sections, I use methodological questions to reflexively explore the potentialities of that facilitation space to function in solidarity with youth experiencing hostility and discrimination. I am using the questions below to understand how I can better attend to the effects of the facilitation moments I create, and how this will look in my future practice.

 ow Can My Modes of Facilitation Address H Accessibility and Inclusivity? As facilitators, researchers become responsible for how the research process is accessed/accessible-to participant communities. Accessibility can be practical (in terms of who is able to interact with the project through its physical location and properties, its time and effort requirements, and its language of communication) and conceptual in terms of a project’s inclusive or exclusive qualities. With the hindsight of ten intervening years, missed opportunities for inclusivity during the facilitation process fall broadly into two areas. The first of these is the opportunity to engage with questions of accessibility within the facilitation of visual work, and to move from an approach in which youth with visual impairments experience the work via translation to one in which they might experience the project directly. The second is the opportunity to apply critical pedagogical approaches within the facilitation process that might have made the safe space we created through the project more diverse and welcoming, and taken advantage of the facilitation space as a means for political learning and school action with regard to issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion.

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Accessibility Mitchell et al. (2017) remind researchers that part of a critical approach to visual research methodologies includes consideration of the social conditions and effects of visual objects, and to consider how to proactively create environments in which participants and audiences can listen to each other. Looking back on facilitation as its own moment within school contexts, with its own materiality and consequences, I see the ways in which it aligned with and perpetuated structural hostilities towards youth with disabilities. Within the context of the school, story posters were the singular entry-point to storytelling work, and they were available only as a visual cue in shared school spaces. We relied on school resources to ensure that all students would be informed of and participate in the project, but in aligning ourselves with a flawed and ableist system we missed opportunities to consult directly with students who might have helped us understand how to better complement visual cues with other interactive spatial interventions that could be directly experienced by youth with visual impairments or mobility exceptionalities that affected their ability to interact with the project. I look forward to approaching future visual and digital work with attendance to how it might be experienced directly, rather than translated secondarily, by youth with disabilities. Nirmala Erevelles (2018) suggests that researchers consider a radical ontology of disability in which we attempt to understand our work’s place in the experiences of those who are structurally excluded by ableism. In attending to facilitation as an opportunity to unsettle contextual boundaries and structures of oppression, I would add to this Nguyen’s (2020) observations that researchers connect with facilitation through decolonial approaches that make visible the experiences of students with disabilities in new ways. I now ask how I can facilitate my work in ways that bring forward the perspectives of differently abled students not just in their content but also in the ways that we might choose to present or provide access to them.

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Equity, Diversity, and Inclusivity The theme of social isolation and its effects on school engagement ran through all conversations about the project with staff and students. Within these conversations various usages of the words “unsafe/safe” were frequent; youth used metaphors of conflict, violence, and drowning to describe their social relations. It was clear from study responses at the close of the project that most students were navigating a high degree of social risk and anxiety. While an intense degree of daily perceived social risk affects all students, it disproportionately isolates those who are already experiencing discrimination (Desai 2018; Ginwright and Cammarota 2007; Tuck and Yang 2011). Interviews from the project illustrated that complex visual identities played a clear role in how students were treated at school, particularly for racialized students, 2SLGBTQIA+ students, and students visibly experiencing poverty. Marginalized youth received frequent feedback that their identity was problematic, deprioritized, or irrelevant, and this sent a clear message that they were unwelcome within the larger sociopolitical structures that school purported to represent. Potts and Brown (2015) note that a commitment to anti-oppressive research requires active work to foster conditions for social justice through research. In viewing the meetings as their own transformative output, I see their potential to perpetuate exclusivity or inclusivity through how they are structured. My individual facilitation practices made space for youth in ways that were inclusive, and one of the project’s strengths was the diversity of its organizing team. The student-run space was also proactively inclusive, providing, for example, anti-racist training for staff and hosting regular gatherings for the school’s gay-straight alliance, but it was also enmeshed in school politics that prevented some teachers and resource staff from engaging with its offerings. There was more proactive work during facilitation that could have been done to make space and time for students who might not have the familiarity, staff support, schedule flexibility, or confidence to spontaneously encounter and join our meetings. We might have considered the experiences of youth for whom communication in English requires an extra degree of effort:

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Fig. 12.1  First day of school

emotional, psychological, or practical. As evidenced by the story “First Day of School” (Fig. 12.1), newcomer and EAL learners navigate school spaces differently, and may not have physically happened upon the student-­run centre or been directed there by resource staff (Kaufmann 2021). I might have used my role to reach out beyond the student-run space, stepping into school resource centres to proactively model an approach that prioritized such youth (Lohmeyer 2017). We could have also supported their experiences by creating posters in multiple languages, or asking them if they were interested in doing so themselves. This kind of proactive practice could have widened the umbrella of the project’s low-risk environment and modelled politically engaged, anti-oppressive research approaches for youth already involved in the project.

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 ow Can I Facilitate New Projects in Ways That H Address Participant Vulnerability? At some point during the collection and dissemination of stories, it became clear that the stories were individual and collective acts of vulnerability that required some social risk on the part of participants. Akesson (2014) notes in her work with youth that for most participatory visual data collection one should adopt an “ethics as process” approach defined by Guillemin and Gillam (2004) as the “exploration of ethically important moments” that arise during research practice (84). A series of these moments took place during project planning conversations, when it became evident that youth were already taking risks by sharing their personal stories, and that in-school supports for their wellbeing were not sufficient to create a sense of safety. My role in these moments begs questions about how facilitation aligns or challenges existing school structures, and what balance is to be found that allows researchers to work in schools without alienating school contacts, and also without undermining participant trust. Lac and Fine (2018) suggest in her autoethnographic work that youth in schools need caring environments in which to talk about their lived experiences (Lac and Fine 2018, 568). Through facilitation, I created a lower risk space, and students stepped into it with enthusiasm. I now consider my future work and ask: how can I attend to what happens when that space disappears, or when it isn’t enough? The network addressed student support needs by consulting school counsellors and collaborating on project statements regarding student stories as they arose. The primary strategy for such statements was to state the limitations of the network, provide contacts for resources, and refer students back into the school system that was clearly not meeting their needs. Throughout the project my facilitation approach with regard to accessibility and inclusivity was to trust school infrastructure to provide support for students. However, the school environment was not proactively inclusive or equitable and was often falling short. During facilitation I saw this problem and my role within it as static and predetermined, assuming that while my data and research could make a difference, my facilitation practices were somehow bound by institutional standards.

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I wonder how researchers can address the moment when it becomes apparent that more resources are needed for students. Thinking through the way that participant vulnerability came to light and how I might better adopt an “ethics as process” approach, I want to leave room to grapple with my place as an ethical researcher within larger systemic tensions. My facilitation practice was and is rooted in conversation; perhaps there is a place here for conversations with youth that address systemic issues as they arise; not to solve them, but to stand in alignment in our acknowledgement of difficulty and to examine possibilities for solidarity. These conversations would start with an investigation of moments of facilitation, asking youth how these moments function for them as a resource, and how that resource could be best sustained or utilized. A commitment to PAR principles alongside youth co-researchers necessitates that we explore ways to create better resources and systemic change—even if only temporary—for the communities that we work with (Bastien and Holmarsdottir 2015; Tuck and Yang 2014). This brings me to my final question, which is about how facilitation can work as a tool for systemic change.

 ow Can My Approach to Project Facilitation Adapt H to the Needs of the Youth Who Co-design the Work? Despite hostile conditions, youth take up resistance to the violence of school systems in a myriad of ways that “oppose the minimization of their experiences and knowledge about the world” including protest, storytelling, collaboration, creation of peer networks, and the active imagination of positive and inclusive futures (Burkholder, Hamill, and Thorpe, 2021, 94). This became evident in the storytelling project. In interviews and focus groups it was apparent that youth were using the story sharing network to speak back to marginalizing narratives. By creating and interacting with the story network, they were upholding their experiences as central, visible, and important and purposefully reflecting on each other’s stories. The collective visibility of the images and keywords in school spaces spoke to their existence and importance for students. Youth addressed that visibility as a necessary piece of belonging. One individual

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described this by saying, “I kinda wanted my story to be out there and to be read. And I think a lot of people want that. To be read and heard.” I now understand the story network partially as an attempt to re-­ humanize the school by uplifting and prioritizing youths’ lived realities, experiences, and contexts. Its original goal for organizers was simply to counteract some of the isolation and marginalization already present in the system. The experience of being seen and heard, for some youth, changed their ability to communicate with others, actively participate, and understand their own ability to contribute to community. However, in creating space for anger, tension, and grief, the project went beyond this goal. It acknowledged a diverse and authentic student experience that included oppression, disenfranchisement, and isolation, upheld it as important, and gave students a place to process. Fine et al. (2018) observe that “researchers have an obligation to stand with movements for justice, with provocative baskets of evidence that challenge dominant narratives, structures and policies and incite the social imaginary about social transformation” (12). Solidarity with participant communities in school contexts is not an ideological project but an opportunity to mobilize academic resources for change. I am more aware now than I was then of education’s legacy as a colonial project in a capitalist society. This demands attention to the ways in which white racial hegemony, patriarchy, ableism, and heteronormativity are forged, reproduced, and scripted within school spaces. Within the story-sharing network, this could have included further close work with youth to decide how to arbitrate and/or put stories in dialogue with some of these concepts in ways that might be useful to them. Our project meetings created a bubble within the school; what Akom et al. (2008) describe as “a pedagogical space of resistance and resiliency” (2), in which young people could explore their experiences with isolation and address what they identified as their need to feel more connected to one another. Students used this space to explore how they could leverage their negative experiences as supportive messages for their peers through stories. This is exemplified by stories like “Strong” in Fig.  12.2. That youth used the network to transform experiences of oppression into something positive for others often shifted their feelings about their relative position in the school. This was echoed by a staff member who

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Fig. 12.2  Strong

observed that “the stories that they told were given new meaning based upon the fact that they could tell those stories.” These outcomes align with other studies indicating that youth activism can be a mediating/coping factor for individuals encountering extra stress variables due to discrimination (Fine et  al. 2018). As an early graduate student, I needed clarity on the difference between strong, supportive facilitation with a critical pedagogy, and imposing learning on a student environment in a way that might be directive and undermine trust. YPAR literature is full of demonstrations of research as critical pedagogy, in which students are supported to critically approach new learning around social and political issues that affect them. Gloria Ladson-Billings (1995), for example, describes culturally responsive pedagogy as a humanizing pedagogy that utilizes the students’ lived realities, experiences, and cultural backgrounds to inform method, form, and content of instruction. I did not know how to enact this kind of pedagogy within the facilitation space, and I felt conflicted about how to both step back and support youths’ process and also step forward to facilitate learning. Once

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we could see the ways in which the stories functioned as resistance to aspects of the school experience, I might have drawn on a variety of approaches including feminist, queer, anti-racist, and intersectional research design to engage youth in a discussion about what goals they might have for change within the school, and how we might use the project to address these goals. My future facilitation practice will begin by trusting the youth I work with. Rather than conceptualizing my facilitation as “not-school” in a passive way, I will build on my understanding of not-school to include deliberate moves towards politicizing and exploring resistance through facilitation. This approach requires transformative pedagogical practice and a variety of intersectional solidarities that can better support student experiences.

Conclusions Engaging in a reflexive ethnographic process, I have used this chapter to examine participatory visual research facilitation practices within school contexts. I trace a shift in my own approach to research facilitation. In my early work, I designed my facilitation with data collection as its primary purpose. I now view moments of research facilitation for their potential to intervene in, affect, and be affected by student contexts. The reflexivity required by this exercise has contributed to my understanding of adaptive facilitation techniques. Using methodological questions relevant to my past and future research as a frame for exploration, I return to my facilitation practices then from my present perspective. In engaging reflexively with my own practices, I explore the underlying assumptions that led my work, and then consider how future facilitation practice might carry forward new understandings. By revisiting my work through these questions, I seek to undermine unintended exclusivities in future research facilitation while broadening my research’s utility to participant communities. In engaging with research facilitation as a moment of intervention within research contexts, I explore how my practices can stand in solidarity with the daily experience of the youth I work with.

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Through autoethnographic engagement, I have come to realize that my research process and the relationships it formed were in themselves a partial answer to the problems of isolation and competition evident in my findings. My analysis here therefore becomes more than just a piece of academic work—it becomes a way of exploring tensions between academic and lived experiences, and a struggle to augment the often negative research results within school data by investing in the positive possibilities of the facilitation process. Thinking through the above findings in relation to my positionality as researcher, I have reflected upon the ways in which my work in schools is constructed through and partially because of deep injustice in the daily lives of youth in my community. We look to participants to breathe purpose into visual research; purpose defined by the needs, observations, and contexts of their lives. In designing participatory research within schools, researchers are afforded an opportunity to intervene in the feedback process between school environments and student identities, affecting how youth choose to self-identify, participate, and enact their identities within school spaces. Rethinking my position as facilitator within this context is part of my analytical process; it is a constant reminder to ask better questions, to return to the question of why youth want to be involved with research, and of what purpose they see the research process as serving. In doing so, I hope to undertake research that better supports students as they re-draw and re-imagine community narratives so that we may see them with fresh perspectives, and take up these perspectives to challenge oppressive school environments.

References Akesson, B. 2014. Using mapmaking to research the geographies of young children affected by political violence. In Researching the lifecourse. Critical reflections from the social sciences, 123–141. Akom, A.A., J. Cammarota, and S. Ginwright. 2008. Youthtopias: Towards a new paradigm of critical youth studies. Youth Media Reporter 2 (4): 1–30. Bastien, Sheri, and Halla B. Holmarsdottir, eds. Youth ‘at the margins’: Critical perspectives and experiences of engaging youth in research worldwide. Springer, 2015.

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Burawoy, M. 2003. Revisits: An outline of a theory of reflexive ethnography. American Sociological Review 68 (5): 645–679. https://doi.org/10.2307/ 1519757. Burkholder, C., K. Hamill, and A. Thorpe. 2021. Zine production with queer youth and pre-service teachers in New Brunswick, Canada: Exploring connections, divergences, and visual practices. Canadian Journal of Education/ Revue canadienne de l'éducation 44 (1): 89–115. Cunningham, N., and T. Carmichael. 2018. Finding my intuitive researcher’s voice through reflexivity: An autoethnographic study. Electronic Journal of Business Research Methods 16 (2): 56–66. Desai, M. 2018. Reading, naming, and changing the world: Youth participatory action research in a Hawai'i school. PhD diss., University of Hawai'i at Manoa. Erevelles, N. 2018. Toward justice as ontology: Disability and the question of (in) difference. In Toward what justice? 67–83. Routledge. Fine, M., M.E. Torre, D. Frost, A. Cabana, and S. Avory. 2018. Refusing to check the box. In The methodological dilemma revisited: Creative, critical and collaborative approaches to qualitative research for a new era, 11–31. Ginwright, S., and J. Cammarota. 2007. Youth activism in the urban community: Learning critical civic praxis within community organizations. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 20 (6): 693–710. Gubrium, A., and K.  Harper. 2016. Participatory visual and digital methods. Routledge. Gubrium, A.C., K. Harper, and M. Otañez. 2015. Participatory visual and digital research in action (2015). Routledge. Guillemin, M., and L. Gillam. 2004. Ethics, reflexivity, and “ethically important moments” in research. Qualitative Inquiry 10 (2): 261–280. Kaufmann, L. 2021. Integration in Canada: A systematic review of the youth experience. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 84: 52–64. Kleinsasser, A.M. 2000. Researchers, reflexivity, and good data: Writing to unlearn. Theory Into Practice 39 (3): 155–162. Lac, V.T., and M. Fine. 2018. The good, the bad, and the ugly: An autoethnographic journey on doing participatory action research as a graduate student. Urban Education 53 (4): 562–583. Ladson-Billings, Gloria. 1995. Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American educational research journal 32 (3): 465-491. Lohmeyer, Ben Arnold. 2017. “Restorative Practices and Youth Work: Theorizing Professional Power Relationships with Young People.” Young 25 (4): 375–90.

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Nguyen, X.T. 2020. Whose research is it? Reflection on participatory research with women and girls with disabilities in the Global South. Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures 12 (2): 129–153. Potts, K., and L.  Brown. 2015. Chapter 10: Becoming an anti-oppressive researcher. In Research as resistance: Critical, indigenous, and anti-oppressive approaches. Tuck, E., and K. Wayne Yang. 2011. Youth resistance revisited: New theories of youth negotiations of educational injustices. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 24 (5): 521–530. ———. 2014. “R-words: Refusing research.” In Humanizing Research: Decolonizing Qualitative Inquiry with Youth and Communities, ed. Django (pp. 223–248). Paris, Maisha T. Winn.

13 For Us, with Us: Creative Expressions as Means to Collectively Elevate Minoritized Experiences, Knowledge, and Wisdom LaShaune Johnson , David Olawuyi Fakunle and Sarah Lux

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Introduction: About Us LaShaune and David first met in 2019 at the final convening of New Connections, a programme of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation aimed at increasing diversity within the philanthropic organization’s

L. Johnson (*) Master of Public Health, Creighton University, Omaha, NE, USA e-mail: [email protected] D. O. Fakunle Morgan State University School of Community Health & Policy, Baltimore, MD, USA e-mail: [email protected] S. Lux Medical Humanities, Creighton University, Omaha, NE, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Burkholder et al. (eds.), Facilitating Visual Socialities, Social Visualities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25259-4_13

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funding opportunities. As a postdoctoral fellow at Morgan State University at the time, David was exploring the utilization of storytelling as a research methodology and specifically, how storytelling could cultivate more genuine insight from study participants—in this case, Southwest Baltimore residents who were asked about what assets and resources they rely on within their neighbourhoods. David had relatively little exposure to qualitative methods and if it ever came up in discussion, it was with condescension and minimal respect for its empirical value. However, LaShaune was one of several Black academics he met at New Connections whose explicit use of creative expression to explore public health issues came as a beacon of further confirmation to David that he was on the right track and decided to collaborate. Neither of them knew what their new collaboration would look like yet. Throughout the next couple of years, LaShaune and David cultivated moments that allowed them to further develop their individual and collective professional efforts with arts and culture at the forefront. The journey included a presentation on how David utilized narrative in public health work that he shared with LaShaune’s class at Creighton University and eventually led to a paper they co-authored with colleagues on storytelling’s value in public health research (Fakunle et al. 2021). All the while, they constantly navigated and contemplated the epistemological and methodological dissonance experienced in their respective careers. One thing that has resonated strongly with LaShaune and David is the importance of their stories, because that has in large part determined the paths they are on. They are not naive to the fact that their primary research interests are connected strongly to the colour of their skin and all that comes along with it. They embrace their bias for what it truly is: context. And context is everything. The ethics of what we do as scientists is a conversation we have alone in our heads and aloud with colleagues, and it goes beyond whether we are causing harm, taking unhealthy advantage of the people we are charged to serve or not properly listing all relevant references. The real ethical conundrum, as LaShaune and David have navigated, is whether scientists are doing everything they can to explore and elevate a more complete truth about human health and wellbeing.

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This chapter is but a brief view of how arts and culture can serve as an appropriate vessel for researching topics within public health that are under-researched and underappreciated. Sarah elucidates the mechanisms by which ethical considerations are made throughout the process of research—from idea generation to dissemination of results—and demonstrates that sometimes, the best way to do what is ethically just for everyone involved is to create approaches that challenge convention. Our hope that our collective story leaves readers encouraged, comforted, and empowered to be the necessary rebels with the greatest cause: the pursuit of truth.

Stories of Selves as Reflective Researchers Following the model of Norwood et al. (2022), the three authors of this book chapter have decided to offer reflections on how and why they joined this participatory action research project on Black women and the cancer continuum. We begin with David.

David’s Story I am the product of many people who love and care about me, such as my father Taiwo Fakunle who has been beating prostate cancer for the past couple of years. That love and care has even come from those who never saw me, and explicitly evokes my maternal grandmother, Mary Lee Pierce. In my mind she is a mythical figure, a person I know solely through a few pictures and many family stories, especially those from her youngest daughter, my mother. It is from those stories that I learned about her brilliance as a singer, a beautiful voice that rang out across churches, her high school graduation, and one worthy of the prestigious Peabody Institute in Baltimore…but never heard there because her family could not afford the other half of the tuition. Her willingness to take in my five cousins, the most powerful demonstration of her unquestioned role as matriarch of my mother’s family, is also part of her legacy, one immortalized in The Black Extended Family written by my godparents,

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Dr. Joanne Martin and the late Dr. Elmer Martin (1980). Mary Lee Pierce was all too real, and she left this world far too soon, in 1979 at the age of 49 due to breast cancer. My mother says she remembers the smell of my grandmother’s flesh (due to chemotherapy) during her final days as if it was yesterday, and yet the only thing she cared about while facing her death was the wellbeing of everyone she would leave behind. No one knew how they would go on without her, but she said we would all be alright…her prophecy was correct. I never knew I could love someone so much who I never met in person, someone who transitioned years before I was born, but I do. And so, it is an act of love and respect that I explore the experiences of other Black women on the cancer spectrum, who navigate many feelings and responsibilities while facing a debilitating and often fatal disease. Mary Lee Pierce’s grandson can think of no better way to honour her…other than love, of course.

LaShaune’s Story Born in the shadows from Tulsa’s “Black Wall Street,” granddaughter of musicians, cousin of preachers, niece of a biographer, niece of a ceramicist, I grew up intimately aware of the transformative power of storytelling and the arts through the hardships wrought by structural racism. Ours is a family ravaged by late diagnosed cancers, uncontrolled diabetes, and nearly defeated sickle cell disease; I grew up fearing slippery lacunae in my genetic and familial health history. I have slipped into the cancer hole three times—once with Hodgkins lymphoma as a teenager, and twice with breast cancer. I participate in this project on the shifting sands of “survivorship,” not year reaching the five-year survival mark. I come to this project as a Black cancer thriver, a Black cancer victim, a Black cancer mourner, and a Black cancer educator. The fear of cancer never leaves me, but swimming in the stories of fellow Black breast cancer survivors and caregivers gives me odd peace with my disease. As a preschooler, I was mesmerized by my aunt’s stories of how she, powering through sickle cell anaemia episodes, took formless clay and moulded it into the glossy and colourful ceramics she lovingly bestowed upon us. While I never became the dexterous potter that she was, I dreamed of moulding words on the

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page into stories and poems that would conjure up images and emotions as solid and delicate as any ceramic sculpture. As a Black researcher, Black cancer survivor, and caregiver of Black cancer patients, I (Johnson) have always worried a great deal about my positionality and relationships with the cancer patients with whom I work. Worried of being accused of “mesearch” (Ray 2016), I would sometimes step away from the topic and focus on other health equity issues in the community, but as I grew from one-time cancer survivor to two-time cancer survivor, to mostly recently (and during the poetic transcription project three-time cancer), I was drawn back to this work. In the 1980s, Toni Morrison begged us all to write the book we want to read, so I have returned to the collaborative poetics to not only advance the field and create empathy but to also give Black women something they don’t always see in the traditional “pink ribbon” stories of life on the breast cancer continuum—their stories, in their voice, with no filter and Real Talk.

Sarah’s Story Intersecting privileges have afforded me to be and remain unremarkable. What I mean, here, is that while I have worked through challenges and enjoyed successes at various points in my life, my own story is not that helpful to me as a novice researcher, at least, on its face. I am a White cisgender woman with multiple intersecting privileges. My upbringing was one of solitude and spending time in my own head. We lived just outside of a small, rural town in Nebraska. Growing up, I remember spending a lot of time at the public library by myself or in my room listening to music, drawing, reading, or writing stories—a disconnect and always at arms-length—on both relational and intellectual levels. The constant low hum of stoicism and disconnect was something my parents and extended family modelled and something which I carry on. This article is ultimately David’s and LaShaune’s story. I am a listener and learner while also pushing myself to break open.

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 he Story of (Un)ethical Health Research T in the United States Just like each of our personal stories, the history of health research in the United States brings its own “story” in the sense that to ignore it, or worse, accept it, does not allow us to be fully authentic as researchers, academics, or human beings. Decades of well-documented abuses and unethical treatment of marginalized populations in scientific research in the United States received wider attention in the mid to late twentieth century with publications such as “The Belmont Report.” The report provided only a foundational framework of ethical principles in research: (a) respect for persons by acknowledging autonomy and ensure protections for those with diminished capacity for self-determination; (b) beneficence by doing no harm and maximizing benefits while minimizing potential risks; and (c) justice, or assurances of equitable distribution of or access to resources (National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research 1979). Unethical research practices were, of course, conducted by White researchers and perpetuated because of the long-embedded system of White supremacy. Social norms, resulting from long-held systems of oppression and power structures, seep into every aspect of our academic institutions, science, research, and ways of knowing. Partly in response to the visible and hidden harm done to oppressed or marginalized communities and individuals, new methodologies began to emerge and evolve in various disciplines, particularly in the social sciences. As discussed in this chapter, communities have often relied on storytelling as a way to construct meaning for themselves and within their communities. “Performance studies scholars—scholars who long have valued storytelling, narrative, and the body—often recognize the ways in which identity is manifest in bodies” (Ellis and Adams 2014, 260). In other words, autoethnography, art-based and performance methodologies, and participatory research each employ various approaches that empower the individuals or communities being researched to be directly involved in constructing meaning from differences and how identities impact lived experiences and worldviews. Yet, such methodological advancements that

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work in direct opposition to the epistemic injustices of White intellectualism and colonialist paradigms have had to and still must navigate explicit and implicit barriers in research and academia, as one can well imagine by now (Aguayo-Romero 2021; Kumanyika 2018; Quaye et al. 2017). However, those concerned with the decolonization and democratization of research continue to make progress towards epistemic justice. Acknowledging this spectre of long-embedded injustices, this is how we use poetic and narrative-based methodologies to co-create a new standard of research that is not only about historically marginalized communities but done with them and for the advancement of issues most deeply felt by them.

Black Women and Breast Cancer One such issue is breast cancer. As Black women see their female leaders, sisters, mothers, and friends taken down by breast cancer, they have begun to seek out their own answers to the questions that seem to be impacting them most dramatically. In recent years, breast cancer has replaced lung cancer as the leading cancer-related cause of death for Black women in the United States (Stringer-Reasor et al. 2021). Despite the aggressive breast cancer health education efforts done on the local and national level, to encourage women to empower themselves to take care of their health, Black women remain over 40 percent more likely to die of breast cancer than their White peers (American Cancer Society 2022). It is generally accepted that Black women’s disparities are the result of the maelstrom of the lifetime experiences of intersectional inequalities— those in the earlier part of the cancer continuum, such as genetic differences, lack of access to safe and affordable housing (environmental causes of cancer), compromised access to high-quality education (and therefore job opportunities that offer health insurance); those that happen once Black women enter the next stage of the cancer continuum, such as less access to timely and high-quality cancer care and screening, later stage cancer diagnoses, provider misogynoir (American Cancer Society 2019) that result in Black women not being offered the gold standard of care and access to clinical trials; and those that continue beyond ­initial/

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recurring treatment phases—care without cultural humility, care that does not take into consideration Black lived experiences for end-of-life care and the psychosocial needs of the informal caregivers of Black patients. The rigor of the analysis of breast cancer disparities for Black women is compromised if one takes a purely population health approach to addressing them. This is where adopting a “hybrid habitus” framework is particularly useful. Lo and Stacey refer to the benefits of the hybrid habitus approach as being when: “patient cultures can be understood as the broad, less than fully conscious cultural orientations that shape a patient’s sense-making in clinical settings. These cultural orientations, in turn, are shaped by surrounding, intersecting structural forces. Some structural forces (e.g., motherhood, immigration) may lie outside the institutions of medicine and ethnicity, but they become relevant as they intersect with the latter” (2008, 747). Along the cancer continuum, Black women’s genetic, familial, and medical history remain important, as does their access to health care and their ability to activate their cultural health capital (Dubbin et al. 2013) to navigate a complicated health system, but the hybrid habitus framework reminds us of the shifting parallel continuums that Black women are also on, connected to their roles outside of the community. The “pink” (breast cancer) experience looks and feels particularly Black when one takes into consideration the additional roles that Black women play and the psychosomatic impacts those roles have. For several decades, the “Superwoman Schema” (Woods-Giscombé 2010) and Sojourner Syndrome (Lekan 2009) literature have highlighted the indirect and direct roles of stress on Black women’s health—this stress experienced as Black women are relied upon to be the strong leaders in their extended families, religious communities, social networks, and the advocacy communities. These leadership roles are taken on wholeheartedly as they weather the stresses of their intersectional identities, such as being Black, a woman, possibly a person with limited social, economic, and cultural capital, and as figures who are—in popular media—both copied and vilified for their original style and work (Bleiweis et al. 2021). One particularly pointed example of the complexities of the Black breast cancer continuum is that of “triple negative breast cancer” (TNBC).

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TNBC is an aggressive and deadly form of breast cancer (Siddharth and Sharma 2018) and represents one of the most jarring cases of cancer disparities, with TNBC’s incidence rate twice of their White peers (Cho et al. 2021). TNBC’s causes and the influences on the outcome disparities are hotly debated—it’s a cancer that seems to be diagnosed much more frequently in Black women and obese women (Aaron and Stanford 2021), the strains diagnosed in younger women (i.e., women outside of the recommended [and therefore, insurance-supported] age for yearly mammograms) seem to be particularly aggressive and many non-biologic factors (and often out of the control of women) are increasingly linked to the development and course of these cancers—such as obesity, poverty, stress, and education (Prakash et al. 2020). As the complex story of Black cancer emerges, providers and members of the “pink ribbon” community continue to scratch their heads over Black women’s limited participation in cancer trials. Overly simplistic analyses link Black lack of participation in trials to the historical scars of the Tuskegee Syphilis study, and some recent research hints at ongoing distrust (Merz et al. 2022), but as with all things with Black women, the story on the ground is far more complex. Learning about—and accessing—cancer clinical trials requires access to valuable social, economic, and medical capital that many Black women do not have. Hamel et al. (2016), highlight the systemic, interpersonal, and individual level barriers that face Black women looking for a chance to live. Among those interpersonal factors is the fact that Black women are not frequently told about cancer trials (Walker et al. 2022). And when they are, they are often faced with a difficult choice: A) try to navigate complicated, and possibleexhausted healthcare benefits to continue a treatment that is not working; B) stop treatment altoghether and rely on luck, prayers, or untested folk remedies; or C) take part in a clinical trial (for which they have doubts) in which they are asked to relinquish control of their bodily autonomy and their destinies to a treatment for the same cancer they have watched shorten the lives of the women in their communities (Fayanju et al. 2020). The non-biologic factors that are a part of Black women’s cancer journeys are not experienced in silos—even as Black women are overrepresented in a number of these non-biological categories through a significant

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portion of their lives (Chinn et al. 2021), their loved ones are also experiencing these factors—and those factors related to structural violence and poor community health—as well. They are caring for those others as they fight for their own lives. While experiencing a cancer diagnosis is devastating for anyone at any age, understanding the specific Black cancer hybrid habitus, through the voices and words of Black women, is vitally important for improving Black community health. The COVID-19 epidemic added insult to injury for Black women’s breast cancer disparities. Recent research has illuminated that COVID-19 has significantly impacted breast cancer screening, diagnosis, and treatment (Du et al. 2022; Fu et al. 2022). Amidst the disproportionate diagnosis, death, and caregiving impacts the COVID-19 pandemic has had on Black communities (Poulson et al. 2021), the barriers to screening for breast cancer were exacerbated due to the pandemic (Tsapatsaris et al. 2022). As a result, we do not clearly understand all of the very real impacts of COVID-19 on the Black community. It will take years to understand the true number of excess deaths due to COVID, in part due to disproportionate burden of pre-existing chronic conditions in the Black community, conditions, like asthma, heart, and lung disease, that complicate recovery.

Coming Together as Researchers/Collaborators This project is connected to a larger body of work about Black women cancer survivors in the United States (Johnson and Fakunle 2021). Johnson is a Black three-time cancer survivor, and Fakunle is a caregiver/ grandchild of African cancer survivors. Guided by participatory action research (Organizing Engagement 2019), public health critical race methodology (Ford and Airhihenbuwa 2010), arts-based research (Wang et al. 2017), and ideas of epistemic justice (Epistemic Justice in Community Engagement Project 2019), the larger project consists of four main parts: qualitative interviews with Black cancer survivors (in some case, multiple interviews separated by two years), focus groups with Black cancer survivors (with some overlapping individuals from the interviews), arts creation based on data collection (poetic and narrative

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transcription), and community share backs in the form of a virtual arts night. Between 2018 and 2021, Johnson conducted 35 telephone/Zoom interviews over two projects that focus on Black women in the breast cancer continuum (with some of the participants being repeated), and Johnson/Fakunle facilitated four Zoom focus groups in 2021, with 11 participants (some of whom who had also been interviewed). This chapter will highlight the focus group data collection. While there are nuances in the iterations of the various breast cancer projects—in terms of foci along the cancer continuum and populations—the project series is built on a base of a number of broad theories. First, reflecting on her own experiences with the powerful Black women of her childhood, of her broader Black community, and of major social movements of the African diaspora, the presence of the Sojourner Syndrome (Lekan 2009), and Superwoman Schema (Woods-Giscombé 2010), LaShaune deeply understood that such influences loom large on these projects. Before their breast cancer diagnoses, Black women have often become adept at balancing their roles in financial/household juggling, community caregiving, trendmaking, fierce advocacy, and layered theory-making. Like the Hindu goddess Durga, Black women’s many hands dole out love, judgment, protection, and light. This is the blessing and curse of the Sojourner Syndrome (Lekan 2009). While the festival of Navratri celebrates the virtues of Durga, Black women are often taken for granted or overlooked while excelling at their gendered and racialized responsibilities. In Navratri, fireworks are burned to celebrate the victory over evil, in the Superwoman Schema (Woods-Giscombé 2010), another fire illuminates the darkness—that of the candles burning at both ends for Black women, due to their (in)visible constant work, layered on racial discrimination, layered on gendered discrimination, resulting in disproportionate morbidity and mortality in a number of chronic and acute conditions, including cancer (Allen et al. 2019). All the connected breast cancer projects look to give a voice to the process of the changes happening under the skin of Black women. Due to stigma within the Black community about mental health and stress, this process is not always well-documented or understood. The cancer and other medical disparities experienced by Black women do not happen in a vacuum. They exist in a whirlpool of historical and

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contemporary structural violence (Sharif et al. 2022) that impact the way that women navigate social interactions, acquire housing, interact with law enforcement, seek a liveable wage, achieve education, and create and nurture those they see as their families (Chambers et al. 2021). As a result, an intersectional understanding of the Black experience (Steinmetz 2020) across the breast cancer continuum is key to understanding the fits and starts, hits and misses, cures and recurrences that are the roller coaster of the Black cancer experience.

Review of Literature It is reasonable to suspect that many researchers, especially those in the social sciences, enter the field with perspectives, insights, and theories cultivated by their lived experiences and cultural foundations. Acknowledging our own contexts, we suspect those perspectives, insights, and theories are particularly important for researchers from historically oppressed groups such as people of the African Diaspora, and that further understanding of (and in some cases, confirming) the experiences of the oppressed within society serves as a primary motivator. However, the exposure to intellectual and epistemological properties that align with contextual circumstances such as racism and sexism is relatively limited, particularly during the early stages of professional research careers. For example, David’s use of storytelling—the African oral tradition—in public health work resulted from a combination of serendipity and his internal ethical considerations around research with people dealing with substance use disorder (SUD). His doctoral training in drug epidemiology prompted a critical reflection on to what extent individuals with lived experiences of SUD were represented in the research, often used to guide drug use interventions and policies, beyond their social determinants and drug use behaviour. Concurrently, David’s training in Black storytelling provided a cultural evidence-based methodology for navigating lived experiences of any manifestation. Not until recently did serendipity find him again and connect him with a set of ideas that provided long-awaited clarity about why the push for culturally based methods is

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needed to best explore the nuances of race and culture-defined health research: Transformational Grounded Theory.

Transformational Grounded Theory In the most basic sense, transformational approaches in research are rooted in the assumption that research should work towards undoing injustices on various fronts. Its worldview rejects reality as objectively quantifiable and not only socially constructed but also dependent upon beliefs and experiences with “oppressive positions of power” (Mertens 2021, 2). Applied to a specific methodology, transformational grounded theory not only explores the particular phenomena being researched but also the relationship between researcher and co-researchers, the act of co-­ constructing knowledge, and structural contexts (Redman-MacLaren and Mills 2015). Even when it comes to the data analysis stages, transformational approaches see research validity as fluid and situational. Since there is no absolute truth, “alternative notions of validity should be considered to achieve social justice, deeper understandings, broader visions, and other legitimate aims of qualitative research” (Trent and Cho 2014, 653). In other words, Trent and Cho (2014) remind us that validity, when applied to transformational research, should be based on the outcomes and actions resulting from the research itself. Transformational grounded theory requires researchers to adopt what Lincoln and Cannella (2018) describe as critical radical ethics, which is an inherent awareness of existing power structures and systems of oppression while simultaneously working to deconstruct them. This is a continual tension that is “played out within the personal core of the researcher as she or he examines and makes decisions about the conceptualization and conduct of research” (83).

Arts-Based Research and Engagement In effort to be mindful of power in research, to bring to bear the work of transformational grounded theory and to continue to collaboratively tell

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stories with Black women, our team chose to integrate the “collaborative poetics” method featured in Helen Johnson and colleagues’ 2018 pilot (Johnson et al. 2020). Collaborative poetics is an amalgam of storytelling techniques fuelled by a co-creative partnership with research subjects that borrows “from poetic inquiry the use of poetry as a research tool,” “from autoethnography a focus on personal experiences to describe and transform the world,” and from “the social scientific understandings which frame these approaches” (page 4). These methods are sometimes called “poetic transcription,” which is a process that empowers community partners by putting their voices in the “center of inquiry, analysis, and discussion rather than at the margins” (Tillman, as quoted in Schrauben and Leigh 2019). Although focusing on the lives of survivors of natural disasters, Miller and Brockie (2015) make a case for the use of poetic transcription in qualitative research as a more authentic approach, “with significant ontological, educative, and catalytic authenticity”; and believe this approach enables the wider community to understand the full impact of a disaster and experience more empathy. Can a poetic transcription project with Black breast cancer survivors increase empathy for these Superwomen Sojourners and offer them a measure of peace? Johnson had started to explore these methods after an arts-based evaluation with Nebraskan system-engaged youth1 and adaptive co-creation of Black cancer outreach. The use of poetry and narrative to co-create the health story of marginalized women emphasizes partnership between researchers, community members, and others at all stages of research and health research’s “participatory turn,” which according to Gubrium et al. (2016) allow researchers to use digital and visual methods to make the research process and its outcomes more accessible to the communities most impacted by the issue being studied.

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F rom Subject to Participant to Co-designer: Growing into Equitable, Participatory Methodologies The intimate details of our personal stories and experiences—the things so elemental to our humanity—shape not only our experiences as academics, but inform our research processes. While LaShaune and David’s identities and lived experiences were driving their passion to do this work—and at times, gave them a “leg up” on understanding the experiences—they found early on that they needed to grow and learn alongside the community members whose voices they hoped to illuminate. This meant self-reflection about their training, regular dialogue with the Black patients/caregivers about the impact of ongoing work in the community, and openness to the Black artists, activists, and service providers working on the ground in the community. In the next section, the road to creating culturally responsive focus groups is described. As both a Black cancer survivor and a Black breast cancer researcher, and as a community-based participatory researcher, LaShaune had maintained regular communication with participants to inform them about where and how their data was being used, and how it was helping to educate others. Without knowing the concept of “transformative grounded theory” (RedmanMacLaren and Mills 2015), LaShaune already was regularly using these conversations to understand the work being done in the Black cancer community throughout the US—what were the issues, images, treatments on the tips of the tongues of Black survivors? Who in our group is confidently rocking a sassy bald head and hoop earrings; who is flaunting their scarred cocoa-coloured skin on a summer day? Headwraps might have been a curse that White survivors lived with, Black survivors “owned” the look, with a panache that the ancestors would have given two snaps for. After the initial interview portion of various research projects ended, our contact did not. The emails, social media messages, and phone calls that followed were often lively, personal, and therapeutic. Regardless of where each of us were on the breast cancer continuum, and sadly, regardless of where were on the socioeconomic spectrum (Sacks 2018),

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common themes around racism, community stigma, loss and the weight of being a lifelong supporter/consoler of other Black patients, remained a theme in all of our conversations. The energy and naturalness of these contacts stuck with her. Over and over again, the women referred to natural connections that Black women had with each other and the shared understandings across the diaspora. Outside of the more formal “research” relationship, the Black women dropped any pretence and bore no responsibility to positively represent the community or uphold the pretences of the painful “respectability politics” (Lee and Hicken 2016). These were the spaces we long to recreate with our work. But even as we longed for to create these safe spaces, we recognized that Black women were overreached and frankly “over” researched. Research fatigue largely results when “scientists from dominant groups turn to study ‘high interest’ marginalized groups with little consideration for their needs or how to ensure the study will tangibly benefit them” (Ashley 2021, 272). Aware of the experiences of “research fatigue” (Chicago Beyond 2021) that many of the women had discussed, and the existence of “poverty pimps” (Diversi and Finley 2010) who have taken stories from Black communities and given very little in return, LaShaune was initially wary about undertaking another research project. In fact, LaShaune’s hesitation speaks to the gap between “research and practice,” particularly when it comes to CBPR. Institutional Review Boards (IRBs), which largely rely on very basic frameworks to guide what falls within their scope of oversight, are often ill-prepared to consider things like research fatigue and seldom look beyond the singular study to see the collective impact of research efforts focused on a particular community or population (Ashley 2021; Friesen et al. 2017). Further, IRBs are often ill-equipped to provide the training necessary for culturally responsive CBPR (Wilson 2019) nor does training typically delve into the ethical dilemmas that might arise from problematizing methodological aspects like the role of researcher, insider/outsider perspectives, and the nature of objective or subjective validity (Boyd 2014). So, when David and LaShaune started to recruit among LaShaune’s previous participants for the focus groups, they were mindful of the things that make Black women tired and were hopeful to make a space

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where they were reinvigorated, by a familiar way of being, a comfortable way of knowing. When speaking with the women, LaShaune and David were intentional about showing that valuable data could be retrieved from these populations, whose public health challenges are systemically underestimated and under-researched. For our focus groups, we set out to do what Morgan et al. (2014) called “Real Talk,” which they defined as: “a term that is commonly used in the African American community which means that a person is talking candidly and honestly about their feelings without fear or reservations of what others might think.” But how does one replicate “Real Talk” into research? What must a researcher be aware of to make the data collection sphere a “safe” place? In LaShaune’s one-on-one interviews, she regularly heard Black women speaking about not having a place to speak freely about the intersectional struggles of Black breast cancer. The women often stated that they found lacking the hospital-based and “pink” national organization-based support groups as places they could not fully be themselves. They longed for safe spaces that reminded them of the “sister circles” they had in their personal lives, circles that provided support around parenting, relationships, and faith. As a result, we decided to recreate, the “safe space” for “Real Talk” with this “sister circle” in the virtual world. We created this familiar world by modifying the traditional focus group approach. Specifically, we made changes to the structure to assimilate a “sister circle” gather. We started off by David telling a fable well known in the African diaspora, and then by LaShaune providing some personal updates, much as one would do in a group meeting. We deliberately formatted the questions to sound more colloquial, and early in the session asked the group to help us co-create a discussion forum that most resembled their personal relationships. It also resembled Ubuntu healing circles2 where healing, reconciliation, and growth are made. This meant David and LaShaune relinquished control of the flow of the session at times, to let the participants ask each other questions, offer jokes, comfort someone when crying. Almost magically, using this culturally responsive adaption of a focus group still netted all of the answers (and more) that David and LaShaune set to ask. By integrating our personal, medical, and academic experiences as Black people, with the ongoing feedback

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from our Black breast cancer survivors, we were able to create and recreate a setting for Black women to feel revived, heard, and relieved. David and LaShaune, although part of the African Diaspora, had experiences that were both different and similar to the people in the “Sister Circles,” and we had to regularly check in with each other and the participants to “get it right.” No researcher—no matter how closely aligned they believe they are to their research “subjects”— will be without growth and change in this process. It was, in fact, our openness to correction, suggestion, and co-leading that made the circles the vibrant and unique entities that they were. Once the community partners saw that the circles were stripped of the pretence of “traditional” research—even in the planning stages, when LaShaune was calling participants before she submitted the IRB to check the wording of the questions—some of the “research fatigue” melted away and became research intrigue. The Black women, often subjects of research, wanted to know about these new equitable and participatory processes and figure out how they could take charge of them and co-­ create their stories.

F or Us, by Us, Engaging in Ethical Arts Co-creation Throughout this text, the three authors endeavoured to take the reader through our reflections of engaging in critical, exploratory, disruptive arts-based qualitative research; to engage in this work required cultural humility, self-reflection, and unlearning of previous training about research rigor, storytelling, and ethical approaches to working alongside historically marginalized communities. But what would it look like, for example, if we had co-written this chapter with participants? While so much of the art creation involved in this project felt as if it came “naturally” to David and LaShaune, two Black creatives, it would be a mistake to describe this endeavour as “easy.” Quite the contrary, creating art about the Black experience on the breast cancer continuum has been a labour of love, as we seek to capture the rich shea buttery layers of the evolving Black cancer experience. There is nothing “easy” or

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“natural” about the state of Black cancer survivorship and the structural violence that continues to fuel their inequities. Sarah’s willingness to be an eager student, active “warm demander,” and reflective ethicist has complicated our project in the best ways. We have all grown throughout this project. Our message to visual researchers is this: from project design, to implementation, to analysis and dissemination, every aspect of the study should embrace the cultural contexts of the people whose circumstances you want to understand. If you, as the researcher, do not personally reflect those contexts and honestly, even if you do, it is NECESSARY to identify and include contextual experts (including the participants) who can help assure the research best captures and honours the wisdom of people’s stories.

Role White Allies Can Play For White researchers to engage in a “critical ethical alliance” or “countercolonial alliance” they must show their awareness of power structures and systems of oppression (Lincoln and Cannella 2018, p. 85). From a critical methodology perspective, developing a critical ethical alliance involves: (a) understanding the complexity of topics such as power and oppression, and recognizing that no one has or will ever have all the answers; (b) acclimating to a feeling of groundlessness in the sense that there will always be varying degrees of ambiguity; (c) your own sense of self, as both a researcher and “ally” is constantly evolving and not always in a linear way; and (d) reflecting in a deliberative way with the goal of “continued reflexive insight” (Lincoln and Cannella 2018, 85). Yet is it enough to simply be an ally? Some have pointed out the need for accomplices rather than or in addition to allies (Indigenous Action 2014; Suyemoto et al. 2021). While many White researchers consider themselves allies in anti-racist scholarship and service, it does not necessarily follow that those same allies are “working toward disrupting the heteropatriarchy, but rather cycling through and maintaining systems of privilege and oppression” (Powell and Kelly 2017, 45). Instead, accomplices work towards and take risks to disrupt existing power structures while also leveraging their own intersectional privilege to dismantle them.

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Yarbrough (2020) suggests cultural humility can be a tool, or at least, a window. Adopting elements of cultural humility or integrating it into your methodological approach, as Yarbrough suggests, can help White researchers think about knowledge in new ways or “as a dialogical process rather than an endpoint” (p. 70). Using cultural humility can help grease the wheels when examining our own values, beliefs, and biases to allow us to go deeper and uncover some uncomfortable, but meaningful, spots. In addition to cultural humility and intellectual humility, the recognition of different ways of knowing is essential to the progress towards epistemic justice. Further, understanding that the existing power structures and systems of oppression in which we were raised, socialized, and educated have also prevented those who have been marginalized “from having the opportunity to articulate or relay their experiences” (Rosen 2021, 2). Using transformational grounded theory and storytelling work, researchers can create opportunities “to uncover and elevate” the experiences of participants or co-researchers. The study design, itself, should directly engage with and address inequities as well as problems of power and privilege while also considering “the strengths in the community … and give back to the community something of value” (Mertens 2021, 2). Finally, related to one’s overall positionality and self-reflexive work, our “in-the-moment” ethical reflections and decision making are undoubtedly influenced by the reality of our world. As a result, we can be better ethical researchers with conflict humility. Researchers should appreciate that their career goals, funding priorities, and institutional/organizational priorities may generate conflicts of interest that oppose trustworthiness in faithfully serving community interests and priorities. Conflict humility is another reason that investigators should promote vigorous partnering and collaboration in CBPR to provide a strong check and balance against such biasing factors. (Stone 2011, 11)

In explaining what conflict humility means for a researcher, Stone alludes to the interconnectedness and mutuality of authentic community engagement.

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The Not-So-Hidden Potential of CBPR CBPR approaches, regardless of methodology, require researchers to continually lean into the fluidity of its practical ethics, constantly living “rent-free” in their minds, as one might say. The literature shows the many ways in which CBPR researchers have attended to the everyday ethics that arise, including: using a community advisory board to facilitate a shared power structure and increase engagement (Mitchell et al. 2020); assigning community participants to project leadership positions and adequately paying the community leaders, co-­ researchers, and participants for their time (Ashley 2021; Flicker et al. 2007); acknowledging the fluidity of relationships by regularly reviewing partnership agreements, expectations, and roles (Banks et al. 2013); considering how the research project and accompanying relationships, data, and dissemination might impact the larger community, for better or worse (Banks et al. 2013); and balancing confidentiality concerns while also acknowledging co-researcher contributions to the overall project (Banks et al. 2013). Further, there are policy and process changes that academic institutions and IRBs can implement: disclosing research fatigue as potential risk on informed consent materials while also highlighting possible benefits for the community in addition to the individual participants; asking community members to serve as permanent or ad hoc members of their IRBs; and carefully screening graduate student research proposals for potential risk of research fatigue, “especially but not only when submitted by non-community members” (Ashley 2021, 275). This is important to consider, as Ashley (2021) notes, since research performed by graduate students is less likely to be published, more likely to be brief encounters with a community, and are less likely to hold or have earned a position of trust within the community. As such, institutions that want to be culturally responsive community partners should pair graduate students with experienced community researchers to help mitigate potential risk of fatigue.

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Culturally Responsive Visual Researchers For visual researchers seeking guidance on how to start exploring and co-­ creating we suggest a field outside of research that might offer guidance. LaShaune is trained as a culturally responsive evaluator. This field is full of guidance around how to co-create investigative tools with community partners (Hood et al. 2015). The field offers a model for how to self-­ reflect as a researcher, and how to form critical questions (Bryan and Lewis 2019) that challenge the status quo and respect cultural differences. Within this field, there are innovations around Indigenous ways of knowing (Cram 2018), participatory data sharing/analysis (Hutchinson 2021), and LGBTQIA+ epistemology (Petillo and Neuner 2022). LaShaune has integrated many of the learnings from these fields into her work, and we believe that ethical visual researchers can learn from these as well. We would like to end with the voice of an ancestor, Lucille Clifton. We feel this quote highlights the bittersweet joy we experience in engaging in this work of centring the lived experiences of Black cancers survivors: “come celebrate/with me that everyday/something has tried to kill me/ and has failed” (Clifton 1993 as cited in Poetry Foundation 2022). Arts co-creation is a gift, a blessing, and a celebration, and by undertaking more ethical, collaborative, and culturally humble approaches to this work, we can honour the lives lived well by our research partners.

Notes 1. https://supremecourt.nebraska.gov/sites/default/files/Programs/CIP/ developmental_evaluation_jjhbi.pdf 2. https://www.dolovewalk.co/ubuntu-­circles

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14 Engaging in Collaborative Visual Research Practice with Refugees to Promote Social Inclusion and Enhance Belonging in Non-metropolitan Australia Mandy Hughes

Introduction Visual research has evolved considerably since the early days of the “voice of god” style of anthropological filmmaking to more recent projects that include participants more fully in the process of their own representation (MacDougall 2005; Pink 2007). Becker’s (1974) interest in visual sociological methods paved the way for a focus on inequality embedded in a commitment to research validity. In recent years, despite some initial resistance, visual research has proven its academic worth and its capacity to progress social agendas by engaging broad audiences and challenging dominant narratives to share stories that promote more equitable and diverse societies in various international contexts. In this way, visual research has become a vehicle to create authentic cross-cultural and everyday stories

M. Hughes (*) Southern Cross University, Coffs Harbour, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Burkholder et al. (eds.), Facilitating Visual Socialities, Social Visualities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25259-4_14

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that prioritize the perspectives of those previously excluded from having a public voice. This approach, embedded in empowerment principles, can be harnessed to successfully work with marginalized communities and participants subjected to unequal power relations, particularly those who have experienced ongoing trauma and persecution. This chapter discusses facilitating a collaborative visual research framework when working with refugee background participants in non-­ metropolitan Australia to capture meaningful accounts of lived experiences that educate and connect with local communities. The case studies discussed offer examples of facilitating socially engaged collaborative visual research that counter the negative narrative around refugee settlement in Australia and beyond to facilitate social inclusion. The work examined in this chapter includes a documentary made with Myanmar community members about the sociocultural aspects of food in reconnecting with their cultural heritage, provoking positive memories from the past and embedding a sense of identity and belonging. I also describe and reflect on the process of making multiple films with a local non-government organization (NGO) running a programme with refugee background women to meet their aspirations and connect with their local community. The NGO used these films to supplement funding applications, expand the programme to multiple sites, and advocate for the importance of social connectedness and inclusion for these women. This group also used visual methods to create, present, and promote public art exhibitions that sought to cultivate a connection to the broader community. Sharing stories visually through the exhibitions was met with sincere interest, and the newcomers were welcomed, thus interrupting the negative narrative of refugees in mainstream Australia. The visual research outputs discussed exemplify Clifford Geertz’s (1973) pioneering notion of “thick description”; that is, a rich, dynamic, and multi-layered representation of emerging communities.

Developing Visual Research Approaches Over the last few decades, visual research in its many forms has proven its capacity to engage broad audiences (Jackson 2014; Mitchell 2011) and has been harnessed to share stories that promote a more equitable and

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compassionate society (Hughes 2019; Mitchell and de Lange 2011). Emerging from its essence in ethnographic filmmaking and visual sociology, audio-visual research specifically provides “interpretative accounts of social and cultural life” that create unique forms of knowledge to explore “the full gamut of human social experience” (MacDougall 2011, 99–100). Using visual research methods in diverse settings creates authentic cross-­ cultural, “everyday” stories (MacDougall 2005; Pink and Leder Mackley 2012) and enables disenfranchised people to have a public voice (Cox et al. 2014) and be involved in the process of their own representation (Blomfield and Lenette 2018; Emert 2013; Evans and Foster 2009; Lenette et al. 2015; MacDougall 2005; Pink 2007). As anthropological and sociological visual researchers developed a more reflexive approach, they “began to use images to elicit understandings in a collaborative research process, rather than simply document social life” (Harper 2016, 243). Visual research developed a new motivation to move beyond simply being a research tool to consider the potential impact of the process and the reception of the research products by participants, the researcher, and the audience. In this context, visual research evolved to acknowledge the importance of collaboration in producing agreed-upon, authentic, and respectful narratives of lived experiences that seek to promote social action. More specifically, collaborative audiovisual research creates an open space for dialogue: a space for filmmakers to learn to pose the questions they do not originally know to ask, a place where film subjects select the fragments of their reality they deem significant to document, and a moral place where subjects and image makers can mediate their own representation. (Elder 1995, 94)

Collaborative visual research, therefore, becomes “[c]ommunity engaged scholarship” that is “anti-oppressive, anti-hierarchical research … that shifts power relations away from an authoritative expert” (Wiebe 2015, 244). Using collaborative or participatory visual research techniques can challenge the positionality of the filmmaker and provide an “equalling of power relations” (Mitchell and de Lange 2011, 171). Such an approach encourages participants to be acknowledged as experts on their own lives

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and is therefore appropriate for working with marginalized communities and participants, particularly those who have experienced ongoing trauma such as refugees.

 sing Visual Research Methods U with Marginalized Populations The capacity to explore refugee-specific issues, and the potential to change negative narratives associated with this group of people (Mathisen 2013), is apparent when we examine their increasing representation in and with visual forms. Many contemporary examples and approaches use visual research methods with migrant and refugee communities (see e.g. Emert 2013; Hughes 2021; McSweeney et al. 2022; Miled 2020; Tippens et al. 2021). Visual researchers have acknowledged “the huge potential to engage populations who have been marginalized from the process of research” (Warr et al. 2016, 5) and have sought to offer alternative ways to tell stories about identity, challenges, and achievements. Case studies of socially engaged visual research with refugees include using photography (photovoice) to develop a sense of belonging for displaced Muslim refugee girls in Canada (Miled 2020) and addressing issues of trauma and settlement challenges for Yazidi women in the United States (Tippens et  al. 2021). Emert (2013) collaborated with Asian and African refugee boys in the USA to enhance literacy and self-­ confidence through digital story-telling. McSweeney et al. (2022) used participatory action research alongside various photo-based visual methods to examine sport-for-development programmes in Uganda. This growing field of interest demonstrates an increasing focus on working respectfully and reciprocally with marginalized communities to share their stories and support their immediate needs and longer term aspirations.

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 ollaborating to Create Socially Engaged C Visual Research This chapter focuses on several studies conducted over eight years, where I used visual research methods in multiple ways with refugee background communities in non-metropolitan Australia. I had a previous career in television production, including working for a multicultural broadcaster, which provided the necessary technical skills needed to represent migrant lived experiences through audiovisual means. The collaborative research products included a documentary made with the Myanmar community as part of doctoral research and numerous creative projects made in partnership with Anglicare North Coast, a local non-government organization (NGO), to capture lessons learned from their 3Es to Freedom programme supporting women from refugee backgrounds.

Research Context I undertook various visual research projects in non-metropolitan coastal Australia between 2014 and 2022. The regional city with a population of 73,000 (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2022) was an official government refugee settlement zone, with nearly 2000 people from refugee backgrounds having arrived since 2004 (Department of Home Affairs 2021). There are more than 40 countries of origin for these new arrivals, with the highest numbers from Myanmar, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Congo, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and Eritrea (Department of Home Affairs 2021). Despite recent humanitarian settlement and migration from other countries, including Germany, South Africa, India, and the Philippines (ABS 2022), the regional city where the studies took place was predominantly Anglo-­ Australian and had a long history of conservative politics. Xenophobic attitudes in non-metropolitan communities make it difficult for humanitarian arrivals to feel they fit into the community (Colvin 2017; Smith et al. 2020). In many cases, government policy has demonized asylum seekers and refugees and offered politicians self-­legitimization by defending this “threat” to national security (Burke 2008; Devetak

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2004; Every and Augoustinos 2008). In the case of Australia, previous governments have used visual representations of asylum seekers deceptively to justify its harsh stance on border security and promote fear of “boat people.”. In one instance, the conservative government, in the lead up to an election, misconstrued the actions of asylum seekers to imply they threw their children overboard from their boat in an attempt to be rescued, despite being refused entry into Australian waters (see Slattery 2003). In countering these negative political campaigns, visual representations offer a powerful means to provide an alternative narrative to promote a sense of social inclusion and offer support during settlement (see e.g. Esin and Lounasmaa 2020; Hughes et al. 2021a, b; Miled 2020). Humanitarian arrivals in Australia and similar settlement countries face many challenges (see e.g. Clark et al. 2014; Curry et al. 2018; Fozdar and Hartley 2013; Morrice et al. 2021; Rose 2019; Smith et al. 2020; Udah et al. 2019) while many newcomers struggle to re-create a sense of identity and belonging. Nonetheless, small communities can also be very welcoming (Hughes et  al. 2021a, b; Taylor-Neumann and Balasingam 2013; Whitaker et al. 2018), especially when they have personal encounters with newcomers and show sincere interest in learning about their journeys.

Ethical Considerations It is crucial to understand the complexity of ethical considerations when working with both visual research methods and marginalized communities. Combining these two elements presents unique ethical circumstances (Warr et  al. 2016). There are issues around anonymity (Evans 2004; Hernandez-Albujar 2007) and the potential to easily replicate and share visual research (Warr et al. 2016). Therefore, it is essential in this context to ensure participants agree about the intended dissemination of the visual work, and researchers have strategies in place to protect this agreement. The university ethics committee approved the research, however special considerations needed to be prioritized, including how to negotiate informed consent, especially when working with potentially vulnerable

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people. In this instance positionality is also important. As a middle-class, Anglo-Australian woman employed by a university, I was aware of my privileged position and the potential for power imbalances. However, my personal values are aligned with social justice perspectives that promote compassion and reflection to redress inequitable outcomes. I therefore took an “iterative” and negotiated approach (Mackenzie et  al. 2007), whereby trust was developed over some time, over multiple phases and projects, and consent was revisited at different points in the research (Cox et al. 2014; Thomas 2012). I was committed to “building relationships of confidence, trust, and openness with participants” (Akesson et al. 2014, 83) to create an ethical and equitable research collaboration. This approach aimed to promote participant autonomy and self-­determination (Mackenzie et al. 2007). For example, consent forms were explained at initial meetings in English and interpreters conveyed this information in first languages such as Burmese, Hakha Chin, and Dari. In some cases, family members who were more confident in speaking English were involved in the negotiation process. Study participants only signed consent forms once all parties were satisfied enough information had been received (Warr et al. 2016) and that genuine understanding had occurred.

Making The Last Refuge The Last Refuge: Food Stories from Myanmar to Coffs Harbour was a collaboratively produced documentary film that sought to connect refugee background participants to the broader community in their new home. I intended that the film would promote cross-cultural understanding and affect social action through policy change or the provision of appropriate services for the settler community. I also wanted film participants to feel a sense of ownership over the research outputs and hoped participants would feel proud to represent themselves to others locally and beyond. The film sought to inform locals about the lived experiences of diverse community members who had unique settlement stories. These stories showcased different measures of “successful settlement”—not only the linear, government-sanctioned version of what it is to be a good citizen in Australia, that is, secure gainful employment and buy a house. The

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documentary acknowledged participants’ experiences of trauma, including extended periods awaiting refugee status. However, I sought also to share positive stories about communities reinventing their identity, connecting back to their traditions whilst making their place in their new landscape (see Fig. 14.1). The film focussed on the social and cultural role of food for Myanmar community members resettled in non-metropolitan Australia and I used the documentary form to capture the sensory nature of interactions with food: cooking, eating, and growing food. You can watch a family meal through the film, observe a harvest in a home garden, and see and hear the excitement of cooking and eating together at a community festival. Through the lens of food, these interactions allowed participants to tell their stories to the broader community about challenges, successes, placemaking, identity, and belonging in their new home (see Fig. 14.2).

Fig. 14.1  Placemaking in non-metropolitan Australia, film still from The Last Refuge: Food Stories from Myanmar to Coffs Harbour, Mandy Hughes, 2015

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Fig. 14.2  Festival food preparations, film still, The Last Refuge: Food Stories from Myanmar to Coffs Harbour, Mandy Hughes, 2015

Collaborating in the Filming Process In reflecting on my own positionality, I sought to establish positive and safe relationships throughout the study, especially in the context of using visual methods. I was initially “screened” by community leaders, and once introductions to the community were made, time was spent getting to know potential participants. I attended formal and informal community gatherings and had individual and small group meetings with potential participants before commencing filming. Once filming began, I created a friendly, relaxed environment to ensure participant comfort. Participants were always deferred to when deciding what to discuss, what to film, and what was important to them. On-camera interviews were more like casual conversations than formal interviews that, as Nichols (1991) reminds us, are often embedded with unequal power relations. In making The Last Refuge, I sought to minimize my presence by being a single person crew (i.e. filmmaker and researcher combined) to create an intimate relationship with the participants. In the edited version of the film, my presence was kept to a minimum, with no voiceover and only the participants’ voices to tell their own stories. At times I subtly included

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my reflection or a verbal interaction to acknowledge my presence and remind the audience that this is a staged process to some degree. However, attention was always directed to participants and the stories they wished to share.

Screening and Ownership Considering intended outcomes and the implications of sharing visual research products is essential when conceptualizing such projects, especially those involving vulnerable groups. The initial dissemination plan for The Last Refuge was to hold private screenings for participants and community screenings with invited guests. This was expanded to include local film festivals, and significant interest in the film led to acceptance at international ethnographic film festivals in Europe and North America. The expanded screening strategy was negotiated with participants and was mainly due to their enthusiasm and pride in seeing themselves represented on screen, telling “their” stories to audiences in their new home. I encouraged participants in The Last Refuge to feel a sense of ownership of the film. Mitchell and de Lange (2011) discuss the importance of being sensitive to who owns visual research products and how they will be used. In this instance, participants were given copies of the final edited film and were consulted about appropriate public screenings. Empowerment was evident when a group of participants conducted their own community screenings without my involvement. This act reinforced the sense of confidence they felt in being involved in the project and their pride in representing their communities.

 Es to Freedom Visual Representation to Promote 3 Social Inclusion The 3Es to Freedom project used a wide range of visual research methods and creative techniques to capture lessons learned, support program expansion, and promote community connections between newcomers and the broader community. I drew on existing relationships established

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over several years with emerging communities during the doctoral research discussed earlier. Visual methods were embedded in the partnership between the local university-based research team and Anglicare North Coast, a local NGO. This included making documentaries about the programme, co-producing a book telling the women’s stories, and staging multi-site art exhibitions that featured work produced by the women. Anglicare North Coast had considerable experience offering support to newly arrived refugees and was committed to using innovative methods to promote awareness of the issues faced by this group. Initially, Anglicare North Coast commissioned a documentary about their 3Es to Freedom programme to secure additional funding and expand programme sites. This method was requested to provide an alternative means of reporting to funders. Rather than writing a long (potentially unread) report, a 17-minute documentary was produced, canvassing programme experiences from participants, staff, researchers, and other stakeholders. Through this medium the programme participants could speak directly about their hopes and achievements in the programme, and the funder could see the women actively acquiring these skills through the video footage. Staff from the NGO described the research partnership as being “gold,” with the visual research products providing “compelling narratives” to secure further funding for programme continuation and expansion (see Fig. 14.3). Later in the study, the research team proposed using creative arts to share the women’s stories with the broader community at each location. Programme participants engaged in creative visual mediums, including textiles, to tell stories about their childhood and settlement journeys. I produced a short film that was looped and installed in the exhibition spaces to set the scene and add a sensory dimension to the visual works on display. The women participants were also photographed professionally and by staff in a number of settings, including community gardens, doing programme activities like learning to swim or ride a bike, making items for the exhibitions, and on excursions in the local area, and, more formally, in a studio wearing traditional clothing. This collection of photographs formed part of the art exhibitions and featured in a book co-­ created by the research team and staff. The book was given to programme participants and was shared at the art exhibitions to capture more detailed

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Fig. 14.3  3Es to Freedom participants exploring their local area, film still, Mandy Hughes, 2019

accounts of the women’s lives and their programme experiences. The book also took on a valuable role in ongoing reporting, applications for awards and to demonstrate impact. The art exhibitions were successful in terms of visitation numbers but also as an avenue for direct community engagement, dialogue, and possibilities for social action (see Fig. 14.4).

Visual Research and Empowerment The Last Refuge and the 3Es to Freedom visual research outputs were empowering because the participants were involved in the process of their own representation and made choices about how they wished to be depicted and what themes should be focused on (Mitchell and de Lange 2011). Facilitating through a process of education and community engagement, the visual research and creative products sought to connect participants with opportunities they needed to enhance their well-being and social inclusion in their new homes. Comments from The Last Refuge film participants suggest a sense of empowerment was attained by how the film made them feel proud of

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Fig. 14.4  3Es to Freedom film projected at one of the exhibition sites, photo, Emma Aspden, 2019

themselves, their culture and their achievements in settlement. After the initial private feedback screening, participants made the following comments about being part of the film: “Everyone likes it because we are naturally a part of the film—we appear as the way we really are!,” “It made me feel happy and proud of my culture,” and “You made us look beautiful.” Not only did the participants endorse the film, but they reflected on how they felt a deep sense of authorship and were pleased to authenticate the telling of their stories. In response to the 3Es to Freedom art exhibitions, a programme participant commented on how they felt about seeing visitors attend opening nights: I was very happy when I saw many people coming. I am very happy with my story displayed there, my story about my childhood, unforgettable memories. I’m happy for people to read it and learn about me.

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The large number of exhibition attendees at all sites demonstrated community acceptance, interest, and belonging. A participant affirmed this by saying: “Yes, I feel [welcome] because they come to have a look” and “It made us feel the community was open to us. We met new friends.” Knowing that people are interested in hearing their stories was empowering for 3Es women, many of whom had little access to public participation in their countries of origin. A participant acknowledged this validation, “I know someone knows my story. They know what has happened to me….” Positive interactions with audiences at film screenings and art exhibitions can connect diverse communities, deepen cross-cultural understanding, and encourage social action. Whilst acknowledging that visual artifacts are interpreted at the point of audience reception and may, in some cases, affirm rather than challenge negative stereotypes (Warr et al. 2016), commentary from audience members in these projects was overwhelmingly positive and showed sincere interest in getting to know the newcomers and including them in the broader community. These comments include: “We are glad you are part of our community, welcome!” “As an Aussie, I say welcome! Your strength and beautiful spirit enlighten our world.” “It made me feel that I would like to get to know some of these people.” Throughout the different visual research projects, my intention was to prioritize participants’ interests and ensure they were satisfied with their representations. MacDougall (2011, 112) confirms this consideration, as visual research participants “are by rights its first audience.” Facilitating beyond these ethical research commitments to “do no harm” creates the opportunity to “do good” and inspire social action. By employing a collaborative approach, I sought to involve the participants in the creative production processes and engage with audiences through screenings and exhibitions whereby these texts “triggered” community discussions (Mitchell and de Lange 2011, 171) and ultimately action. The actions have included increased funding for refugee support programmes to operate at additional sites and extend programme duration; investing in

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multicultural participation in community gardens; requests to learn more about newcomers through additional film screenings; social invitations and genuine, compassionate feedback welcoming former refugees into their new communities to enhance social inclusion.

Conclusion Visual research has gained increased acceptance in academia in recent years and these outputs have multiple, legitimate audiences. The potential for impact in the community space remains a priority for applied researchers seeking to make a difference and incite social change. Success in this field relies on facilitating long-term, reciprocal relationships and being aware of and addressing power imbalances. It also requires a commitment to involve participants meaningfully in the process of their own representation. Ultimately the sensory nature of visual methods, especially video, must be recognized as a powerful medium to change community perceptions and foster social change by providing authentic representations of unique lived experiences. This body of work intended to share knowledge, to learn more about others, and empathize with their lived experiences. These aims were met through producing collaborative films and other visual research outputs that positively impacted participants and the broader community by engaging with stories of resilience.

References Akesson, B., M. D’Amico, M. Denov, F. Khan, W. Linds, and C.A. Mitchell. 2014. 'Stepping back'as researchers: Addressing ethics in arts-based approaches to working with war-affected children in school and community settings. Educational Research for Social Change (ERSC) 3 (1): 75–89. Australian Bureau of Statistics. 2022. 2016 census. https://www.abs.gov.au/ websitedbs/censushome.nsf/home/2016. Becker, H.S. 1974. Photography and sociology. Studies in Visual Communication 1 (1): 3–26.

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Blomfield, I., and C. Lenette. 2018. Artistic representations of refugees: What is the role of the artist? Journal of Intercultural Studies 39 (3): 322–338. Burke, A. 2008. Fear of security: Australia’s invasion anxiety. Cambridge UP. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511720543. Clark, A., A. Gilbert, D. Rao, and L. Kerr. 2014. ‘Excuse me, do any of you ladies speak English?’ Perspectives of refugee women living in South Australia: Barriers to accessing primary health care and achieving the Quality Use of Medicines. Australian Journal of Primary Health 20 (1): 92–97. Colvin, N. 2017. ‘Really really different different’: Rurality, regional schools and refugees. Race Ethnicity and Education 20 (2): 225–239. Cox, S., S. Drew, M. Guillemin, C. Howell, D. Warr, and J. Waycott. 2014. Guidelines for ethical visual research methods. The Visual Research Collaboratory. http://vrc.org.au/ guidelines-­for-­ethical-­visual-­research-­methods. Curry, O., C. Smedley, and C. Lenette. 2018. What is “successful” resettlement? Refugee narratives from regional New South Wales in Australia. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies 16 (4): 430–448. Department Home Affairs. 2021. Country of origin and ethnicity humanitarian entrants Coffs Harbour LGA. Australian Government. Devetak, R. 2004. In fear of refugees: The politics of border protection in Australia. The International Journal of Human Rights 8 (1): 101–109. https:// doi.org/10.1080/1364298042000212565. Elder, S. 1995. Collaborative filmmaking: An open space for making meaning, a moral ground for ethnographic film. Visual Anthropology Review 11 (2): 94–101. Emert, T. 2013. ‘The transpoemations project’: Digital storytelling, contemporary poetry, and refugee boys. Intercultural Education 24 (4): 355–365. Esin, C., and A. Lounasmaa. 2020. Narrative and ethical (in) action: Creating spaces of resistance with refugee-storytellers in the Calais ‘jungle’ camp. International Journal of Social Research Methodology 23 (4): 391–403. Evans, M. 2004. Ethics, anonymity, and authorship on community centred research or anonymity and the Island cache. Pimatisiwin: A Journal of Aboriginal and Indigenous Community Health 2 (1): 59–75. Evans, M., and S.  Foster. 2009. Representation in participatory video: Some considerations from research with Métis in British Columbia. Journal of Canadian Studies 43 (1): 87–108.

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Every, D., and M. Augoustinos. 2008. Constructions of Australia in pro- and anti-asylum seeker political discourse. Nations and Nationalism 14 (3): 562–580. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-­8129.2008.00356.x. Fozdar, F., and L. Hartley. 2013. Refugee resettlement in Australia: What we know and need to know. Refugee Survey Quarterly 32 (3): 23–51. Geertz, C. 1973. The interpretation of cultures: Selected essays. London: Fontana Press. Harper, D. 2016. The development of visual sociology: A view from the inside. SocietàMutamentoPolitica 7 (14): 237–250. Hernandez-Albujar, Y. 2007. The symbolism of video: Exploring mothers’ experiences. In Visual research methods: Image, society, and representation, 281–306. Hughes, M. 2015. The last refuge: Food stories from Myanmar to Coffs Harbour, documentary film (25 mins). https://vimeo.com/135829461. Hughes, M. 2019. Collaborating with refugees: Power, ethics and reciprocity in documentary filmmaking. Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media 18: 160–174. ———. 2021. Filmmaking as empirical research: Working with people from refugee backgrounds to share stories about food. Visual Studies 36 (1): 11–24. Hughes, M., L. Whitaker, and B. Rugendyke. 2021a. “Yesterday I couldn’t see. Tomorrow’s sun shines now”: Sharing migrant stories through creative arts to foster community connections and wellbeing. Journal of Intercultural Studies 42 (5): 541–560. ———. 2021b. ‘It’s given me love’: Connecting women from refugee backgrounds with communities through art. The Conversation 4. Jackson, J.L., Jr. 2014. Theorizing production/producing theory (or, why filmmaking really could count as scholarship). Cultural Studies 28 (4): 531–544. Lenette, C., L. Cox, and M. Brough. 2015. Digital storytelling as a social work tool: Learning from ethnographic research with women from refugee backgrounds. The British Journal of Social Work 45 (3): 988–1005. MacDougall, D. 2005. The corporeal image: Film, ethnography, and the senses. Princeton University Press. ———. 2011. Anthropological filmmaking: An empirical art. In The SAGE handbook of visual research methods, 99–114. London: Sage. Mackenzie, C., C. McDowell, and E. Pittaway. 2007. Beyond ‘do no harm’: The challenge of constructing ethical relationships in refugee research. Journal of Refugee Studies 20 (2): 299–319. Mathisen, K. 2013. Can Mary meets Mohammad challenge attitudes about asylum seekers? The Guardian.

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McSweeney, M., R.  Hakiza, and J.  Namukhula. 2022. Participatory action research and visual and digital methods with refugees in Kampala, Uganda: Process, ethical complexities, and reciprocity. Sport in Society 25 (3): 485–505. Miled, N. 2020. Can the displaced speak? Muslim refugee girls negotiating identity, home and belonging through photovoice. In Women’s studies international forum, vol. 81, 102381. Pergamon. Mitchell, C. 2011. Doing visual research. London: Sage. Mitchell, C., and N. De Lange. 2011. Community-based participatory video and social action in rural South Africa. In The SAGE handbook of visual research methods, 171–185. Morrice, L., L.K. Tip, M. Collyer, and R. Brown. 2021. ‘You can’t have a good integration when you don’t have a good communication’: English-language learning among resettled refugees in England. Journal of Refugee Studies 34 (1): 681–699. Nichols, B. 1991. Representing reality: Issues and concepts in documentary. Indiana University Press. Pink, S. 2007. Doing visual ethnography. London: Sage. Pink, S., and K.  Leder Mackley. 2012. Video and a sense of the invisible: Approaching domestic energy consumption through the sensory home. Sociological Research Online 17 (1): 87–105. Rose, D. 2019. Creating a home in Canada: Refugee housing challenges and potential policy solutions. Migration Policy Institute. Slattery, K. 2003. Drowning not waving: The ‘children overboard’ event and Australia’s fear of the other. Media International Australia 109 (1): 93–108. Smith, L., H.  Hoang, T.  Reynish, K.  McLeod, C.  Hannah, S.  Auckland, S. Slewa-Younan, and J. Mond. 2020. Factors shaping the lived experience of resettlement for former refugees in regional Australia. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 17 (2): 501. Taylor-Neumann, L.V.N., and M.R. Balasingam. 2013. Migratory patterns and settlement experiences of African Australians of refugee background in Murray Bridge, South Australia. Australian Geographer 44 (2): 161–175. Thomas, S. 2012. Collaboration and ethics in documentary filmmaking  – A case study. New Review of Film and Television Studies 10 (3): 332–343. Tippens, J.A., K.  Roselius, I.  Padasas, G.  Khalaf, K.  Kohel, E.  Mollard, and I. Sheikh. 2021. Cultural bereavement and resilience in refugee resettlement: A photovoice study with Yazidi women in the Midwest United States. Qualitative Health Research 31 (8): 1486–1503.

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Udah, H., P.  Singh, K.  Hiruy, and L.  Mwanri. 2019. African immigrants to Australia: Barriers and challenges to labor market success. Journal of Asian and African Studies 54 (8): 1159–1174. Warr, D., J. Waycott, M. Guillemin, and S. Cox. 2016. Ethical issues in visual research and the value of stories from the field. In Ethics and visual research methods, 1–16. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Whitaker, L., M. Hughes, and B. Rugendyke. 2018. ‘I would call it a social capital building exercise’: The nature of networks that enable women with a refugee background to access sustainable employment in regional Australia. Journal of Social Inclusion 9 (2): 73–85. Wiebe, S.M. 2015. Decolonizing engagement? Creating a sense of community through collaborative filmmaking. Studies in Social Justice 9 (2): 244–257.

15 Ethical and Methodological Considerations for Facilitating Community-Based Participatory Visual Research with Queer and Disabled Elders Megan Hill

I decided to attend Trent University because I knew that decolonial and feminist research about aging was already underway. During my undergraduate degree, my research interests on experiences of queer and disabled aging were niche, and there were few faculty members whose research examined aging at all. I had difficulty recruiting older queer adults in New Brunswick, Canada, for my honour’s research. This was partly because I was conducting virtual interviews during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. I ended up widening my research to all of Canada and recruited three participants, all of which were white, cis, gay men. So, the allure of Trent University was not only in the expertise among faculty regarding diverse aging experiences, but also the ease that

M. Hill (*) Department of Canadian and Indigenous Studies, Trent University, Peterborough, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Burkholder et al. (eds.), Facilitating Visual Socialities, Social Visualities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25259-4_15

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I imagined would come with gathering a dozen queer and disabled older adults in a city that previously hosted similar events. When I arrived in Peterborough, Ontario, during Canada’s fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, I found that the vibrant intergenerational queer community I imagined was not as active as I had thought. In fact, the Aging Activisms collective had paused their research endeavours for the year, with a new wave hitting every time they tried to plan community-­based research. The push-and-pull of planning and cancelling research events, as well as major life disruptions, pulled priorities elsewhere [see Chazan 2023]. With all the hope, enthusiasm, and anxiety of a graduate student in the first month of their master’s, I started networking with different members of the Aging Activisms collective, pitching my ideas for a multi-day arts-based workshop in the summer. I was met with a group of academics worn out from working and living through a pandemic, community participants that did not feel safe to gather, and a time of re-imagining alternative ways of conducting community-based research that were not as time and energy-consuming as workshops. I was not, however, ready to let go of the idea of gathering in community with queer and disabled elders for my research project. In the face of a pandemic characterized by isolation, ableism, and ageism (Shakespeare et al. 2021), I saw the act of coming together in community as immensely important. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, I saw and felt a deep longing for tangible, in-person community building without screens and cities between us. This raised important ethical and practical questions in planning my research. How do I ensure that we can come together in a way that is protecting participants’ physical safety from a life-threatening virus while also respecting participants’ autonomy to make choices for their own well-being? There are steps that I took in the research design process to help mitigate the spread of COVID-19 such as choosing a location with proper air ventilation and filtration, recruiting a small number of participants, and encouraging mask wearing among those involved. Ultimately, I cannot guarantee participants’ safety within the research because we live in a world that is already unsafe. But, there are opportunities to facilitate this work in safe(r) ways.

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The question of how to facilitate safer community research during a pandemic is one of many ethical considerations in my research design process to ensure that I remain in line with my feminist, queer, crip values. As Alison Kafer (2013) argues, “queer” and “crip” are words that help forge a politics, wherein both queerness and disability are fluid, ever-­ changing, experienced in and through relationships, and are potential sites for reimagining (9). I hold this anti-normative fluid politic of queerness and disability at the heart of my research. Sharlene Hesse-Biber (2012) outlines some core feminist beliefs in facilitating research including valuing lived experience and emotions, relationships of reciprocity and care, rejecting researcher-objectivity, and an orientation towards social change. In what follows, I will discuss further ethical and methodological considerations in my ongoing research project. I will apply a queer, crip framework throughout, reflecting on relationships to land, identity, and body-minds. I begin with a brief introduction to my ongoing research project and its theoretical framework before examining Hesse-Biber’s (2012) feminist research values as they apply to my research methodologies. In doing so, I hope to provide other researchers with tools for considering power relations embedded in their facilitation practices and make visible the decision-making process of my research design.

My Proposed Research Project I learned about the importance of intergenerational queer, crip community as a teenager in Fredericton, New Brunswick. As an anxious, closeted queer growing up in a rural, poor, and conservative province, I longed for examples of successful queer, mentally ill life courses. I did not see myself in the adults I knew, had no queer or disabled role models in my daily life, and could not imagine a future for myself beyond graduation. Coming into my queerness and feminism, I met others like me and together we coordinated a youth activist group in Fredericton. Although we gained much from our years of organizing and networking, many of us were struggling mentally and physically. In 2016, three of my closest friends attempted suicide. It was only through the support, open doors,

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warm food, and regular check-ins from older queer community members that I survived. It is not a coincidence that my friends and I did not know what it meant to age as queer disabled youth. Through deliberate state policies, queer and disabled people have been erased, discarded, and killed, resulting in a much smaller population of queer disabled older adults than what could have been had they lived in a society that desired them (Ware 2022). The queer disabled older adults that survive into later life are marginalized from queer communities that prize youthful fit bodies; from crip culture, which separates disability from experiences of old age; and from spaces of old age that are centred around heteronormative and ableist notions of aging well (Duncan 2008; Marshall 2014; Sandberg and Marshall 2017). As Linn Sandberg and Barbara Marshall (2017) argue, queer, disabled older adults are seen as having miserable or non-existent futures, existing outside of norms of “hetero-happiness” (2). Their work encourages a queering of aging futures, imagining possibilities outside of fixed, linear temporal understandings of perfect futures. My research project takes up this call to action, examining the unique temporal contexts, or temporalities, of queer, disabled elders using the participatory visual methodology, cellphilming. Here I ask: how do queer, disabled elders in New Brunswick, Canada, challenge heteronormative and ableist notions of successful aging through their relations to temporalities? I bring to this project a longing to connect with my queer disabled elders, with lived experience of the significance that these relationships can carry.

Literature Review This project will draw on the growing field of critical aging studies, which challenges the pervasive discourse of successful aging. Crafted to address ageist stereotypes of aging as a period of decline and dependence, this popular discourse is exclusionary, accepting the old only if they remain youthful, active, and avoid disability (Calasanti 2020, 198). Those who fail (or are unable) to take up proper lifestyle choices to remain active and youthful in later life are deemed failures, leaving queer, disabled, racialized, fat, poor elders behind (Chazan 2019; Marshall 2018; Minkler and

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Fadem 2002). However, scholars are increasingly expanding the field of aging to better understand diverse later lives. May Chazan and Melissa Baldwin (2021) are two scholars who facilitated an intergenerational story-telling workshop with 2SLGBTQIA+ people about their identities and futures, complicating understandings of queer and trans aging, intergenerationality, and futurities. Similarly, Nadine Changfoot and her colleagues with Project Re•Vision (2022) look to short multimedia videos produced by diverse older adults to examine queer, crip, Anishinaabe forms of aging. Here they assert that Indigenous, disabled, and queer individuals create new possibilities of aging futures, embedded in communities, land, and cyclical, continuous temporalities. Furthermore, my own honour’s thesis found evidence of queer temporalities where participants described experiences living through the AIDS epidemic resulting in a lifestyle that did not account for the future (Hill 2021). Expanding on these empirical studies, this research will focus on temporal experiences of queer disabled older adults, told through short participant-­ produced films using accessible technologies, called cellphilms. Temporalities refer to the chronological progression of time, as influenced by one’s historical and political context (Port 2012). Recently, queer theory and crip studies scholars have been theorizing unique temporal experiences of queer and disabled individuals as they live outside of typical markers of progress. Jack Halberstam (2005) is a leader in this regard, coining the concept of queer temporalities as lives lived “outside of the conventional forward-moving narratives of birth, marriage, reproduction, and death” (16). Allison Kafer (2013) bridges theories of queer temporalities with disability, referred to as “crip time,” countering notions of progress and cure by moving slowly, non-linearly, and flexibly through time. Aging, too, can be seen as a strange temporal experience, as Cynthia Port (2012) explains, “no longer employed, not reproducing, perhaps technologically illiterate, and frequently without disposable income, the old are often, like queers, figured by the cultural imagination as being outside mainstream temporalities and standing in the way of, rather than contributing to, the promise of the future” (Port 2012, 3). Combining these three areas of theorizing about temporalities, I will examine understandings of temporalities of queer, disabled, older adults. Further, by

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using cellphilming, a participant-driven storytelling methodology, I will add empirical, person-centred data to the conversation.

 ueer, Crip Feminist Values: Lived Experience Q and Emotions My research aims to centre lived experiences and stories of queer and disabled elders as there is a dearth of stories by and for diverse populations of older adults. Looking at mainstream representations of aging, popular culture paints an image of aging consisting of strictly heterosexual white couples with nuclear families (Marshall 2018). Linn Sandberg and Barbara Marshall (2017) are two scholars calling for a queering of successful aging, asserting the ways current frameworks of aging are ableist, heteronormative, colonial, and racist. There have been a small number of attempts to increase representations of older queer adults, such as the recent documentary A Secret Love (2020). Yet as is often the case with marginalized peoples, their stories are filtered through authority figures, in this case their younger, heterosexual family members (Hill 2022). For this reason, I am drawn to cellphilming methodology, which refers to short, participant-produced films made using cellphones as familiar and accessible technologies oriented towards a social issue (MacEntee et al. 2016), putting the power of storytelling into the hands of participants.

Cellphilming Methodology Cellphilming is a feminist methodology in and of itself, which has been used in various contexts for social change (see Burkholder et al. 2022; Kendrick et al. 2021; MacEntee et al. 2016). Cellphilming departs from traditional participatory visual methodologies that require researchers to act as an intermediary between participants and technology to tell their stories (MacEntee et al. 2016). Cellphilming draws on personal mobile technologies, like cellphones and tablets, as accessible, portable, and easy-­ to-­use resources to allow marginalized communities to tell their own stories. As co-producers of research, participants have direct control over

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their level of anonymity in their audio-visual materials and autonomy over how their story is shared and with whom (Burkholder et al. 2022). Once participants have completed their cellphilms, we will screen the cellphilms in a community setting, fostering broader conversations about themes that emerge. By actively involving participants as co-producers and co-disseminators, this research project will centre lived experiences of those made invisible by dominant narratives of later life. Cellphilming methodology democratizes the research setting by drawing on everyday technologies like cellphones. However, in designing this project with older adults in mind, I have wondered how familiar and accessible smartphones and tablets are for a population that is commonly framed as technologically illiterate as a result of the “digital divide” (Köttl et al. 2021). Furthermore, May Chazan and Madeline Macnab’s (2018) work demonstrates the power dynamics at play between young and old in intergenerational research settings through assumptions around technological expertise and authority. As a young researcher working with queer and disabled older adults using technology, how will my perceived expertise effect their capacity to tell their stories? In the context of a pandemic that has resulted in increased dependency upon technology for social connections, cellphilming will provide a unique opportunity to examine the use of “youthful” technology among the old.

 ueer, Crip Feminist Values: Relationships Q of Reciprocity and Care Rather than extracting knowledge and data from marginalized communities for the benefit of academic researchers, feminist approaches to research stress the need to build relationships in research settings (Hesse-­ Biber 2012). As outlined by Karen Potts and Leslie Brown (2015), anti-­ oppressive researchers have a responsibility to invest time, energy, and care into building relationships if they are to ground themselves and their work in the community. As Jenn Cole (2019) points out, sometimes this cultivation of relationships involves a lot of waiting, patience, and time to create, which is often incompatible with the neoliberal and colonial landscape of academia. This was reflected, for example, in May Chazan and

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Melissa Baldwin’s (2021) lessons about learning to be refused in a research setting and the unanticipated but necessary time of negotiating ongoing and informed consent. The importance of relationship and community building was also reflected in advice I received from a friend when I first started my graduate studies: “you should never do research in a community you intend to leave” (personal communication, 2021). This advice unsettled my preconceived notions of what facilitating research ought to look like. I had moved to Peterborough because I figured this was where feminist, queer, crip community research about aging was happening! I had assumed that by associating myself with scholars that had done the work and spent time building relationships in this place that the trust would already exist when I went to hold my own research workshops, without considering what I would put into those relationships and communities myself. This new city was decidedly not my long-term home, but rather the place I was staying to conduct my research. I wondered: could I facilitate longer term meaningful relationships to scholars, participants, and the lands even after I leave? Should I make this place home to build and maintain ethical research relationships? If not here, then where?

 etermining the Research Setting D and Population I thought back to my own queer and crip community. I know a handful of queer and disabled elders in my hometown, but there has not been much community or opportunity for gathering among them. In a youth-­ oriented and ableist queer culture, queer disabled older adults are largely invisible in my queer community. On the other hand, queer and disabled elders in Peterborough had access to a collective of scholars and activists dedicated to lifting up their voices and stories, holding many events and gatherings over the course of the past five years. Perhaps, I thought, both my community and my research would be better off if I worked in a territory that I am personally connected to. Additionally, given the differing circumstances of the pandemic in the two provinces, gathering in person

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with a small group of participants seemed more feasible and meaningful in New Brunswick, although this is in-flux and unpredictable. Conducting this research in my home would not only provide me with direct contact with intergenerational queer, crip community I craved, but could also help facilitate the building of a more accessible, age-friendly queer community with long-lasting effects even after my research project was complete, centring my values of reciprocity and community care. I contemplated how to best recruit a marginalized population in New Brunswick during a pandemic. My experiences recruiting online for my honours thesis resulted in a group of participants that were all white, cis, well-educated, gay men. How could I access diverse queer and disabled older adults in New Brunswick? I considered recruiting within long-term care facilities, where I know the old and disabled are hidden away from public view and where queer folks are often pushed back into the closet to receive care (Clare 2017; Schwinn and Dinkel 2015). I see this as an area for further research, but worried about the practicality given the strict COVID-19 protections in place for long-term care, as well as the potential ethical and safety concerns of conducting openly queer research in a space where it is often unsafe to be out. In my deliberations regarding the best way to access this population, I came upon a newly formed group called ElderPride, an intergenerational social programme for 2SLGBTQ+ older adults (50+) organized by local pride organization, Fierté Fredericton Pride. I decided to shift the scope of my research, both in age range, to include the younger end of ElderPride members in their 50s, and in terms of visibility, recruiting within the group presumably resulting in participants that are more connected within the community. Although I may not reach the most-vulnerable queer and disabled older adults by recruiting within ElderPride, gathering, and sharing their stories may help facilitate future storytelling and research with more marginalized elders.

 ueer, Crip Feminist Values: Rejection Q of Researcher-Objectivity Looking to abolitionist Harriet Jacobs as an early feminist scholar, Hesse-­ Biber (2012) describes one legacy of Black feminist theorizing as the

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value of the personal as political. Jacobs believed that personal experience is a space to build knowledge and create social change which I see as directly related to the feminist research value to reject so-called unbiased, objective researcher-positions. Our backgrounds, upbringings, privileges, and oppressions impact how we see and experience the world, including how we conduct research. Feminist researchers turn their interrogation inwards, to their own positionality and the ways that it shapes questions they ask, methodologies they use, data they collect, interpretation of data, and how it is disseminated and received (Hesse-Biber 2012). My position as a young, white-settler, queer scholar with various chronic illnesses from the unceded traditional lands of the Wolastoqiyik is reflected in every aspect of my research project.

My Positionality Although aging is a universal experience, as a twenty-something-year-old studying old age and elderhood, my perspective will be that of an outsider. Young people in Western, colonial societies (although not the very young) are the standard against which agency, beauty, ability, and success of all others are measured. My capacity to make decisions for myself, to have my thoughts and ideas be taken seriously, and to be independent are not challenged due to my age, which may not be the case for participants. In my exchanges with participants, I will make an active effort to challenge ingrained ageist assumptions about old age, but inevitably as a young person working with older people, there will be power imbalances due to our age discrepancies. Even by being in the research space as a young person, the space will no longer be a space of old age but will become an intergenerational space due to my presence. As a white-settler on unceded and traditional lands of the Wolastoqiyik1—the people of the beautiful river—conducting research with what I anticipate will be an overwhelmingly white and settler group of participants, I will be cognizant of the power relations of occupying space that is not mine. To me, this means I will ensure that all involved are aware and appreciative of the fact that we are on stolen lands and the responsibilities that white settlers hold to respect, centre, and pay

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reparations to original inhabitants of the land. This means making connections to Black and Indigenous-led movements of resistance in our territory whenever possible, including Black Lives Matter Fredericton and the Wabanaki Two-Spirit Alliance. This also means being respectful of the land by leaving no trace when and if we are out in nature and giving thanks to the land and its protectors. Any racist, colonial language and sentiments that come up in the research space will not be tolerated and will be used as an opportunity for intergenerational learning and solidarity building. My own first-hand experience with chronic illness and queerness is a large motivation behind wanting to conduct this research and will hopefully be an asset in my connection with participants and in the interpretation of the data. As I have grown up in queer and disability community in Fredericton, I have noticed the dearth of accessible queer spaces for all ages that do not centre around alcohol. When the only queer spaces in a community are bars and drag shows, held late at night, in spaces with stairs, poor lighting, and no masks, disabled and older queer community members are excluded from queer social spaces. In conducting community-­based research with queer disabled elders, I hope to facilitate community building by recording experiences of an invisible group in our community and fostering intergenerational exchange in the sharing of their cellphilms. Though, I understand that age and various other factors will mean that our conceptualizations of queerness and disability may differ, including the language we use to identify our inclusion within these communities. I hope to find common ground with participants of this project by practicing vulnerability, stimulated by the sharing of my own cellphilm prior to the creation of their cellphilms.

Vulnerability in Practice Carla Rice (2018) argues that researchers must maintain self-reflexivity and vulnerability about their own embodied experiences and histories when researching marginalized populations. Making oneself a “vulnerable observer” during the research process by being present and honest with one’s own emotions as well as the emotions and experiences of

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others, even when they are difficult, contradictory, and uncomfortable, is a way of turning the gaze inwards and decolonizing ways of knowing and producing knowledge (Behar 1997; Rice 2018, 146). Although it is important to recognize the ways that our own positionality influences findings we create, I am critical of the commonplace use of reflexivity in qualitative research to mark our research as better or more accurate, and as a “cure” to the problem of doing representation (Pillow 2003, 180–181). Spivak (1988) echoes this critique when she argues that “making positions transparent does not make them unproblematic” (6, as cited in Pillow 2003, 183). As a young white queer woman, my positionality differs from my research participants. In my analysis and retelling of their experiences I am utilizing my power as a researcher to define the Other. This position of power over the data and research subjects does not exist in isolation from other relations of power. Although I am critical of the use of reflexivity as a catch-all solution to the problems of conducting research, I am committed to investigating and addressing relations of power within academia.

 ueer, Crip Feminist Values: Orientation Towards Q Social Change Fundamentally, a feminist, queer, crip research project must be oriented towards creating social change. My understanding of the purpose of community-­based research lies not only in the examination of social issues, such as ableism and heteronormativity in dominant understandings of aging, but in imagining alternative futures and taking steps towards creating a better world. Cellphilming methodology is well oriented to take up social change as it is about working together with participants to take research findings and put them into action (Burkholder 2020). In my research project, in collaboration with participants, we will hold a public screening of the completed cellphilms. As a group we will determine what films we are comfortable sharing in public, what level of anonymity those involved would like to maintain, and determine what audiences would be most impacted by the messages and themes emerging from the films. This public screening will be an opportunity to start

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conversations about aging, queerness, and disability on a wider level, and share diverse stories of aging. I hope that in creating cellphilms for this project, those involved will gain a new tool for engaging in social justice and continue to explore the method for their own use. In coming together as a group of queer and disabled older adults, this workshop also aims to deepen community connections and relationships between those involved, which will in turn strengthen their organization.

Conclusion The social change at the root of this project lies not only in the outcomes, but also in the process. In applying my feminist, queer, crip values to every step of the research process, I hope to also bring change to normative understandings of qualitative research within the academy. I will do this in small actions such as giving participants autonomy to choose what name or pseudonym they would like to use in the research and by giving all participants honorariums, regardless of what they produce, to demonstrate the value of their contributions and storytelling. As I have outlined in this chapter, acknowledging and changing unequal power dynamics is at the heart of every decision I have made for this research project such as the location, recruitment, and methodologies. Before researchers begin to make decisions about facilitating their projects, I believe it is important to clarify their research values. In the case of my ongoing graduate research, my feminist, queer, crip values of lived experience and emotions, relationships of reciprocity and care, rejection of researcher-­ objectivity, and an orientation towards social change have guided me through the first stages of my research project and will continue to inform my research as I begin my fieldwork. Acknowledgments  This research is supported by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and approved by the Trent University Research Ethics Board, file #28056.

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Note 1. The Wolastoqiyik are an Indigenous Nation whose traditional lands are along the Wolastoq river through Quebec, New Brunswick, and Maine.

References Behar, R. 1997. The vulnerable observer: Anthropology that breaks your heart. Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press. Burkholder, C. 2020. Exploring participatory visual research methodologies with queer, trans, and non-binary youth in a research for social change framework. Antistasis 10 (1): 130–142. https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/antistasis/article/view/30376. Burkholder, C., A. Thorpe, and Pride/Swell. 2022. Facilitating gender-affirming participatory visual research in embodied and online spaces. Visual Studies 37 (1–2): 33–46. https://doi.org/10.1080/1472586X.2021.1982650. Calasanti, T. 2020. Brown slime, the silver tsunami, and apocalyptic demography: The importance of ageism and age relations. Social Currents 7 (3): 195–211. https://doi.org/10.1177/2329496520912736. Changfoot, N., C.  Rice, S.  Chivers, A.O.  Williams, A.  Connors, A.  Barrett, M. Gordon, and G. Lalonde. 2022. Revisioning aging: Indigenous, crip and queer renderings. Journal of Aging Studies 63: 100930. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.jaging.2021.100930. Chazan, M. 2019. Unsettling aging futures: Challenging colonial-normativity in social gerontology. International Journal of Ageing and Later Life 14 (1): 1–29. https://doi.org/10.3384/ijal.1652-­8670.19454. Chazan, M., and M.  Baldwin. 2021. Queering generativity and futurity: LGBTQ2IA+ stories of resistance, resurgence, and resilience. International Journal of Ageing and Later Life 15 (1): 73–102. https://doi.org/10.3384/ ijal.1652-­8670.1574. Chazan, M., and M. Macnab. 2018. Doing the feminist intergenerational mic: Methodological reflections on digital storytelling as process and praxis. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research 19 (2): 1–19. https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-­19.2.2949. Chazan, M. 2023. Crip Time and Radical Care in/as Artful Politics. Social Sciences, 12(2), 99. MDPI AG. Retrieved from h ­ ttp://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ socsci12020099

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16 Experiential and Land-Based Learning of Wapana’ki Language, Culture and Art, and Worldviews: Piquing Interest and Accessibility Through Digital Archiving Starlit Simon

 y Classroom and Students: Learning M and Sharing Language When I began working at the Mi’kmaq-Wolastoqey Centre—a space at the University of New Brunswick that supports and affirms Indigenous students on campus—I knew the energy of the place was going to align well with my own. I knew that it would fill my spirit up to work in this place because I would be with other Indigenous people, working collaboratively to help Indigenous students. I knew I would learn a great deal and that opportunities would arise that would challenge me, but it would be alongside others thirsty for the same growth and knowledge. What I didn’t know was the humble and grounded ways I would be advised,

S. Simon (*) University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Burkholder et al. (eds.), Facilitating Visual Socialities, Social Visualities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25259-4_16

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taught, and guided by my supervisors Dr. David Perley and Dr. Andrea Belczewski along with the Elder in Residence Dr. Imelda Perley. Collectively, these three educators encouraged and nurtured what I would consider a little seedling of capability. What I thought was a speck of possibility they saw as something more. Not only would their confidence in me fuel me to try things I never thought possible, such as teaching a Mi’kmaw language class, but their depth of wisdom and experience encouraged me to implement, try, and use alternative ways of teaching and facilitating learning. Elders Dave and Imelda Perley’s recommendation for me to teach Mi’kmaw, when I had lost so much of my language over the previous decade, was paired with an encouragement of land-based and experiential teaching and learning. To expand the ways of learning and teaching beyond the classroom and beyond lectures and slides provided such ease in my heart, because language anxiety became a very real concern for me and I came to discover a concern for some students as well. Through the practice of land-based and experiential learning in my “classroom,” a snowball of self-acceptance, re-learning my language, growth and understanding of myself and of my students began to form, and I was quick to recognizing through these land-based and experiential activities how necessary and important it was for my personal well-being as well as my students’ well-being. Without these supervisors gently pushing me in this direction, I would never have come to the place of healing, I found myself in with my own land-based artwork, nor would I have discovered so much of my language that I didn’t know—old words and phrases used to describe plants that were not commonly used anymore and so their traditional Mi’kmaw names also lost. I would not have tapped into the incredibly profound and impactful community of artists whose art form also comes from the land and who through many conversations were feeling that land-based art has so much healing to provide. I also would not have been asked to then coordinate a month-long web series of Indigenous land-based artists within New Brunswick. Through the experience of teaching introductory and intermediate Mi’kmaw language classes at the University of New Brunswick in this way, I discovered the value of connecting the emotional, spiritual,

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mental, and physical to the language lessons. The ability to implement the multi-faceted ways in which Mi’kmaw people lived into these courses allowed for learning of language to take place through plant identification, forest bathing, archery, moccasin making, beading, and attending activism events that raised awareness for Indigenous rights and issues. My students and I had as much fun learning and connecting with one another through art, culture, traditions, activism, and Indigenous world views all while threading language lessons throughout. Each event had Mi’kmaw words and phrases tied into it. We learned the words that described the parts of the moose as we learned how to make moccasins with moose hide and sinew. We learned about all the medicinal, artful, and practical ways plants and trees were used along with learning their Mi’kmaw names. When students chose to attend an activism event, they would learn about the cause in whichever way they felt was best for them. They would then research Mi’kmaw word(s) or phrase(s) through Mi’kmaw language apps and websites or if they had someone in their life that spoke Mi’kmaw they could ask them as well. The word/phrase they would research would be something that resonated with their experience at the event or through the topic and they would then write a response paper that would expand on why they chose that word/phrase and how they felt this information, these events, impacted them and what they took away from learning more about them. While this isn’t an effective way to learn Mi’kmaw, as it did not typically encourage a memorization of a list of words/phrases, it piqued the interest of students who’d been separated from their culture and language. Students were engaging and connecting to the language and culture while simultaneously understanding how it had all been impacted through systemic inequality, racism, and colonization. This method nurtured the idea of treating the language as a living breathing entity, that is full of description, activity, and relationality. You can learn it in a traditional way, where prefixes and suffixes, plurals and singulars are taught. But there is a heart that is missing, that is being left out that comes from the lack of an emotional, physical, and spiritual connection to the language.

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Assignments that involved each component of the medicine wheel helped to feed the heart of the language and the soul of understanding Mi’kmaw. Physically they were attending events, emotionally they were tapping into how these events made them feel, mentally they were researching the word and learning to say the word, sometimes, while doing the activity itself, and they were connecting spiritually with their ancestors and what was taken from them. All quadrants of the medicine wheel were functioning as they learned a word or phrase. While not a streamlined approach to learning, it was alternatively a healing, nurtured, and grounding approach. Most importantly though, this is how our people learned traditionally. Through doing and engaging with the world around us. Take for example the word for brown is tupkwanamu’k which translates to “the colour of the dirt.” Mi’kmaw is a verb-based language and often in relation to something else because none of us on this entire planet can function without good relations with the world that surrounds us. What tied all these organic and grounded ways of learning was the ability to document, archive, and share this awakening and understanding that each individual student was having. As collective awareness was rising, resolve was strengthening, confidence building and a deep understanding of the self, their culture, and history were being had. By including a digital component—either to share through social media or within the classroom through mini movies and instructional videos, animations, and voice overs—the students had time to work extensively on a script or sounding a word or words out properly; they were able to apply art, graphics, creativity, and humour into their language learning activities and assignments, and a sense of the whole self being activated was occurring. All four quadrants were working, not one was left behind, while learning the language.

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 y Art and Story Telling: Learning M and Sharing, Healing and Reciprocity Soon after I began teaching the Mi’kmaw language courses, I started nurturing what I knew about porcupines and quill art. In 2009, I was taught by Tara Francis, the process of plucking a porcupine, the best way to line up your birch bark, and finally how to create your stencil and porcupine quill artwork. She taught me through two days of workshopping at the Fredericton Native Friendship Centre and did so through doing it herself and having me watch and do it alongside her. While I had been taught these incredible lessons, I had put them aside when I developed some allergies. But the more I decolonized my life, my workspace, my experiences, the more I was drawn back to this craft, and I worked with a naturopath to treat the allergies I had developed. My entire experience in reconnecting to this craft, as well as the harvesting of porcupines and birch bark, uploading artwork and my process, has all been documented through my social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook. I started by reaching out to friends digitally to let me know if they drove past any porcupine roadkill and if it was within driving distance I would investigate to see if it was good to harvest. This practice of locating porcupine roadkill relies heavily on all the people I am connected to on social media. Some people will simply post on their walls or stories where exactly they drove past a porcupine, these people tend to have several friends who are all porcupine artists or teachers. Porcupine locations is one part of it and is reliant on the connections I have with people who share with me via social media. There is also the harvesting of the quills, as well as the ceremony that goes into how you treat roadkill. I was always taught by people in my community, Elders, traditionalists, that if you hit an animal or are taking from an animal that was hit, you make an offering to the land and to that animal because it is considered that the animal has offered itself to you. My process changes based on where I locate the porcupine as well as the state of the porcupine. If on a rural road with little traffic, I might harvest them on the spot, smudge and do an offering right there on the spot, then drag the porcupine down into a ditch and lay some plants and flowers over them. However, if I locate one on a busy street with hardly a

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curb or on a highway, I will place them in a bin and take them home with me and bury them in my backyard where a porcupine gravesite of four pines now resides. Another element to this practice that I have started is to always give them names. I began doing this with my very first pine I harvested in 2009, and when I returned to this practice in 2019, I began naming them again. Often, through these experiences with porcupines, locating them, harvesting them, doing offerings, and naming them, a story emerges. A profound experience deep and visceral will occur. One that I will never forget is when a therapist I had seen let me know that she would like to hand me over to a trauma counsellor instead. She was breaking up with me. Certain traumas that had happened to me, I blamed myself for. And on a regular basis we would work through those feelings, and I would emerge from that place recognizing that I wasn’t to blame. Yet time and time again after a couple of months, those feelings and thoughts, that it was all my fault, would consume me once again. I was to blame for all the terrible things that happened to me because I wasn’t smart enough, wise enough, strong enough. I remember I had felt so broken and defeated— almost a year with this therapist and she was handing me off to someone else. It screamed to me that I was unfixable. What was the point of trying to heal from trauma? What was the point of therapy? The next day I had been particularly busy, and while I was informed about this porcupine at 7 am, 5 pm had now rolled around and it was rush hour, the pine was a good hours’ drive away from me, and it was drizzling. I had almost convinced myself not to go and investigate the pine, that at this point he was probably not worth salvaging with how it had rained nearly all day and decomposition had likely done its work on it. But then I reminded myself that, if I wanted to take this seriously, that at the very least it was my duty now to investigate the state of the pine and offer tobacco, even if it were not salvageable. If I was going to be a quill artist, I had to be committed to the investigation and to the ceremony of each pine I was made aware of. No excuses. I drove out and what I saw was the biggest, quilliest, porcupine I had ever seen. I began plucking its quills on the side of the road and at some point, I came into this meditative state as I physically removed roughly 30,000 quills, the estimated amount of quills on a porcupine.

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Eventually my body got weak from the constant motion, the chill of the rain and the supper-time hunger, but I kept going. Eventually, I thought about the porcupine and how this big, beautiful creature had likely lived a long life and here he was with all these protective quills almost completely intact—these quills that protected him from predators. This porcupine walked this earth with a shell of spikes to ward off any harm that might come its way and still…still this terrible thing happened to him. In that moment I had an epiphany, one of those ones that you’ve been waiting for your whole life, those ones that finally help you understand in your guts and heart and soul something that you could never seemingly understand through years of talk therapy. I understood from a visceral place, that you can do everything you possibly can to protect yourself from bad things happening, you can walk around with a shell of spikes to keep you protected, and do everything right and you can live a long and old life like this porcupine with his shell of spikes, and still, still you can have something bad happen to you, and it isn’t your fault if it does, just like it wasn’t this porcupine’s fault. I wrote a snippet of this epiphany, this deep understanding that had taken me so long to unpack, on a post with a picture of Billy. I called him Billy, because on that day it was raining. It was raining that day and the last thing my Godfather Bill Simon Jr. said to me in an email sounded in my head and in my heart, “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning how to dance in the rain.” The irony in all of this was my Godfather Bill passed away in a motorcycle accident. Out there on the road, just like the one I was on at that moment with this porcupine I decided to call Billy. My Godfather Bill, when he passed away, was doing what he loved, and he was also in protective gear from head to toe. Sometimes bad things happen to us, and it isn’t our fault, and there was nothing we could do to change it. If we always knew what dangers were ahead, we would never live fully in the moment. Bad things just happen to us sometimes. And it’s not our fault. Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass; it’s about learning how to dance in the rain. Stories emerge from these experiences I have with porcupine and birch bark harvesting and through creating porcupine art. These stories, I share

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snippets of on my social media accounts. Storytelling is a part of my family, it is a part of my people, I tell my story as I experienced it and I recount the lessons I learned from my experience. Through these posts there are stories, and there is information on my process of honouring the pines, the offerings and the teachings I’ve received and where I am simply doing what I feel is right. Often, I will also include a Mi’kmaw word or phrase that resonates with me, or I name the porcupine a Mi’kmaw name. There I am also able to share a language lesson to my followers and friends on these digital platforms. Interest is piqued, conversation is had in comments, and community is created. I feel connected to my friends and followers knowing that I get to involve them in my experiences and share with them how I’m nurturing and healing the whole self and how this decolonial way of being has provided me with healing that is hard to quantify, that Western methods of healing through talk therapy, while helpful in some regards, could not provide for me the deep understanding that plucking a porcupine in the rain gave me. The unshakeable idea that it was all my fault has been shaken off. I no longer believe that it is or that it was, and an acceptance and peace has occurred, which has allowed me to move forward in my journey.

 y Work and My People: Learning M and Sharing with Community Through Third Space Art Gallery in New Brunswick, I worked as a coordinator in developing a web series of Indigenous land-based artists. Six applicants were chosen to present their land-based art forms in whichever way they chose. They could do a workshop, a talk, or anything else they had in mind but would have to be done virtually through Zoom. The cases of the pandemic were particularly high and lock down measures were in place. People were feeling a need to connect and this one-month long workshop series turned out to be just what we had all been wanting

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to fill our cups back up. Artists were all from Wapana’ki territory and presentations ranged from corn husk doll creation, birch bark biting, harvesting from the land, teachings, ash basket weaving, porcupine quill work, and salmon skin tanning. Before putting on the webinar we made it explicitly clear for those who registered as attendees whether these workshops were for Indigenous people specifically or for the public. This was done in collaboration and in talks with the artists and depended on the extent of their workshop/talk. Discussions of cultural appropriation were had and while fears of cultural appropriators infiltrating these events were always in the back of our minds, what ultimately emerged were groups of Indigenous artists and curious Indigenous people from Indigenous communities across Wapana’ki and beyond tuning in to learn something new about our culture and art forms, as well as a sense of community and connection. This platform was particularly well received due to people feeling so disconnected from each other and in some ways their culture throughout the lockdowns of COVID.  People reported feeling a better understanding and awareness about kinship and our relational way of being as well as the struggles and needs. Some history was taught, laughs were shared, frustrations discussed, and an extension of love felt. A community was formed, a digital one, but one that still held validity and appreciation as if it were the “real” thing. This feedback had me contemplating the ways in which people from isolated communities could use virtual methods of learning, sharing, and connecting with one another. It also amplified the state of how virtual and digital methods could potentially help isolated children. Those who are taken from their First Nation communities and placed in off-reserve foster care homes. The digital world can be a place to tune in and establish some semblance of connection. While it will never replace the real thing, it can be a little something for the time being and sometimes that little something is enough for the day. This is what was determined we had needed as a group of Indigenous artists throughout another wave of COVID-19 (Fig. 16.1).

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Fig. 16.1  Visual representation of how my experiences in combining digital dissemination and land-based experiences have looked like

Apprehensions and Concerns Digital modes and methods can enhance and support learning and to make information accessible as well as pique the interest of people. However digital methods are also seen as a way of replacing in person, on the land work which is counterintuitive for how Indigenous worldviews and teachings are understood. Simpson, for example, argues: Social media in many ways is the antithesis of Indigenous life. It is appealing, attractive, addictive, and apathetic. It amplifies fear, ego, and anxiety. It centres individuals within a corporate, capitalist, coded algorithm—an algorithm that we have no control over and that most of us don’t even know how it works. (Simpson 2017, 224)

In writings by Simpson, it has been identified that to include or implement digitizing ancestral knowledge and land-based cultural practices was a stripping away of the importance and deep-rooted impact that land-based, ancestral, cultural knowledge of Indigenous people has.

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Rather she says that more needs to be done to include and to prioritize Indigenous knowledge and to make in person opportunities more accessible and a priority. Another concern is that the more we pander to the digitization of our ways the easier it is for the powers that be to disregard the value and importance of in person, on the land, with elders work that young people need right now—particularly to undo the centuries of erasure of these valuable systems. Simpson (2017) continues: Social media gave us the opportunity to skip the hard work of being present, of doing ceremonies together, of sharing food, and of standing face-to-­ face with our people, even when we disagree. I’m not sure it’s an opportunity we should have taken. (224)

In addition to Simpson’s criticisms, I have my own reservations and fears around digitizing culture and language, particularly because a modern form of erasure and colonization has been occurring and on the rise; shape shifting, pretendians, distorted dissent. Essentially people who claim to be Indigenous pick up Indigenous ways, culture, and identity without actually being connected to anyone Indigenous in the last few generations. They are often running with a family story of having an Indigenous ancestor, though nothing concrete has ever come from it. A connection to any community or family has never been made, and basically the person and their parents and grandparents have otherwise lived a white and privileged life and have had no exposure to an actual Indigenous person’s real experiences but want to claim that identity for the unique cultural aesthetics and elements of it. My concern is that through digital means it gives far too much access to those who culturally appropriate Indigenous ways for the goal of obtaining clout, accolades, grants, and positions. It is erasure in its most modern form because media, organizations, workplaces, institutions embrace these types. They embrace these types because “white mainstream media ‘want their palatable Indians, rather than real ones’” (Wheeler 2016, para. 1). There are stories I have heard that the reason we were able to hang on to so much of our ways and why so much of the lessons of our ways are

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still emerging despite the centuries of colonial efforts to erase our ways, our languages, and existence is because of the careful and hidden ways in which our people shared knowledge and information throughout these genocidal efforts. Mawiomis (gatherings) were held in secret; our language and stories were only spoken when we were in the safety of our kin. The culture was devalued so much that we began to see a loss but in private and in secrecy people were still practising and eventually they were able to come forward to share with everyone again when it was safer to do so. I feel this ancestral instinct to hide our ways, to keep them inaccessible and to vet anyone who wants access to it. Land-based and experiential learning should not be replaced with digital discourse but rather digital methods can be used to enhance the land-­ based experience as a way to highlight, share, archive, and make accessible to different Indigenous groups, communities, and people. Parameters can and should be put into place to ensure that it is being done in a way that prioritizes Indigenous worldviews, experiences, and people. The benefits to this are that it creates a space for mobilizing Indigenous people to either continue or to begin to explore their culture, traditions, and language particularly if they have not had much exposure to it due to the systemic stripping and eradicative efforts of colonization and the Indian Act. Through digital archiving and visual and digital research, interests can be piqued, curiosity nourished, and holes in information filled. I realize that over and over again that I use social media and digital tools to unpack, learn, understand, share, and address what I am learning and what I know about language, culture, and colonial trauma. I realize that I often take to Instagram to discuss issues affecting Indigenous people, and its Instagram where pages calling out pretendians occur and discussions on how to circumvent their efforts occur and where a community of Indigenous activism snowballs into hands on work to support causes and movements that support Indigenous people. I believe it’s possible for both worldviews to exist without declaring that only one works for all Indigenous people and groups. While we are all Indigenous people, we are unique still in our needs, our strengths, and weaknesses.

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In speaking with Dr. Allan Sabattis-Atwin, it was identified that there is a high rate of Indigenous children in non-Indigenous foster care homes. The systemic issues around why this is happening are so gargantuan and need to be tackled from so many directions, but he said in the meantime there needs to be things in place for these children and their foster parents that keep them connected to community culture and language, and the most effective way they can ensure this connection isn’t lost is through digital methods. To have digitized land-based learning that does not cause or increase potential of harm, misconceptions, or cultural appropriation for vulnerable groups it is detrimental to approach these methods with a spirit of relationality, respect, and clear communication.

 reating Boundaries for Cultural C and Language Sharing in the Digital Realm Encouraging and facilitating a walk in two worlds, also known as Etuaptmumk, Two-Eyed Seeing (Bartlett et al. 2012), may have a healing effect on Indigenous peoples who have resisted and who remain resilient in the face of centuries of displacement tactics enforced upon them by settler governments (Palmater 2014). Responding to this context, I can see that there is space for anticolonial virtual community-building activities and healing through social media-­ based exhibition practices through an Etuaptmumk approach with exhibiting, disseminating, and archiving visual research materials through online spaces. Using the concepts of Etuaptmumk (Two-Eyed Seeing) by Dr. Albert D Marshall there is room to forge ahead in this new world without abandoning who we are, without abandoning the land. Accessibility is a major factor in this as well particularly to Northern and rural communities. Putting limitations on what can and cannot be accessed and who can access what online will be key to establish that balance and to protect what is ours from appropriation. At this time, we are connecting more and more through digital means and the language around how to approach some of these issues needs to be loud, clear, concise, and

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consistent. Relationality and respect can inform the merging of this Western world and Traditional world. I would argue that the ability to pique interest in people through social media and digital means is in effect a way to start the ball rolling towards movement building and resurgence. It does not replace it but it can be used as a tool to motivate and move, particularly young people who are tied to their devices, who are displaced through the foster care systems, whose families are broken and their only solace sometimes are their phones. Let’s find a way to use the digital world, not to replace in-person and on the land experiences, but as a method to knock on the doors of Indigenous people who might be looking to learn more and find ways to feel connected but don’t know where to start. Research as social change (Schratz and Walker 2005) can explore how a Two-Eyed Seeing framework can successfully bring Wapana’ki forms of knowledge and art production to larger publics through the creation of participatory archives on Instagram and other social media sites. It has the potential to establish land-based and community-based arts and language practices and how sharing information, establishing connections, and encouraging discourse through social media can help facilitate healing. Elders Albert and Murdena Marshall suggest that Two-Eyed Seeing allows researchers to understand Mi’kmaq and settler knowledges, not as competitors, but as multiple ways of seeing the world (Bartlett et  al. 2012), “to use both these eyes together, for the benefit of all” (Marshall et al. 2007, May). Pedagogies of refusal refuse to engage in damage-centred narratives through the theorizing of scholars like Eve Tuck (2009). This framework disrupts damage-centred framing and merges traditional knowledge through art production and language teaching—including the dissemination of this knowledge and artwork through social media platforms. In this way knowledge that has been eroded through the systemic oppression of Indigenous people through Canadian governments’ genocidal policies, laws, and practices since colonization can be revived and shared. Through this kind of work a deliberate confrontation of settler colonialism occurs and recentres Wapana’ki art making, language revitalization, and does so through public facing teachings through various digital platforms.

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A question I am grappling with right now is whether it makes sense to use the concept of grounded normativity in digital spaces. Dene scholar Glen Sean Coulthard describes what grounded normativity is as “the systems of ethics that are continuously generated by a relationship with a particular place, with land, through the Indigenous knowledge that make up Indigenous life” (Simpson Indigenous Resurgence and Co-Resistance 2016).

References Bartlett, C., M. Marshall, and A. Marshall. 2012. Two-eyed seeing and other lessons learned within a co-learning journey of bringing together Indigenous and mainstream knowledges and ways of knowing. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences 2 (4): 331–340. Marshall, A., M. Marshall, and M. Iwama. 2007, May. Approaching Mi'kmaq teachings on the connectedness of humans and nature. In Ecosystem based management: Beyond boundaries. Proceedings of the sixth international conference of science and the management of protected areas, 21–26. Palmater, P. 2014. Genocide, Indian policy, and legislated elimination of Indians in Canada. Aboriginal Policy Studies 3 (3): 27–54. Schratz, M., and R. Walker. 2005. Research as social change: New opportunities for qualitative research. Routledge. Simpson, L. 2016. Indigenous resurgence and co-resistance. Critical Ethnic Studies 2 (2): 19–34. ———. 2017. As we have always done. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Tuck, E. 2009. Suspending damage: A letter to communities. Harvard Educational Review 79 (3): 409–428. Wheeler, J. 2016. CBC News: Opinion. https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/ boyden-­indigenous-­community-­1.3915934.

17 Facilitating Art in Digital Classrooms During COVID-19: Engaging in Inquiry with Jamaican Visual Art Teachers Loaneen Palmer-Carroll

Introduction Since the COVID pandemic encouraged a transition to the digital classroom, some Jamaican secondary students have disconnected from themselves and one another. In this chapter, I will discuss how some visual arts instructors in central Jamaica have embraced digitizing their classrooms despite experiencing several hurdles. Drawing on an autoethnographic inquiry into my own experiences, I highlight obstacles encountered while transitioning from embodied teaching to setting up and employing innovative techniques to reach teachers and students in the digital visual arts classroom in the context of Jamaica. Drawing on Pauwels’s (2010, 506) suggestion that “the valuable scientific understanding of society may be gained by viewing, examining, and comprehending its visual manifestations,” I will also discuss how I engaged in photo-elicitation with four teachers to explore their experiences. Photo-elicitation interviews (PEIs)

L. Palmer-Carroll (*) University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Burkholder et al. (eds.), Facilitating Visual Socialities, Social Visualities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25259-4_17

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have been shown to transform power dynamics, empower children in research, and promote dialogue, allowing them to participate in ways other than formal interviews (Epstein et  al. 2006; Harris et  al. 2014). This chapter will also examine the challenges and possible solutions of engaging in a photo-elicitation interview (PEI) in digital classrooms.

Context Since the COVID pandemic urged a shift to the digital classroom, secondary pupils in Jamaica have become estranged from one another. In addition, students’ mental health and psychosocial effects from staying home alone for over a year, a lack of social interaction, a lack of participation in physical activity, an increase in screen time, an increase in sexual violence in online and domestic spaces, and an increase in violence against children generally have been some of the deleterious effects of the pandemic (Sewell 2021). Jamaican educators have suggested that the move to the digital classroom will significantly exacerbate Jamaica’s extreme socio-­ economic inequalities (Williams 2021). According to the Ministry of Education and Youth Jamaica, since COVID-19 caused schools to close, 120,000 students did not participate in online instruction for one or more reasons during the 2020–2021 academic year, including a lack of an electronic device or internet access to attend classes. Students’ lack of participation in online learning spaces has exacerbated the learning gaps that preceded the pandemic. This is apparent in many classrooms, including virtual visual art instruction. Moreover, some educators at traditionally “low-performing” schools suggested that many students who needed extra support did not attend the summer classes the Ministry of Education put on or did not attend consistently enough to make a difference (Gordon 2021). Clearly the switch to the digital classroom exacerbated pre-existing challenges in Jamaican secondary schools. Within this context, I ask: how did art teachers work with students within the digital realm and encourage digital trust? What might engaging with visual methods—like photo-elicitation—teach us about Jamaican teachers’ understanding of students’ connection and disconnection in the digital art classroom amidst the pandemic?

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Digital Classroom A digital classroom typically incorporates electronic devices and software to engage students in learning. For a digital classroom to be successful, it must be able to facilitate collaboration and allow for continuing work outside of the classroom (Digital Classroom Definition and Meaning n.d.). Despite the differences in delivery methods, the digital classroom has the same goals as a physical classroom. For example, just like in-­ person teaching, teachers will engage a variety of tools and skills. Students with access to the right tools in the digital classroom will grow in curiosity, participate in collaboration and receive feedback, and be able to express themselves creatively (The Digital Classroom: An In-Depth Guide n.d.). However, the issue of universal access is one worth exploring in greater depth, particularly in the context of students’ varied socioeconomic statuses in Jamaican secondary schools. In the next section, I describe the methods that I engaged in the study: autoethnography and photo-elicitation interviews.

Autoethnography Autoethnography draws from and analyses or interprets the author’s personal experience (Butler-Kisber 2010), linking the researcher’s discoveries to self-identity, cultural resources, communication techniques, traditions, precepts, symbols, rules, shared meanings, emotions, values, and more significant social, cultural, and political issues (Sikes 2015) suggest that autoethnography is a distinctive qualitative methodology incorporating story research, autobiography, ethnography, and arts-based study elements. Kerwin-Boudreau and Butler-Kisber (2016) describe autoethnographers as one sort of narrative researcher who “employ narrative dialogue, self-study/autobiographical and memory work to develop stories of their own experiences” (65, see also Butler-Kisber 2010). Autoethnography frequently engages elements of arts-based research—a “technique that employs the expressive aspects of form to transmit meaning” (Barone and Eisner 2012, xii; see also Ottaway 2013). When using interpretive and representational methods for data gathering and presentation, arts-based

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research aligns its objectives with those of traditional autoethnography— to describe human experience through expressive methods.

Photo Elicitation Interviews Visual sociology studies the unseen nature of social reality through tools for producing, collecting, and analysing visual data. These tools include photo documentation, photo-elicitation, participatory video and photography, data generated by research subjects, and other traditional methods such as content analysis, interviews, and participant observation (Margolis and Pauwels 2011). The photo-elicitation interview, which has been aggressively advocated and expanded upon by visual sociologists, is undoubtedly one of the most well-known and complex methods for gathering original data (Harper 2002; Lapenta 2011; Schwartz 1989; Zuev 2006). In a photo-elicitation interview, photographs created by the researcher or study participants can be used to help elicit data that would not have been possible without the aid of images. Photo-elicitation interviews offer a balanced visual-oral research tool and can elicit individual or group answers on various topics. Although there can be possible differences in social status, education, age, gender, religion, language, or ethnicity between an interviewer and the subject, photo-elicitation interviews can help them connect and bridge their worlds (Twine 2016). In the next section, I highlight how I used photo-elicitation to explore Jamaican teachers’ attempts to establish connection and trust in the virtual visual arts classroom.

Data Collection Photo-elicitation and formal interviews were conducted with five (5) teachers in central Jamaica. Based on Clark-IbáÑez (2004; see also Ford et  al. 2017; Meo 2010), participant-produced photographs are commonly used in research with children and are considered to be a more practical method of collecting data from children that is rich, detailed, and relevant. In addition, by capturing images that reflect what matters

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to children through photo-elicitation interviews, researchers can make visual children’s thoughts and worlds (Cook and Hess 2007; Fargas-Malet et al. 2010; Woodgate et al. 2016). I engaged in photo-elicitation interviews to investigate teachers’ and students’ perceptions of online art classes.

F indings: Opportunities and Challenges to Pandemic Visual Art Teaching Situating My Own Experiences As an education officer from Jamaica, when the pandemic first began, I felt elated that I could continue working from home. However, I was unprepared for teaching in the Virtual Art classroom while simultaneously parenting my own school-aged children. I had to learn various online tools to support art teachers as they developed their online teaching practices, particularly those struggling to navigate the online space, and conduct workshops with teachers who occasionally openly expressed their frustrations. I felt overwhelmed during the first few weeks of online teaching and learning. At one point, someone stole the internet cable cord from my house. I had to use data from my phone to complete daily tasks like conducting meetings and giving my children data to attend their own classes online. This was cost prohibitive and I felt like I was having a mental breakdown. My children needed my attention daily. As an education officer dealing with curriculum and instruction, I had to visit many teachers’ online classes. I recall during an online class visit, a parent when realizing that I was observing the class uttered a comment, “Why don’t you leave the teacher alone and go and find something else to do?” I continued to monitor the teacher’s class and provided feedback when the lesson ended. I found that teachers’ cries were similar. They felt that they were: • unable to reach students • unable to demonstrate elements of practical tasks

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• having classes with sometimes only one student • not being able to navigate the online platforms they were meant to use effectively. To make matters worse, I was left to figure out how to assist my children, teachers, and students. With the Ministry of Education Jamaica’s motto “Every Child Can Learn Every Child Must Learn” (“Ministry of Education, Youth and Information | Every Child Can Learn, Every Child Must Learn” n.d.) I sought assistance in training teachers to employ innovative practices to reach their students during this challenging time. I found that using the newest technology in the classroom to employ innovative teaching techniques was not always necessary. Instead, according to Thompson (2021), innovative teaching involves proactively implementing new pedagogical approaches and techniques in the classroom. I innovated my own pedagogical practices alongside teachers: project-­ based learning, flipped classrooms, live demonstrations of practical activities, virtual class tours, show and tell, seek and find games, and online apps and extensions and group collaboration. Students can effectively direct their learning through project-based learning. For example, students pick a real-world issue and then create a remedy as part of a PBL assignment. PBL helped to build core competencies like research, critical thinking, problem-solving, and cooperation, which are essential for project-­based learning (Thompson 2021). According to Okolie et  al.’s (2020) findings, good pedagogical practices include arranging students into small groups to make sense of the lessons and eliciting information from the students. Eliciting information can be done through various visual methods, asking questions that allow students to reflect on previous lessons, and fostering critical thinking skills through problem-based learning. However, all of these innovations did not increase student access to the digital classroom, and certain students were left behind. Certainly, we were unable to meet the mandate set out by the government. Every child cannot learn if they do not have access to the necessary technologies and internet connectivity. In this way, the pandemic furthered social inequities and impacted students from lower income brackets most negatively. I found that my experiences were also mirrored in those of my participants.

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Digitizing the Visual Arts Classroom In conversing with the four teachers, I realized that shifting their art instruction practice to the digital realm had been a paradigm shift for some, and they had to come out of their comfort zone to relearn and learn new things. I began by asking, “How was the visual arts classroom embraced and digitized?” Some teachers had a basic knowledge of the online platforms they were expected to use in their teaching. In Jamaica’s public education context, the text means the circumstances under which something has happened. Jamaica, that included: creating PowerPoint presentations, quizzes, and interactive games. Learning online became more collaborative by using special software links accessible to students. For example, using technology in the classroom was easy with Nearpod, a student engagement platform. This app works with them using iPads, iPhones, Macs, or Chromebooks. Using Nearpod, teachers could control what their students see and get immediate feedback. The teachers could get lessons based on specific topics, for example, Art History, Exploring Artistic Expression, Elements of Art, Principles of Art, Feminism and Art, and drawing and painting exercises. Students could interact with the software, using it for art lessons. They were able to utilize the various tools that the software had (Hailey 2020). Gamification in education uses game-based elements like point scoring, peer competition, teamwork, and score tables to increase student engagement, aid in assimilating new material and assess their level of knowledge. The teacher’s device then displays all of the students’ “drawings,” and the teacher then “shares” whiteboards with the entire class (The Nearpod Team 2019). These activities made teaching and learning more as flipped classroom as students could go back and look over lessons. Even though nervous at first, teachers fully supported the concept of digitizing their online art classes. They created digital content using PowerPoint and discovered websites and apps like pear deck, jam board, Google Slides, and bit emoji to go with the Google Meet add-on. These apps gave the teachers, especially those who might not be tech-savvy, the opportunity to create interesting visual arts content for their classes. They were able to create drag-and-drop art games, online art galleries,

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WebQuests, and puzzles. Pear Deck helped the teachers transform Google Slides into robust formative assessments and daily active learning experiences for every student. Teachers enjoyed that they could instantly see which students were confused and who was ready for more. Some teachers lacked resources and had no access to a projector or computer lab in their physical art classroom. While online, they could utilize the web effortlessly, showing students videos and pictures: lessons recorded were readily available to view at their students’ convenience. Unfortunately, not all students had access to the internet for online classes, so they could not benefit from these teachers’ innovations. By digitizing the visual arts classroom, teachers could create presentations for students, and the students would do research and make presentations and even teach the entire class. Students could display their drawings and paintings and talk about them. The class content was shared by email and Google classroom to the students, who utilized the Google Suite to enhance learning. On a few occasions, because of a teacher’s background in digital technology, digitizing their classroom was not entirely new for them; the software and the modality used for teaching and learning were not shifted drastically. However, the students’ lack of communication and reaction to content shared was a marked difference. The teachers explained that they were learning challenges with the online learning space. I began by asking, “what obstacles did you encounter as you digitized your classroom?” Some of the teachers were unsure if students were invested in the lessons and if they understood the concepts presented in real time. Teachers explained that students sometimes did not want to talk in their synchronous classes, and many had to be coaxed to participate in class discussions online. In some cases, the same students always respond to questions posed while others remained silent. Connectivity to the internet was a significant obstacle for teachers and their students. Teachers will plan their lessons, and only ten students or fewer would log on (from a class of over twenty-five). Sometimes only one student would log on. Teachers wondered: what are we expected to do in a situation like that? The teachers mentioned other issues relating to access including experiencing power cuts in the middle of their synchronous lesson. To pivot, they would then give the students the lesson’s

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content on WhatsApp and use emojis to engage in practical activities (see Fig. 17.1). DIY approaches became the answer to technical difficulties. For example, teachers worked with emojis to create and teach about the notion of patterns that students could follow at their convenience. One major challenge in hands-on production was that teachers could not physically demonstrate practical tasks to students. The visual arts classroom moved from something where making was at the centre to a space where students were much more passive in their learning. One teacher noted that getting their students registered for classes who were unfamiliar with the apps and technologies that their school was bound to was an obstacle. Virtual jam boards allowed students to interact with the instructor and one another in the virtual space. Teachers also used YouTube videos to demonstrate practical tasks. The shift in expectations in the pandemic visual arts classroom was sudden for all teachers, and they shared that they had to learn many things in a short space of time. Some teachers used photo-elicitation with their own learners to get a sense of students’ learning. Some of the teachers stated that one challenge was blurred images on the students’ end; however, the image was evident on their end. Video and audio were not clear for some students due to internet connectivity. An observation of a lesson revealed that students received videos for class discussion before class started. They received the video before class to alleviate the challenges of distorted and unclear video and audio.

Fig. 17.1  Engaging emojis in the virtual visual arts classroom (researcher-­ generated photograph)

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Another challenge was that students did not want to turn on their camera, so teachers could not pick up emotions and facial expressions. Teachers would say that if they called on a student to respond to an image, students would magically disappear from the online class. Teachers explained that some students would openly talk to them about images they asked them to create or capture. Those images would generate discussions and allow the teachers to understand the students’ perspectives on specific topics or issues.

Photo-Elicitation Interview with Teachers I asked the four teachers to identify two images (one positive and the other negative) that spoke to their experience transitioning from embodied classroom to a digital visual art classroom. Teachers chose different images to express their experiences transitioning from embodied classroom to a digital visual art classroom (Fig. 17.2).

Fig. 17.2  500 ml lifespan spring water bottle and 1.5 L lifespan spring water bottle (participant-generated photograph)

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One teacher chose the 500 ml spring water because, at that stage in the teaching and learning process, the teacher believed that they had so much to offer but could not explore the dynamic ways they could. They felt stymied by the pandemic and how it constrained them pedagogically in teaching visual arts. In the second image, the teacher chose the 1.5  L spring water bottle because they believe that teaching and learning is a lifetime investment that one should always embrace. The transition from face-to-face teaching to online was a significant challenge. The teacher believed in research and has to depend heavily on the importance of researching in order to plan practical lessons (Fig. 17.2). The image of leaves in a rainbow shape was selected to represent a teacher’s experience during a day of virtual teaching during the pandemic. The image has an aesthetic appeal, and brings up notions of colour theory. The image invites the viewer to linger and to think about the leaves together in the shape. However, if the leaves are separated and looked at individually, they each have a story about each stage. In the first image, the green leaf was meant to represent positivity. The teacher shared that they felt that a routine was created and adhered to until they got the hang of it. Then, the teacher did what they could when they could. The green leaf represents the person fresh in the morning, fuelled with a good breakfast, a word from God, and a positive outlook for the day. Then, their own children had to be monitored throughout the day while they were teaching. This teacher had to also adjust their children’s cameras and microphones, get books, and take photos to turn in assignments, fix snacks and lunches, and wipe tears. The teacher shared that the yellow leaf was meant to symbolize hope. They suggested that sometimes they would pray that the internet connection would be poor for others, so if students do not join their lesson, they could get a little break. Nevertheless, sometimes great lessons are planned, power points are set up, and there is access to videos, images, and information right at the teacher’s fingertips, and no one joins in. The teacher felt crushed after all that effort went into the planning for a lesson they did not ever get to teach. Then another day, just a few students join, and the teacher felt grateful. The class was small, and the teacher felt that a great rapport was built with the students despite exclusively meeting online. The lessons mostly went as planned, the students participated and

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even turned in assignments, and they were mostly enthused and looking forward to the next day. That kind of feedback gave the teacher hope and the reassurance that they were succeeding in their classroom. But this feeling did not last. The teacher suggested that the brown leaf was meant to symbolize feelings of burnout. As their days wound down, the teacher would look and feel like a brown leaf. Finally, however, an evaluation is done, and preparation for the next day starts; with preparations and plans in place, the teacher knows that they will have a better day, after all that; they wake up fresh and green and do it all again. The second image of the leaves in a pile represents a teacher’s daily cycle during the online experience; it was chaotic, like all the leaves that fell under the tree. All piled up, some still green and fresh, while some rot below. The piled leaves still managed to be beautiful because they represented a teacher’s family and the best that they wanted for themselves and the students in their care. In a pile, it looks like beautiful chaos (Fig. 17.3). This picture illustrates that on the left are river rapids. The teacher stated that there was vibrant movement in their workspace because so many thoughts constantly rushed into their mind from shared ideas, techniques, and criticisms. The teacher said that even though it seemed rough, they became accustomed to these waters, making it manageable to navigate. They said the drive acknowledged that there would be a

Fig. 17.3  Leaves symbolizing positivity, hope, burnt out (L), and chaos (R) (researcher-generated photograph)

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doorway (the mouth of the river) to more immense experiences ahead. The second image chosen by the teacher shows a pond. While still managing to find the art appealing, everything in the virtual classroom became stagnant, showing no activity, dull and sluggish. The teacher found themself feeling somewhat trapped. They had become so accustomed to the water that they did not realize they could walk into unchartered territory. They realized they could no longer hold onto each other’s hands and, as such, stepped on land separately and began their exploration. They trudged rugged terrains. The teacher explained that it was frustrating and dry. However, they survived and conquered (Fig. 17.4). One teacher chose to depict the negative aspect of online teaching with an image of them staring frustrated at a laptop. The interpretation is that devices tend to malfunction when they navigated online platforms, often in the middle of class time. Malfunctioning devices led to a loss of engagement with students, which frustrated them, and the teacher had to find new ways to solve this issue. The positive aspect of online teaching was depicted through a collage of images that illustrate the tools that can be used to make an engaging class, the communication in a virtual space, and having students collaborate using their devices. The interpretation is the vast opportunity learners can engage in online platforms (Fig. 17.5).

Fig. 17.4  River rapids and a still pond (researcher-generated photograph)

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Fig. 17.5  Frustrated and a positive side to online teaching (researcher-generated photograph)

Conclusion For some teachers, transitioning to a digital classroom was abrupt (Javier 2020) and encouraged a paradigm shift. In asking how might art teachers work with students within the digital realm and embrace digital trust, I found that the teachers came out of their comfort zone and embraced as best as possible the digital teaching environment. That, of course, came with its challenges. Student engagement and access to technology emerged as significant barriers in the digital visual arts classroom. Through photo-elicitation interviews, I sought to understand teachers’ experiences navigating the virtual art classroom. Key challenges emerged including connectivity issues leading to blurred images and audio-less videos, and also included some students disengaging from participation (in online discussions and sometimes not attending the lessons). Many students who did attend synchronous virtual lessons would not turn on their video and leave the class if they were called on—resisting these forms of participation. Teachers also found that a student behind the computer was sometimes a different person in the face-to-face class, as it relates to sharing and participating in the lesson. Teachers used images of water bottles, leaves, rapids, and lakes to make visual their experiences. This study offers a way to employ photo-elicitation to make visual teachers’ experiences of teaching art online amidst the pandemic in the context of Jamaican secondary school. The teachers saw the significance of photo-elicitation interviews as they could personally relate visuals to

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their practices while speaking freely about their feelings. Photo-elicitation provided participants more agency in their choices of images, which they chose to explain their experiences (Bates et al. 2017). Valuing the participant’s voice through the visuals they select is essential. In addition, photo-­ elicitation helped to encourage participants to feel comfortable and less like studied objects (Shohel 2012). Through the discussion of these visuals we learned that teaching art in the virtual encouraged teachers to attempt new modes of art teaching, forced teachers to connect in new ways with their students, but also saw large degrees of disengagement, and the lack of access for all students to internet connectivity and personal computer technologies has likely exacerbated existing socio-­ economic inequalities in the context of Jamaica.

References Barone, T., and E.W. Eisner. 2012. Arts-based research. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA. Bates, E.A., L.K. Kaye, and J.J. McCann. 2017. A snapshot of the student experience: Exploring student satisfaction through the use of photographic elicitation. Journal of Further and Higher Education 43 (3): 291–304. Butler-Kisber, L. 2010. Editorial. LEARNing Landscapes 4 (1): 9–14. https:// doi.org/10.36510/learnland.v4i1.355 Clark-IbáÑez, M. 2004. Framing the social world with photo-elicitation interviews. American Behavioral Scientist 47 (12): 1507–1527. Cook, T., and E. Hess. 2007. What the camera sees and from whose perspective. Childhood 14 (1): 29–45. Digital Classroom Definition and Meaning. n.d. Top hat. https://tophat.com/ glossary/d/digital-­classroom/. Epstein, I. B. Stevens, P. McKeever, and S. Baruchel. 2006. Photo Elicitation Interview (PEI): Using Photos to Elicit Children’s Perspectives. International Journal of Qualitative Methods 5 (3): 1–11. https://doi. org/10.1177/160940690600500301 Fargas-Malet, M., D. McSherry, E. Larkin, and C. Robinson. 2010. Research with children: Methodological issues and innovative techniques. Journal of Early Childhood Research 8 (2): 175–192. Ford, K., L. Bray, T. Water, A. Dickinson, J. Arnott, and B. Carter. 2017. Auto-­ driven photo elicitation interviews in research with children: Ethical and

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practical considerations. Comprehensive Child and Adolescent Nursing 40 (2): 111–125. Gordon, T. 2021. ‘We are losing our students.’ Jamaica-Gleaner.com. https:// jamaica-­g leaner.com/article/lead-­s tories/20210904/we-­a re-­l osing-­o ur-­ students. Accessed 4 Sept 2021. Hailey. 2020. Using Nearpod to create remote art lessons | Get STartED. www. youtube.com. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qjY1xbKc2M. Harper, D. 2002. Talking about Pictures: A Case for Photo Elicitation. Visual Studies 17 (1): 13–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/14725860220137345 Harris, C., L. Jackson, L. Mayblin, A. Piekut, and G. Valentine. 2014. “Big Brother welcomes you”: exploring innovative methods for research with children and young people outside of the home and school environments. Qualitative Research 15 (5): 583–599. https://doi. org/10.1177/1468794114548947 Javier, C. 2020. The shift towards new teaching modality: Examining the attitude and technological competence among language teachers teaching Filipino. Asian ESP Journal 16 (2.1): 210–244. Kerwin-Boudreau, S., and L. Butler-Kisber. 2016. Deepening understanding in qualitative inquiry. The Qualitative Report 21 (5): 956. Lapenta, F. 2011. Some Theoretical and Methodological Views on Photo-­ Elicitation. In L.  Pauwels, & E.  Margolis (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Visual Research Methods (pp.  201–213). SAGE Publications. http://books. google.co.uk/books?id=AcBsjtkmPWkC&printsec=frontcover&source= gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0&ganpub=k186085&ganclk=GOOG_ GB_1468668184#v=onepage&q&f=false Margolis, E., and L. Pauwels. 2011. The SAGE Handbook of Visual Research Methods. In Google Books. SAGE. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=AcB sjtkmPWkC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad= 0&ganpub=k186085&ganclk=GOOG_GB_1468668184#v=onepa ge&q&f=false Meo, A.I. 2010. Picturing students’ habitus: The advantages and limitations of photo-elicitation interviewing in a qualitative study in the city of Buenos Aires. International Journal of Qualitative Methods 9 (2): 149–171. https:// journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/160940691000900203. Ministry of Education, Youth and Information | Every Child Can Learn, Every Child Must Learn. n.d.. Moey.gov.jm. https://moey.gov.jm/. Okolie, U.C., P.A.  Igwe, C.A.  Nwajiuba, S.  Mlanga, M.O.  Binuomote, H.E.  Nwosu, and C.O.  Ogbaekirigwe. 2020. Does PhD qualification improve pedagogical competence? A study on teaching and training in higher education. Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education.

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Ottaway, H. 2013. Book review: Tom Barone and Elliot W Eisner, arts based research. Qualitative Research 13 (5): 626–627. Pauwels, L. 2010. Visual Sociology Reframed: An Analytical Synthesis and Discussion of Visual Methods in Social and Cultural Research. Sociological Methods & Research 38 (4): 545–81. https://doi. org/10.1177/0049124110366233 Schwartz, D. 1989. Visual ethnography: Using photography in qualitative research. Qualitative Sociology 12 (2): 119–154. https://doi.org/10.1007/ bf00988995 Sewell, S. 2021. TIME OUT. https://www.capricaribbean.org/sites/default/ files/public/documents/report/time_out_the_impact_of_covid_on_education.pdf. Shohel, M.M.C. 2012. Nostalgia, transition and the school: An innovative approach of using photographic images as a visual method in educational research. International Journal of Research & Method in Education 35 (3): 269–292. Sikes, P. 2015. Book Review: Stacy Holman Jones, Tony E. Adams and Carolyn Ellis (Eds.), Handbook of Autoethnography. Qualitative Research 15 (3): 413–416. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794114535048 The Digital Classroom: An In-Depth Guide. n.d. Kaltura. The Nearpod Team. 2019. 10 ways to use Nearpod in the classroom. Nearpod Blog. https://nearpod.com/blog/nearpod-­in-­the-­classroom/. Accessed 28 May 2019. Thompson, S. 2021. Innovative teaching strategies. Kaltura. https://corp.kaltura.com/blog/innovative-­teaching-­strategies/. Accessed 19 Dec 2021. Twine, F.W. 2016. Visual sociology in a discipline of words: Racial literacy, visual literacy and qualitative research methods. Sociology 50 (5): 967–974. Williams, K. 2021. Educators say students are struggling with online learning. www.jamaicaobserver.com. https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/central/ educators-­say-­students-­are-­struggling-­with-­online-­learning/. Accessed 5 May 2021. Woodgate, R.L., M. Zurba, and P. Tennent. 2016. Worth a thousand words? Advantages, challenges and opportunities in working with photovoice as a qualitative research method with youth and their families. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research 18 (1). Zuev, D. 2006. Reconstructing the meanings of travelling among young people in modern Russia: The use of the photo interview. European Spatial Research and Policy 13 (1): 113–131.

18 Facilitating Ethical Visual Sociological Research: What Difference Can We Make Together? Casey Burkholder , Joshua Schwab-Cartas and Funké Aladejebi

,

Introduction In this edited collection, the contributors described visual sociological research facilitation that attempts to disrupt and challenge anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, patriarchy, sexism in an effort to work towards social change. Throughout the collection, authors take up a range of technical, methodological, ethical, and theoretical issues, including describing the processes of facilitating visual

C. Burkholder (*) Faculty of Education, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada e-mail: [email protected] J. Schwab-Cartas NSCAD University, Halifax, NS, Canada e-mail: [email protected] F. Aladejebi University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Burkholder et al. (eds.), Facilitating Visual Socialities, Social Visualities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25259-4_18

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sociological research for social change. Within the collection, we noticed several themes that authors bring to the fore. We began by asking: What processes and strategies have been used successfully in facilitating visual research for social change? How is visual research ethically facilitated and under what circumstances? How do technologies shift research facilitation? For example, what elements of access and power shift when a phone is used as an instrument to collect data from participants? How is visual research facilitation described in academic writing including theses, articles, and dissertations? How is visual research facilitation articulated in public/community settings? How might we understand research facilitation as a kind of intervention? How might the current shift to prioritizing digital technologies, amidst COVID-19, influence community-researcher relationships? What obligations do we have for privacy and access to technology (e.g. reliable internet) under these conditions? In this chapter, we highlight methodological contributions and ethical issues that our contributors have explored and consider how we might understand and theorize facilitation within sociological visual research.

Key Methodological Takeaways We conclude this collection by highlighting the key methodological takeaways from contributors in the book.

Facilitating in Response to Structural Barriers Both chapters authored by Melissa Keehn and Casey Burkholder, Amelia Thorpe, and Pride/Swell focus on visual research facilitation that affirms queer, trans, and non-binary youth identities despite their oppression in school spaces. Keehn’s chapter focuses on the opportunity provided by asset-informed approaches to facilitating joyfully with queer youth in rural Atlantic Canadian spaces. Keehn’s chapter explores the spaces where research data is collected, the representation of these spaces during the research process, and their culminating dissemination. Exploring rural

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idiosyncrasies, challenges, and common misconceptions from a critical queer metronormative lens, Keehn offers ethical considerations for visual researchers looking to support rural queer youth in the province and make a case for how the methodology could work to resist and (re)shape dominant narratives of queer rurality in the province. Burkholder, Thorpe, and Pride/Swell’s chapter considers the ways that participatory visual research may be facilitated with 2SLGBTQ+ youth in embodied spaces that are gender-affirming and resist tokenism and structural violence by employing DIY (do-it-yourself ) strategies. They describe the ways in which facilitating Where Are Our Histories has shaped the co-­ facilitation strategies employed in a distance-based participatory visual research project, Pride/Swell, with 50 2SLGBTQ+ youth amidst COVID-19. They describe how both projects required engaged attention to facilitating the public-facing visual outputs (zines, collages, cellphilms) in public spaces. Burkholder, Thorpe, and Pride/Swell end by offering strategies for facilitating and negotiating cisnormative, transphobic, and homophobic discourses in person and online.

Researchers Enacting Solidarities How might visual research for social change be facilitated through an anti-racist lens? Alicia F. Noreiga’s chapter highlights the importance of solidarity when engaging in visual research with Black students in Canada to respond to structural barriers—including university spaces where anti-­ Black racism flourishes. Noreiga argues that co-constructing the visual research space with participants was central to disrupting white supremacy in Canadian institutions. She argues that differently located scholars and administrators must engage in solidarity to support Black students’ calls for change and to make change outside of research spaces (with an eye towards social change). Mehdia Hassan’s chapter focuses on how the production of a painting, “The Fibers of Our Being,” opens up new pathways to recognize and honour the coexistence of multiple, diverse ontologies and epistemologies with racialized youth in St. James Town, in Toronto, Ontario.

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In their work with visual research facilitation with refugees, both Mandy Hughes’ and Zehra Melike Palta’s chapters highlight the ways in which visual production allows refugee participants to create texts that challenge normative deficit framing. Mandy Hughes’ chapter argues that facilitating solidarity with refugee participants—in the context of Australia—includes a commitment to involve participants meaningfully in the process of their own representation. She suggests that visual methods, and in particular video, are a useful medium in which to do this work. She argues that the “sensory nature of visual methods” is useful in facilitating ethically with participants with different experiences than researchers in order “to share knowledge, to learn more about others and empathise with their lived experiences” (2023). Our interpretation of projects that we engage with changes over time. Auralia Brooke’s chapter reflexively revisits a digital storytelling project that she engaged in with youth in Alberta, Canada, almost a decade ago. She explores how visual research facilitation with youth can be understood as an intervention into school spaces where youth share their knowledge and frustrations about systemic oppressions. Looking back at this work, Brooke’s analysis “becomes a way of exploring tensions between academic and lived experiences, and a struggle to augment the often negative research results within school data by investing in the positive possibilities of the facilitation process” (2023).

Facilitating Insider/Outsider Positionalities Through personal reflections of her engagement with Elders within rural communities in Lesotho, Mathabo Khau’s chapter explores how she facilitated ethical participatory visual research on taboo issues such as witchcraft within tight-knit community spaces. Using visuals as entry-points, Khau facilitated narrative storytelling with elderly participants to explore constructions of gender and sexual identities within their society, to understand the connections between such constructions and the practice of witchcraft. In particular, she highlights the need for anonymity and confidentiality for research participants, as well as the issue of informed consent. Noting that her participants were selected by the community’s

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chief and council, she noted that she was bound to respect the chief and council’s decisions, but worried that participants might not truly be volunteering to participate in the research. Eunice Chau and Jan Gube’s chapter also explores the tensions in negotiating insider/outsider positionalities in visual research from the context of a multicultural pre-­ service teacher education programme in Hong Kong. They highlighted the centrality of researcher reflexivity to “reveal the challenges of conducting multicultural research where the construction of subtle cultural lines of difference takes place” (2023). In their chapter exploring the role of visual and artful inquiry to explore the Black cancer continuum in the United States, LaShaune Johnson, David Olawuyi Fakunle, and Sarah Lux highlight cultural humility, intellectual humility, and the recognition of different ways of knowing as essential in moving research towards epistemic justice. The centrality of facilitating ethically, politically, urgently, artfully, and with care is explored in the chapter as they note: While so much of the art creation involved in this project felt as if it came “naturally” to David and LaShaune, two Black creatives, it would be a mistake to describe this endeavor as “easy” or done without thought. Quite the contrary—creating art about the Black experience on the breast cancer continuum has been a labor of love, as we seek to capture the rich shea buttery layers of the evolving Black cancer experience. There is nothing “easy” or “natural” about the state of Black cancer survivorship and the structural violence that continues to fuel their inequities. Sarah’s willingness to be an eager student, active “warm demander” and reflective ethicist has complicated our project in the best ways. We have all grown throughout this project. (2023)

 o-production and Ethical Tensions Amidst C COVID-19 Mehdia Hassan’s chapter describes the ways in which co-production in the visual research space opens up space for ethical tensions, which she describes as “the messy, complex, permeable, and unfinished process of facilitating collective knowledge building, as alluded to in the process of

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making the yellow, inner spiral” (2023). Zehra Melike Polat’s chapter highlights the ethical tensions amidst working with Kurdish and Turkish participants who had entered Canada as asylum seekers in online focus groups amidst COVID-19. She found that the visual was central to providing participants an opportunity to disrupt homogenous portrayals of refugees including the normative and “stereotypical representation[s] of their experiences and identities” (2023). Megan Hill’s chapter disrupts the suggestion that online spaces were democratizing during the COVID-19 pandemic in her honour’s research with queer elders in Canada. She notes that in the context of COVID-19, she “saw and felt a deep longing for tangible, in-person community building without screens and cities between us” (2023). For Hill, facilitating in a community-­ minded way amidst COVID-19 included mitigating the potential spread of the virus, including choosing a location with proper air ventilation and filtration, recruiting a small number of participants, and encouraging mask wearing among all participants.

F acilitating Visual Research in the Digital Realm In the context of facilitating visual inquiry in the digital realm, Kaylan Schwarz’s chapter explores the ways in which COVID-19 required her to shift the facilitation of her project with Canadian craft vendors and craft vendors’ parallel from in-person to online through object elicitation techniques. Her chapter explores three categories of objects—spontaneous objects, pandemic objects, and wearable objects—to illustrate methodological insights relating to space and location, time and context, as well as embodiment and attachment. Both Thomas Strasser and Loaneen Palmer-Carroll’s chapters explore the opportunities and tensions in using the visual as teaching tools in the digital realm. Strasser explores the ways that visual inquiry—especially video—is impactful in the language learning classroom. Through autoethnography and photo-elicitation with Jamaican secondary visual arts teachers, Palmer-Carroll suggests that facilitating artmaking with secondary school students in the digital realm

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required making space for visualizing hope, endurance, and burnout. Expanding on these suggestions, Megan Hill’s chapter highlights the way that the visual engagement in the digital realm led to participant burnout, and that participants in her study with queer and crip elders were seeking in-person connection that they simply could not receive in virtual spaces.

F acilitating Visual Research as Indigenous Scholars Both Josh Schwab-Cartas and Starlit Simon’s chapters take up the ways that visual research within Indigenous communities requires specific attention to ethical practice and learning ancestral knowledge through lived experiences. Josh’s chapter explores the ways in which he learned a family recipe of mole negro from his Jña Bida (grandmother) and the importance of passing down las creencias de los viejos (the beliefs of our old people, which refers to our binniguala’sa’ our Elders and ancestors). The practice of making mole was more than passing down a recipe, but was a mode of embracing “Binnizá culture by actively contributing to the continuity of our ancestral lifeways” (2023). Starlit’s chapter similarly echoes the importance of land-based experiential learning and shares that “through these land based and experiential activities how necessary and important it was for my personal well-being as well as my students’ well-­ being” (2023).

Future Sites of Inquiry As Josh argues in Chap. 3 in this collection, “When we think of facilitation, words such as support, change, assistance, neutral, encouragement come to mind. There is no singular approach to facilitation; there are several methods and approaches to facilitation, which greatly vary depending on the theoretical or methodological orientation, objectives and context” (2023, p.). Taken together, the chapters in this collection

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explore ethical visual sociological research facilitation and are particularly interested in research facilitation within community-based approaches, participatory visual approaches, and through specific methods including participatory mapping, cellphilm method, photovoice, and walking methods. The chapters in this collection open a series of possibilities as we continue to wonder: What happens when visual facilitation fails? How might we continue to theorize failure in visual research facilitation as a learning/ teaching encounter? How are power relations shared and theorized in co-­ facilitation with community members? What can community developed approaches teach researchers about facilitating in a culturally responsive manner? How is trust in visual research facilitation theorized? What does facilitation look like in a time of social distancing? What happens when communities do not have access to online platforms due to internet access and broadband issues? How can digital technology be used to enhance visual approaches to learning and teaching methods? What difference can we make together?

Index1

A

Ability, 15, 37, 82, 95, 105, 106, 124, 129, 159, 171, 184, 230, 235, 248, 300, 309, 310, 320 See also Crip; Disability Accountability, 7, 54 Action research, 181, 250, 274 Activism, 6, 24, 25, 27, 30, 31, 35, 38–41, 50, 80, 81, 110, 136, 138, 178, 179, 181, 189, 236, 309, 318 Aesthetics, 122, 333 African communities, 135, 137 countries, 135, 137, 138 diaspora, 251, 252, 257, 258 women, 138, 146

African descent, 28 Ahmed, Sara, 196 Anti-Black racism, 23–26, 40, 343 Anti-racist, 2, 25, 27, 29, 30, 231, 237, 259, 343 Archives, 179, 189–190, 195–200, 310, 318, 320 Art, 2, 6, 13–15, 30, 47–61, 71, 88, 153–173, 178, 179, 181, 183, 187, 189–191, 194, 195, 198, 201, 242–244, 250, 258–262, 272, 281–284, 307–321, 323–337, 345, 346 Artificial Intelligence (AI), 7, 91–95 Arts-based research, 25, 157, 161, 250, 253–254, 325 Assemblage, 4

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

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350 Index

Atlantic Canada, 105, 178, 184, 190 Australia, 13, 119, 120, 157, 271–285, 344 Autoethnography, 25, 28–30, 40, 246, 254, 325–326, 346 B

Binaries, 10, 11, 177, 188 Black Canadian, 3, 28, 37 Black communities, 29, 250, 251, 256 See also African descent Burawoy, Michael, 224 C

Canada, 3, 5, 8, 10, 23–30, 33, 34, 37, 40, 47–51, 55, 120, 123, 153, 155, 158, 160, 164, 170, 172, 173, 193, 223, 225, 274, 291, 292, 294, 343, 344, 346 Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), 201 Capitalism, 81 Care caregiving, 250, 251 community care, 299 Case study, 110, 272, 274 Cellphilm, 2, 4, 5, 14, 23–41, 78, 107, 178, 179, 192, 196–198, 295, 297, 301–303, 343, 348 Collaboration, 88, 119, 154, 207, 208, 234, 242, 260, 273, 277, 302, 315, 325, 328 Collage, 2, 4, 53, 105, 157, 178, 179, 192, 193, 335, 343 Colonialism, 49, 101, 320 See also Decolonial

Community academic community, 3, 28, 186 Black communities, 29, 250, 251, 256 community activism, 50, 318 community organizing, 181 disabled, 14 engagement, 139, 260, 282 Indigenous communities, 49, 315, 347 queer communities, 100, 101, 110, 292, 294, 298, 301 racialized communities, 13 researcher relationship within, 342 Community-based research, 292, 302 Confidentiality, 139, 142, 145, 147–148, 160, 217, 261, 344 Consent, 123, 144–147, 164, 170, 184, 195, 200, 261, 276, 277, 298, 344 Co-production, 105, 198, 345–346 Cote d’Ivoire, 120 COVID-19, 5, 9, 14, 15, 47, 49, 51, 60, 105, 106, 117, 122, 124, 126, 127, 153–173, 178, 179, 181, 192, 193, 250, 291, 292, 299, 315, 323–337, 342, 343, 345–346 Criminalization, 155 Crip, 14, 293–300, 302–303, 347 D

Decolonial, 230, 291, 314 Decolonization decolonizing research, 247 Digital archive, 195, 197–200 Digital storytelling, 223, 344

 Index 

Disability, 195, 230, 293–295, 301, 303 See also Ability Disclosure, 166 Discomfort, 145, 147, 169, 207, 218 Discourse, 9, 11, 12, 14, 24, 29, 30, 33, 38, 53, 85, 91, 103, 109–111, 135, 147, 148, 155, 156, 160, 173, 179, 182, 186, 294, 318, 320, 343 Disruption, 226, 292 Do-it-yourself (DIY), 2, 11, 88, 105, 119, 178, 188, 200, 331, 343 Drawing, 100, 105, 108, 157, 179, 187, 192, 196, 245, 297, 323, 329, 330

351

Ethical research, 4, 9, 24, 137, 142, 145, 148, 246, 284, 298 Ethical practice, 1–16, 141, 196–198, 347 Ethics, 154, 160–169, 180, 189, 200, 233, 234, 253, 261, 276, 321 See also Institutional Review Boards (IRB); Research ethics boards Ethnography, 29, 106, 108, 224, 325 Exhibition, 12, 14, 60, 179, 272, 281–284, 319 Exploitation, 13, 86, 87 Extractivism, 189 F

E

Embodied, 7, 11, 119, 120, 129, 131, 158, 177–201, 301, 323, 332, 343 Embodiment, 9, 23, 100, 118, 127, 346 See also Embodied Emotions, 7, 14, 40, 72, 164, 165, 245, 293, 296, 301, 303, 325, 332 Engagement, 9, 38, 105, 119, 121, 137, 139, 141, 142, 144, 148, 181, 191–194, 196, 198, 199, 228, 231, 238, 253–254, 260, 261, 282, 329, 335, 336, 344, 347 Epistemology, 7, 13, 48, 68, 139, 206, 262, 343 Equity, 5, 11, 23, 25, 40, 50, 87, 211, 229, 231–232, 245 Ethical dilemma, 256

Facilitator, 3–5, 7, 10, 12, 24, 33, 39, 41, 53, 59, 68, 77–79, 82, 88–90, 156, 163, 164, 177, 181, 183, 186–188, 197–199, 225, 228, 229, 238 Failure, 6, 168, 294, 348 Feelings, 5, 30–33, 35, 36, 38, 52, 54, 58, 68, 74, 100, 157, 192, 193, 198, 225, 235, 244, 257, 259, 308, 312, 314, 315, 334, 335, 337 Feminism, 293 Fieldwork, 2, 120, 130, 140, 145, 303 First Nations, 49, 315 G

Gender, 2, 3, 9–11, 16n1, 28, 31, 101, 102, 106, 109, 135, 137, 142, 145, 146, 148, 177–200, 205, 207, 326, 344

352 Index H

L

Hong Kong, 11, 30, 205–211, 213, 214, 345

Labour, 26, 128, 188, 189 Language, 2, 7, 10, 11, 14, 15, 69, 78, 80, 81, 83, 85–96, 155, 158, 164, 166, 170, 172, 177, 180, 183–194, 198, 200, 210, 211, 214, 215, 217, 229, 232, 277, 301, 307–321, 326, 346 Lesotho, 9, 135, 137–140, 344 Listening, 60, 78, 82, 93, 186, 197, 225–227, 245 Lived experience, 2, 7, 10, 13, 14, 27, 59, 60, 76, 79, 82, 106, 155, 164, 165, 168, 169, 172, 182, 206, 233, 238, 246, 248, 252, 255, 262, 272, 273, 275, 277, 285, 293, 294, 296, 297, 303, 344, 347

I

Identity, 3, 9, 11–13, 16n1, 23–41, 54, 69, 100, 102, 105, 106, 109, 110, 137, 148, 154, 157, 159, 163–167, 169, 172, 173, 178, 181–184, 186, 190, 194, 195, 198, 200, 205–219, 226, 231, 238, 246, 248, 255, 272, 274, 276, 278, 293, 295, 317, 342, 344, 346 Immigrants, 9, 10, 40, 49 Incentives, 92, 172 See also Honoraria Indigenous, 2, 3, 7, 26, 27, 49, 51, 68–72, 77–80, 167, 193, 194, 196, 262, 295, 301, 307–309, 314–321, 347 Instagram, 190, 197, 311, 318, 320 Institutional Review Boards (IRB), 161, 256, 258, 261 See also Ethics; Research ethics boards Inuit, 49 J

Jamaica, 15, 323, 324, 326, 327, 329, 337 Joy, 262 K

Knowledge production, 57, 149

M

Māori, 78 Materiality, 121, 230 Memory, 13, 72, 75, 76, 118, 157, 272, 283, 325 Mental health, 161, 192, 228, 251, 324 Métis, 49 Mexico, 70 Microaggressions, 32 Migration, 155–157, 172, 275 Mitchell, Claudia, 1, 4, 12, 24, 30, 31, 38, 39, 91, 118, 179, 191, 230, 261, 272, 273, 280, 282, 284 Montreal, 180 Mothers, 28, 69, 73, 74, 130, 142, 214, 243, 244, 247

 Index 

Multimedia, 90, 295 Multimodal, 86, 96, 158, 159 N

New Brunswick (NB), 2, 5, 8, 11, 24–27, 30, 35, 40, 99–111, 180, 184, 291, 293, 294, 299, 304n1, 308, 314 Non-binary, 11, 100–103, 107, 110, 177, 178, 180, 181, 186, 188–190, 192, 200, 342 Non-participation, 2 O

Objectivity, 14, 293, 299–300, 303 Ontology, 48, 230, 343 Oral history, 3 P

Pandemic, 6, 9, 10, 14, 47, 49–55, 57–60, 105, 106, 117–131, 153–173, 250, 291–293, 297–299, 314, 323, 324, 327–336, 346 Participation, 2, 27, 31, 82, 139, 162, 170, 197, 228, 249, 284, 285, 324, 336 Participatory action research (PAR), 225, 234, 243, 250, 274 See also Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) Participatory video, 130, 326 Participatory visual research, 1, 9–11, 14, 24, 39, 135–149, 154, 177–200, 237, 273, 291–303, 343, 344

353

See also Visual research Pedagogy, 25, 50, 79, 80, 182, 211, 226, 236, 320 Performance, 4, 92, 246 Photography, 123, 160, 274, 326 Photovoice, 4, 10, 274, 348 Poetry, 4, 13, 51, 159, 254 Policy, 101, 261, 275, 277 Positionality, 1, 50, 51, 100, 154, 167, 171, 172, 181–183, 205–219, 238, 245, 260, 273, 277, 279, 300–302, 344–345 Poverty, 31, 58, 136, 231, 249 Power, 1, 3, 5, 9–11, 14, 16, 29, 33, 39, 40, 50, 52, 87–91, 101, 102, 135, 136, 138, 147, 154, 165, 168, 171, 172, 180, 182–183, 189, 195, 200, 207, 228, 244, 246, 253, 259–261, 272, 273, 277, 279, 285, 293, 296, 297, 300, 302, 303, 317, 324, 330, 333, 342, 348 Practitioner, 184 Praxis, 7, 28, 41, 170, 196, 224 Pride, 69, 71, 104, 180, 181, 280, 299 Pride/Swell, 3, 10, 105, 106, 342, 343 Process, 2, 4–7, 13–15, 30, 33, 39, 51, 53, 55, 57, 58, 60, 61, 71, 72, 74, 77, 78, 82, 85, 87, 88, 90, 91, 96, 102, 104, 117, 129, 137, 141, 154, 157, 160–172, 178, 190, 196, 205–208, 211–214, 218, 223–225, 227–229, 233–238, 243, 251, 254, 258, 260, 261, 271–274, 277, 279–280, 282,

354 Index

284, 285, 292, 293, 301, 303, 311, 314, 333, 341, 342, 344, 345 Public health, 12, 58, 153, 242, 243, 250, 252, 257 Q

Qualitative research, 28, 29, 157, 205, 206, 208, 214, 253, 254, 258, 302, 303 Queer, 2, 3, 8, 11, 14, 16n1, 35, 99–111, 177, 178, 180–182, 184, 186–190, 192, 195–197, 200, 237, 291–303, 342, 343, 346, 347

Research ethics boards, 154, 160, 168 See also Ethics; Institutional Review Boards (IRB) Research participants, 144, 284, 296, 302, 344 Research practice, 2, 4, 9, 13, 15, 24, 137, 140, 142, 145, 148, 154, 169, 233, 246 Research processes, 2, 4, 5, 30, 53, 104, 137, 141, 171, 172, 205–208, 211–212, 214, 218, 224, 229, 238, 254, 255, 273, 301, 303, 342 S

R

Race, 2, 3, 10, 27, 28, 32–34, 41, 184, 250, 253 Reflexive revisiting, 223, 229 Reflexivity, 1, 2, 5, 11, 205–219, 224, 237, 302, 345 Refugee, 13, 154–157, 160–163, 165, 168, 172, 173, 271–285, 344, 346 Relationality, 15, 55–56, 141, 180, 200, 309, 319, 320 Relationships, 9, 10, 12, 14, 28, 33, 35, 51, 52, 82, 101, 102, 118, 141, 157, 158, 163, 164, 169, 170, 172, 207, 208, 215, 238, 245, 253, 256, 257, 261, 277, 279, 280, 285, 293, 294, 297–298, 303, 321, 342 researcher/participant, 213 Research assistants, 207, 218

School, 8, 11, 12, 15, 26, 27, 31, 75, 86, 91, 99–101, 104, 107–109, 143, 172, 181–183, 188, 189, 191, 192, 197, 210, 211, 223–235, 237, 238, 243, 324, 325, 331, 336, 342, 344, 346 Screenings, 4, 35, 39, 40, 196, 197, 199, 247, 250, 261, 280, 283–285, 302 Settler colonialism, 49, 101, 320 See also Colonialism Sexuality, 2, 9, 135, 137, 142, 145–148, 195, 197, 207 Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake, 2, 316, 317 Smith, Linda Tuhiwai, 140 Social change, 2, 4, 8, 14, 24, 30, 50, 153–173, 179, 191, 285, 293, 296, 300, 302–303, 320, 341–343

 Index 

355

Social media, 39, 105, 120, 126, 196, 255, 310, 311, 314, 316–318, 320 Social science, 246, 252 Solidarity, 4, 24, 29, 30, 39–41, 52, 56, 59, 71, 100, 225, 229, 234, 235, 237, 301, 343–344 South Africa, 120, 139, 275 Space, 3–5, 7–14, 16, 25, 29, 32, 35, 37–41, 50–53, 59–61, 86, 93, 95, 99–111, 118, 119, 126, 127, 153–173, 177–200, 213, 224–236, 238, 256, 257, 273, 281, 285, 294, 299–301, 307, 318, 319, 321, 324, 327, 330, 331, 335, 342–347 Storytelling, 9, 12, 79, 119, 137, 138, 148, 223, 230, 234, 242, 244, 246, 252, 254, 258, 260, 296, 299, 303, 314, 344 Structural violence, 11, 178, 197, 200, 252, 343 See also Violence Supervisor, 68, 308 Switzer, Sarah, 2, 3, 178, 179, 183

Toronto, 5, 29, 47, 49, 158, 180, 343 Trans*, 186 See also Transgender Transcripts, 215 Transgender, 16n1 See also Trans* Transphobia, 182, 189, 341 Trauma, 32, 52, 154–157, 163–165, 168, 272, 274, 278, 312, 318 Tuck, Eve, 2, 4, 49, 51, 231, 234, 320 Twitter, 190, 197 2SLGBTQ+, 10, 11, 16n1, 99–109, 177–181, 184, 188, 189, 200, 231, 295, 299, 343 See also LGBTQIA2S+ Two Spirit, 16n1, 184, 186, 200

T

V

Teachers, 5, 11, 15, 69, 71, 79, 89–92, 94, 95, 177, 205, 206, 208, 210, 211, 213, 215, 216, 218, 219, 226, 227, 231, 311, 323–337 Technologies, 2, 10, 86–89, 162, 170, 225, 295–297, 328, 329, 331, 336, 337, 342 digital technologies, 7, 85, 86, 105, 330, 342 Thesis, 223, 225, 228, 295, 299

Video, 5, 11, 30, 35, 37–39, 88–95, 117, 122, 123, 127, 129–131, 160, 194, 196, 211, 212, 215, 216, 218, 281, 285, 295, 310, 326, 330, 331, 333, 336, 344 Violence colonial violence, 193 gender-based violence, 31, 191 sexual violence, 31, 324 structural violence, 11, 178, 197, 200, 250, 252, 259, 343, 345

U

Ubuntu, 257 Uganda, 120, 125, 137, 274 United States, 27, 246–247, 255, 274, 345

356 Index

Visual research, 1–16, 40, 68, 99–111, 118, 139, 183–194, 200, 205, 230, 237, 238, 271–285, 291–303, 319, 342–348 See also Participatory visual research Vulnerability, 10, 54, 56, 146, 160, 161, 168, 182, 224, 233–234, 301–303

newcomer, 272, 280, 285 racialized, 50, 54 violence against, 29 white, 28 young, 50 Workshops, 5, 6, 24, 25, 31–35, 38–40, 54, 60, 78, 79, 158, 179, 187–191, 211, 214, 227, 292, 295, 298, 303, 314, 315, 327

W

Y

Whiteness, 172, 184, 195 White privilege, 32 White supremacy, 23, 27, 32, 39, 40, 246, 343 Witchcraft, 9, 135–139, 145–148, 344 Women Black, 12, 28, 29, 41, 243–245, 247–251, 254, 256–258 of colour, 125 Indigenous, 194

Youth, 6, 8, 10–12, 15, 29–31, 47–56, 58–60, 69, 99–111, 157, 177–181, 184, 189, 190, 196, 198, 200, 223–238, 254, 293, 294, 342–344 Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR), 223, 236 Z

Zines, 2, 105, 109, 179, 198, 343