A poignant Photovoice exhibit has been popping up in various Kingston venues and was recently spotted at the North American Primary Care Research Group Annual Meeting in San Francisco. It combines images and candid quotes from Kingston area families about resiliency, despite the various challenges they face. It also demonstrates the unwavering commitment of a research team to community-engaged participatory action research and to United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 17, Partnerships for the Goals.
The research team is I-CREAte - Innovations for Community Resilience, Equity and Advocacy , an action-oriented initiative investigating how to improve the health and wellbeing of families and communities in the Kingston area. I-CREAte is made up of four equity-oriented researchers from Queen's, Dr. Eva Purkey, Dr. Imaan Bayoumi, Dr. Susan Bartels, and Dr. Colleen Davison, working in collaboration with four community researchers who have various lived experience and expertise, Rifaa Carter, Michele Cole, Autumn Watson, and Logan Jackson.
The goals of I-CREAte are to inform community-led programs and services to better support families living with the ‘Pair of ACEs’ (adverse childhood experiences such as child abuse and community environments such as poverty, racism, and poor housing), advocate for equity-focused policies, and to create effective, inclusive partnerships that support the development of resiliency and healthier communities. Their work addresses several SDGs such as: 1 No Poverty; 3 Good Health and Well-being; 5 Gender Equality; 10 Reduced Inequalities; and 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities; however, SDG 17 Partnerships for the Goals, is fundamental to their process of building meaningful relationships among researchers, community members, and services. There is also an I-CREAte Community Advisory Board made up of community members and representatives from various local agencies that participate in all the planning and decision-making. Many meetings were held over the course of I-CREAte’s first year with the researchers and the Board, long before any of the research began, to discuss how their partnerships would work and the best ways forward to achieve their goals.
“We knew we wanted to do community-based work that would result in actual change and also advance the SDGs, first in new partnerships and engagement between the university and community, and then also in the wellbeing of community members,” says Dr. Purkey. “The community knows what it needs and what the problems are. Academics cannot envision all these things because they may have different lived experiences. Because they hold so many resources, there is an obligation to share them and to build partnerships, so community members can use the resources, engage in relevant research, and enact the changes needed.”
Logan Jackson (BAH’21), an I-CREAte community researcher grew up in Kingston’s Rideau Heights community and works at Pathways to Education, a program that supports youth in completing their high school education. “I was invited to choose my level of involvement with I-CREAte and the both the research and this choice was dignifying and empowering,” he recalls. “I really appreciated the time we took for the research team to get to know each another and the goals, discuss our interests and capacities, and then, as partners, to design our plan to bridge the gap between researchers and the community.”
I-CREAte is currently wrapping up their first project, Engaging Families to Build Healthy Communities, that explores how families who were already navigating challenges such as poverty, mental health, substance use, and disability, built resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically what helped or hindered them during this even more challenging time. In this mixed methods arts-based project, families were recruited with the help of the Community Advisory Board and then asked to collect images of things, places, and spaces they value and to discuss them with the researchers. Snippets from these conversations are included on the banners in the Photovoice exhibit.
“It shows strength and resilience that I have a home. I’ve worked and provided a home for my child,” reads one banner contributed by a single mother in her mid-20s who identifies as a member of the LGBTQIA2+ community and has lived experience of domestic violence, trauma, and discrimination, beside a photo of her cozy living room. “I had to really fight for what I have. Everything in this picture is something that I fought for [,,,] Like to even have clean clothes.”
All the families demonstrated significant resilience in the face of personal and structural barriers to wellbeing, such as the pandemic, and the Photovoice exhibit highlights this. “Our team uses a strength-based approach and seeks health equity that is the ‘absence of avoidable, unfair, or remediable differences in health between groups of people’,” explains Dr. Bayoumi. “Through our partnerships we were able to learn about what is needed, what really works, and about things such as the power of accessible language and the extreme value of safe, welcoming spaces like in homes, libraries, and community hubs. I-CREAte will continue to use these lessons and the SDGs as our guide.”
The project identified twelve themes that significantly impact families’ experience of resilience such as anti-discrimination, community safety, family-friendly substance use treatment needs, and Indigenous community needs and experiences. The findings are available in a Community Report and a series of short videos about participants’ experiences is currently in development.
Additionally, community meetings are being hosted by the I-CREAte’s Community Advisory Board to share the results. “The meetings are designed specifically for the audience and so far, have included the Seniors Association, ACEs and Resilience Coalition, Kingston Community Health Centres, and Trellis HIV & Community Care,” explains Bruce Knox, I-CREAte Project Coordinator. “Our hope is to brainstorm with the communities themselves about ways people can participate, partner together, and find solutions to address obstacles to wellbeing.” Meetings in February are booked with the City of Kingston, KEYS, as well as with youth groups at local high schools and service agencies. Following the meetings, another report, the Community Action Plan, will be shared with various agencies, the City of Kingston and community members.
The project wraps up after the community meetings, but the I-CREAte team has follow-up projects planned during which they will explore some of the themes that came up and work on building even more partnerships in the community for both I-CREAte’s goals and the SDGs.
More stories about students, faculty, and staff at Queen’s who are doing this work of advancing the SDGs and the Queen’s Strategy will be profiled on the SDGs at Queen’s page in the coming months. To participate or share a story, please fill out this form.
Learn more about I-CREAte, the current project, and the research:
- Browse the I-CREAte website and read the Community Report about Phase 1 of I-CREAte’s project, “Engaging Families to Build Healthy Communities.”
- Read more about the project in the spring edition of Horizons, the Department of Family Medicine’s global health magazine.
- Watch Dr. Eva Purkey’s Cinq à Sept Research Talk “Making stone soup and building stronger communities” to hear her vision and process for community transformation where communities and universities can enjoy ‘stone soup’ together and improve people’s lives and wellbeing.
Take action:
- Sign up for the I-CREAte newsletter to stay informed about the next project.
- I-CREate encourages all citizens to get involved in community citizen advocacy groups; consider signing up for the I-CREAte Community Advisory Board; or work on building community in your neighbourhood with a block party to bring people together. Keep an eye out for I-CREAte’s Community Action Plan that will have concrete actions that everyone can take to contribute toward community wellness!
Learn about UN SDG 17 Partnerships for the Goals
- Visit globalgoals.org to get to know SDG 17.
- Watch ‘Understand Goal 17: Partnerships for the Goals’ from Participate - a free community-learning platform.
- Watch United 4 Social Change video ‘Sustainable Development Goal 17: Partnerships for the Goals - SDG Series.’
Learn more about all 17 UN SDGs on the UN’s Student Resources page and what you can do to get involved.