Conference session

Community-engaged collaboration, arts-based action research and care ethics are at the heart of my scholarship. As the project lead of "Survivor-Centred Visual Narratives,” I work in partnership with scholars, comics artists, genocide and mass atrocity survivors (Holocaust; Former Yugoslavia; Iraq; Rwanda; Syria) as well as survivors and intergenerational survivors of Residential Schools in Canada. Interlinking the graphic novel medium with scholarship in collaborative life writing and relational ethics, the SCVN project engages arts-based relational storytelling as a foundational principle for gathering genocide and mass atrocity testimonies. Comprised of an interdisciplinary team of scholars and knowledge holders across five research clusters, we self-identify as Ashkenazi Jewish, Indigenous, Kurdish, Métis, Muslim, Sunni Arab and Yezidi. Our primary objective is to co-develop arts-based research methodologies that place survivors’ well-being and agency at its centre while preserving the dignity and singularity of their lived experiences. Artists and survivors are invited to the project as researchers in their own right, and they are encouraged to creatively collaborate with one another over an extensive period of time. The nature of these collaborations, which are built on mutual trust, respect and reciprocity, are negotiated between each artist and survivor. In a co-facilitated workshop with Nathaniel Brunt, I will introduce participants to practical tools and collaborative techniques drawn from our arts-based research practice and demonstrate how visual methods can foster trust and co-creation with communities. We will invite discussion on how these methods can be adapted to support partnerships between communities and institutions, and culturally informed knowledge mobilization.