I will be honest: I did not know what “arts-based” or “participatory” research meant before I joined the Institute for Human Development and Well-being (IHDW). In the three months that I would spend as a summer research intern at the IHDW, I would come to ask many questions about participatory arts-based research (PABR)—what exactly was it and what did it do? With the patient guidance of my supervisors, the IHDW’s Director Dr. Claudia Mitchell, and Institute coordinator, Ramy Gorgis, this internship put me into direct conversation with what it meant when communities did the research.
This Fall, I enter the final term of my Honors History program and Social Studies of Medicine minor. Throughout my degree, I have articulated my academic and extracurricular passions in all things society and health—from law and policy to history and statistics. Applying to the IHDW’s internship program was an extension of my endeavor to learn how to locate myself in the crosshairs of many disciplines.
As a transdisciplinary research unit, the IHDW is home to many research nodes and working groups bringing together education, psychology, medicine, social work, and policy studies. Projects seek to understand policy’s role in human development and well-being of people with disabilities, people experiencing emotional, physiological, and mental health issues, and vulnerable people including minors, those with low socioeconomic status, and oppressed identities.
My tasks over the summer were to provide research assistance to a new IHDW project hoping to work with Ukrainian arrivals in Canada, Germany, and Sweden, and develop background reviews on participatory work done with Ukrainian newcomers elsewhere. I also was to develop a conceptual framework to package the Institute’s work with refugee youth and children, to provide a foundation for a new working group (called Art Connecting) on arts-based research with refugees and migrants. As is with internships, I had the chance to work with other interns on the IHDW newsletter and assist the Director with the many side-projects such as an article and toolkit in collaboration with Oxfam Canada.
Working on the Ukrainian newcomer’s project was perhaps the most insightful. In my volunteering role in the Montreal community, I had the chance to interact with two Ukrainian families over the course of the same three months that I did my IHDW internship. Attending and listening to their concerns made it clear how important participatory research was. PABR is an accessible and highly democratized way for people living on the margins to create and document their demands, and perhaps very poignantly, PABR is tangible—you can see, hear, feel, and do art. These and many other discussions with my supervisor allowed me to appreciate the very unconventional mode of research that the Institute was known for. Involving communities cannot only mean that they are participants, or “subjects,” but it should seek to invite them as co-creators, collaborators and researchers.
I look back on my last undergraduate summer internship fondly. I hope to take the insights, and experiences from the IHDW wherever I go. I have known how difficult transdisciplinary academics can be, but the Institute shows that it is not impossible.
In the end, my learning curve was steep, but this only made the experience more rewarding. I mobilized my skills from history and statistics to perform research at the IHDW. I was able to test new work-from-home strategies and made sure to work at the office at least 3 times a week. I formed enriching relationships, taking inspiration from supervisors and colleagues. I also delivered on the tasks that I set out to do, all the while investing in my learning.
Weekly meetings with the team, and monthly check-ins with the larger group created a sense of camaraderie that had been missing in the virtual iterations of summer internships over the last two years. I am grateful to have gotten the chance to witness the IHDW’s work and support their activities as they create new transdisciplinary spaces, daring members of their community-led research projects to create, decolonize and commit radically to their futures.
This indelible experience would not have been possible without the support of the Goodman Family Internship Awards, The Morris and Rosalind Goodman Family Foundation, and the Arts Internship Office. Thank you for your faith in student work and upholding the dignity of labor.
