Arts-based Community Action + Research
This ongoing social art-based project brings together diverse stakeholders to re-frame, imagine, and honour lived experience of those at the heart of the toxic drug crisis within communities. A group of artist-researchers, front-line workers, and people with lived and living experience banded together in a spirit of solidarity, attempting to come to terms with the impact of the crisis on individuals and community. As a way of moving forward, the Walk With Me aims to:
- Enable new ways of thinking about the toxic drug crisis as it is played out within our communities, and within small cities generally — leading to systemic forms of change
- Explore the lived and felt reality of the crisis alongside statistical/empirical data, and in relation to official and more vernacular cartographic representations of place
- Develop insights surrounding the crisis leading to the design of positive change and transformation
- Create research and research models that are participatory and rooted in the local — produced through multi-level community agency
Using a practice of cultural mapping, communities impacted by the crisis are brought together to share stories and create drawings/photographs that speak to their experiences. These are made accessible through public presentations and ‘Story Walks’ — guided audio journeys that bring participants through various outdoor ‘Reflective Spaces’. Communities and groups are invited to walk and listen, and to sit together — responding to the stories in a sharing circle. Through this process, communities are encouraged to find connectedness with the people and places at the heart of this crisis.
During the fall of 2020, the Comox Valley Art Gallery was the initial activation site. An exhibition and public Story Walks launched the ongoing arts-based community action project. Since that time, the project continues to expand its outreach to other communities on Vancouver Island and beyond.
More about the project can be learned by checking out Walk With Me’s official website.
WWM Exhibitions + Events at CVAG
2020 – Ongoing: Comox Valley Story Walks
September 30 – November 21, 2020: WALK WITH ME | uncovering the human dimensions of the overdose crisis
October 5 – 19, 2024: SAFE | Holding space for lived experiences and safer ways of being amidst the Toxic Drug Poisoning Crisis