Product Details

Author Information

Corresponding Author
Elizabeth Miller
Concordia University
7141 Sherbrooke St. West, CJ 3.230
Montreal, QC
Canada
p: 5145270890
elizabeth.miller@concordia.ca

Authors (listed in order of authorship):
Elizabeth Miller
Concordia University

Michele Luchs

Sylvain Thibeau
Projet Refuge

Gracia Dyer Jalea

Colleen French
Canadian Council for Refugees

Rania Arabi
YWCA, Montreal

Robins Paul
Youth Center of Cotes-des-Neiges

Ed Lee
AGIR

Suhail AbualSameed
Express

Steve High
Life Stories, Concordia

Product Description and Application Narrative Submitted by Corresponding Author

What general topics does your product address?

Arts & Design, Public Health

What specific topics does your product address?

Advocacy, Community development, Community engagement, Community health , Community-based education, Curriculum development, Education, Housing, Immigrant/refugee health, Interdisciplinary collaboration, Leadership development , Mental health, Minority health, School health, Community-based participatory research

Does your product focus on a specific population(s)?

Adolescents, Immigrant, LGBTQ, Refugee, Women

What methodological approaches were used in the development of your product, or are discussed in your product?

Arts-informed methodologies, Participatory evaluation, Photovoice, Videovoice

What resource type(s) best describe(s) your product?

Curriculum, Documentary, Training material

Application Narrative

1. Please provide a 1600 character abstract describing your product, its intended use and the audiences for which it would be appropriate.*

Mapping Memories, a four-year collaborative multi-media research-creation program with refugee youth explores how innovative new media techniques can be used to solicit unique artistic expression, while empowering subjects in the process. The result of our participatory projects, a media rich website, is a collaborative initiative of Montreal based educators, filmmakers, policy advocates, students, and youth to showcase personal narratives created by youth with refugee experience.

The media projects presented on the site were facilitated by principle investigator, Elizabeth Miller of Mapping Memories working in collaboration with the Canadian Council for Refugees (CCR), an umbrella organization that brings together refugee advocates from around Canada. Mapping Memories and the CCR trained youth participants with refugee experience to create digital stories using tools such as digital cartography, audio, video, and photography. These narratives were then integrated onto the website to bring a vital youth perspective to students, teachers, advocates, community organizers, health care workers, and social workers to improve understanding and services offered to youth with refugee experience.

The diverse range of stories presented on the site works to counter stereotypes and build tolerance. In addition to compelling first person narratives, the website also provides curriculum resources for educators, advocates, social workers, and researchers wanting to engage in collaborative media projects involving self expression and public advocacy. The web site is a vibrant peer platform for youth with refugee experience to share their stories with each other and to recognize they are not alone as they grapple with mental health issues connected to isolation and the range of emotions that surface as they adapt to a new life.

2. What are the goals of the product?

A primary goal of the website is to offer a venue where youth with refugee experience can share their narratives with each other. Creating a collective space for youth to process difficult experiences and to recognize they are not alone is one means of addressing their general health. Participatory media projects help youth to establish or strengthen support systems and creative expression can be a healing activity.

The individuals represented on the site were forced to flee their countries for diverse reasons including gender violence, persecution based on sexual orientation, or violence as a result of armed conflict, and this website builds understanding about the diversity of refugee experiences. An additional goal is for the site to be a tool to help sensitize resident coordinators, social workers and other refugees to the range of experiences refugee claimants have survived. Coordinators of refugee residences for example, are often at a loss on how to confront differences or prejudices regarding gender or sexual preferences. Our website includes powerful stories by individuals including Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transexual, Queer (LGBTQ) refugees, young women, artists, and unaccompanied minors. Accompanying the narratives are educational resources that help build awareness and tolerance.

Social workers are often the first group dealing with youth refugees and can use the narratives to share with newcomers who may be discouraged or dealing with depression and anxiety. By sharing stories of individuals who have “survived” both persecution and relocation they can help newcomers feel less isolated. The stories can be used in university programs to train social workers or be used in schools, refugee advocate networks, community centers, and within residence programs to build sensitivity and understanding.

Our overall goal is to feature stories for educational environments including class lessons/lectures in areas such as public health, migration, social work, and media ethics. We have included educational resources to share our methodology with other educators interested in facilitating peer support groups and participatory media projects. The Canadian Council of Refugees has established a youth network and we plan to reach other youth with refugee experience who may be inspired to tell their stories and foster peer support groups and resources.

3. Who are the intended audiences or expected users of the product?

The site was created on a flexible open source web platform to reach the largest audience possible. Our target audiences are social workers, teachers, refugee youth group facilitators, refugee residence coordinators, students, and youth with refugee experience. The web narratives are short and serve as conversation starters for lessons, discussions and even public conversations. In collaboration with a consultant working with the Quebec Ministry of Education, the website was introduced in trainings with high school teachers throughout the region to explore what kinds of lesson plans they would develop around the theme of refugees. Teachers addressing migration, public health, globalization, media ethics, media literacy, and human rights can use the narratives.

4. Please provide any special instructions for successful use of the product, if necessary. If your product has been previously published, please provide the appropriate citation below.

All of the projects are organized under “Projects” and there are videos, images, maps and educational resources connected to each project.

The material on the site has been presented to classrooms, film festivals, and in front of government ministries. Several videos featured on the website have been screened at film festivals in New York, Toronto and Montreal. The website was developed on a flexible web system that permits us to adapt the project over time in response to user feedback.

Selected Screenings:

Entry Point - Cinema Politica (Oct, 2010)
Image Nacion (Nov, 2010)

Roots to Rap With – Regents Film Festival 2010
Finalist for on-line film festival - Roots competition, Radio Canada International, 2010

If Only I Knew - Exhibitions: City Hall in Toronto, Sherbrooke Community Health Centre in Toronto, UQUAM gallery in Montreal with Ethnoculture, and ARTWHERK art exhibition in Toronto,

5. Please describe how your product or the project that resulted in the product builds on a relevant field, discipline or prior work. You may cite the literature and provide a bibliography in the next question if appropriate.

The objective of Mapping Memories was to engage with refuge youth in participatory art practice such as digital mapping, “memoryscapes” and audio bus/walking tours to deepen understanding about their under represented experiences and to strengthen peer networks. In working with place-based participatory media and on-line mapping the goal was to help newcomer youth articulate their voices and find commonalities in a period of transition. The explosion of on-line mapping tools such as Google Earth offered new opportunities to explore on-line networks and to connect personal narratives to place.

The project built on and contributes to the field of participatory new media practices. Participatory approaches have ranged from Canada’s Challenge for Change program of the 1960s (20) to digital storytelling (8; 9; 19; 21) to more recent participatory media projects involving digital mapping, audio tours, and mobile devices (13; 4; 2). Innovations in this area are not only framed by who is telling the story but also how or even where the story is being told.

The key questions framing this research included; What are the impacts of participatory practice on participants? How do new media and community-engaged arts contribute to healthy and sustainable relationships, organizations, institutions, and communities? How can we use technological innovations to share the resulting artwork with larger publics or make a deeper impact? What does informed consent and the mitigation of harm mean in the context of digital stories that are disseminated on the Internet? How do collaborative projects share authority throughout the research-creation process?

6. Please provide a bibliography for work cited above or in other parts of this application. Provide full references, in the order sited in the text (i.e. according to number order). .

On-line projects bridging art and testimony

Beyond the Fire - http://archive.itvs.org/beyondthefire/resources.html
I Live Here - http://www.i-live-here.com/ilh.html
“I Was Here” - filmmakerinresidence.nfb.ca/

References

1.Benmayor, Rina. “Digital Storytelling as a Signature Pedagogy for the New Humanities.” Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 7, 2 (June 2008): 188-204.

2.Butler, Toby. “Memoryscape: How Audio Walks Can Deepen Our Sense of Place by Integrating Art, Oral History and Cultural Geography.” Geography Compass 1, 3 (2007): 360-72.

3. Dodge, Martin & Rob Kitchin, Chris Perkins. Rethinking Maps: New Frontiers in Cartographic Theory. New York: Routledge, 2009.

4. Evans, Mike and Foster, Stephen et al. "Representation in Participatory Video: Some Considerations from Research with Métis in British Columbia” Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 43 No. 1 (Winter 2009).

5. Frisch, Michael. A Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft and Meaning of Oral and Public History. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990.

6. Frisch, Michael “Sharing Authority: Oral History and the Collaborative Process,” Oral History Review 30,1 (2003): 111-112.

5. Hein, Jane Ricketts, James Evans, Phil Jones. “Mobile Methodologies: Theory, Technology and Practice.” Geography Compass 2, 5 (September 2008): 1266-1285.

6. High, Steven. “Telling Stories: A Reflection on Oral History and New Media.” Oral History 38, 1 (Spring 2010): 101-112.

7. High, Steven, Jessica J. Mills and Stacey Zembrzycki, “Telling Our Stories / Animating Our Past: A Status Report on Oral History and New Media,” (http://storytelling.concordia.ca/oralhistorianstoolbox/ ) (Accessed 15 January 2011).

8. Kidd, Jenny (2010) “Capture Wales Digital Storytelling: Community Media Meets the BBC” in Making Our Media: Global Initiatives Toward a Democratic Public Sphere. Laura Stein, Dorothy Kidd and Clemencia Rodriguez (Eds) Hampton Press, 2009.

9. Lambert, J.. Digital Storytelling: Capturing Lives, Creating Community.Berkely, CA: Digital Diner Press, 2002.

10. Lundby, Knut, ed. Digital Storytelling: Mediatized Stories: Self-representations in New Media. New York: Peter Lang, 2008.

11. Meadows, D. “Digital Storytelling: Research-Based Practice in New Media.” VisualCommunication 2, 2 (2004): 189-193.

12. Miller, Elizabeth. “Building Participation in the Outreach for the Documentary The Water Front,” Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d'études canadiennes 43, 1 (Winter 2009): 59-86.

13. Miller, Elizabeth. “Queer in the Eye of the Newcomer: Mapping, Performance & Place Based Media,” InTensions Journal 4 (Fall 2010).

14. Palacios, L. Low, B. Brushwood Rose, C. Salvio, P, 2010 “Framing the scholarship on participatory video: From celebration to critical engagement.” Paper submitted to The Canadian Society for the Study of Education, Canada, May 2010.

15. Rheingold, Howard “Using Participatory Media and Public Voice to Encourage Civic Engagement’ in Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth. Edited by W. Lance Bennett. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, (2008): 97–118.

16. Rodríguez, Clemencia. Fissures in the Mediascape. An International Study of Citizens‘ Media. NJ: Hampton Press, 2001.

17. Soep, Elisabeth. “Beyond literacy and voice in youth media production.” McGill Journal of Education 41(3), (2006): 197-214.

18. Wang, C.C. “Photovoice: A Participatory Action Research Strategy Applied to Women’s Health.” Journal of Women’s Health 8, 2, (1999): 185-192.

19. Wang, C. & Burns, M.A. “Photovoice; Concept, Methodology and Use for Participatory Needs Assessment” Health and Behavior 24, 3, (1977): 369-387.

20. Waugh, T., Baker, M., & Winton, E. (Eds). Challenge For Change, Activist Documentary at the National Film Board of Canada Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010.

21. White, Shirley. Participatory video: images that transform and empower. New Delhi: Thousand Oaks Calif.: Sage Publications, 2003.

7. Please describe the project or body of work from which the submitted product developed. Describe the ways that community and academic/institutional expertise contributed to the project. Pay particular attention to demonstrating the quality or rigor of the work:

• For research-related work, describe (if relevant) study aims, design, sample, measurement instruments, and analysis and interpretation. Discuss how you verified the accuracy of your data.
• For education-related work, describe (if relevant) any needs assessment conducted, learning objectives, educational strategies incorporated, and evaluation of learning.
• For other types of work, discuss how the project was developed and reasons for the methodological choices made.

The value of participatory media (photography, video, digital mapping etc) has often been in the process of creation and in helping individuals to find their voice, develop new skills and become storytellers, filmmakers, and photographers in order to reclaim their images in powerful ways. This is particularly important for individuals with refugee experience who are under-represented and often misunderstood. Beyond involving the youth in creating work we emphasized the dissemination of the projects through our interactive website and through participation in festivals and events. Inviting participants to share their work and experiences with a broader public is individually empowering and has the potential to build greater understanding.

The website is the multimedia platform that permits us to share the results of participatory media projects resulting from our unique collaboration between community organizations serving and representing refugee groups in Montreal and two Montreal based research projects originating at Concordia University - Mapping Memories and Life Stories of Montreal.

Life Stories is working with refugee communities to record their own life stories and has a goal to record 500 life stories of Montrealers displaced by war. Mapping Memories initiated a refugee youth working group within this unique community-university collaboration to ensure a youth perspective and to challenge the form of the Life Story so that youth would be inclined to participate.

Mapping Memories was initiated to explore how collaborative media projects could be used to help youth with refugee experience develop peer networks and establish their voice. We wanted to explore how providing youth with refugee experiences a chance to communicate together, to contribute to a shared project, to express themselves creatively, and to experience a sense of belonging would benefit them at a critical stage of transition.

Over the last four years we have developed ten collaborative media projects that shed light on the experiences of youth impacted by a refugee experience. We have partnered with a number of community organizations including: Project Refuge – a refugee residence program / YWCA of Montreal / Cotes-des-Neiges Youth Center / Express –support group for Queer Youth Refugees in Toronto / AGIR – Queer support group in Montreal.

Because the process was an important as any final media product a peer based participatory method was selected. Rather than interview the youth about their lives we asked them to write stories and then animate these stories with images and video. This permitted a chance for participants to reflect on their experiences and to share their stories in a group context. A participatory process offered a means to decide how to frame their stories and as co-authors have a say in how the work is shown and distributed. This form of shared authority and involvement was key to building trust with participants.

For many individuals an immigration officer is the first and last person to hear their story and they must present a brief but coherent victim narrative. Our collaborative workshops offered a chance to re-frame their narratives, to compare experiences with other youth participants, to reflect on these experiences in a safe and supportive environment, and to see how a larger public can benefit from their stories.

8. Please describe the process of developing the product, including the ways that community and academic/institutional expertise were integrated in the development of this product.

The website is a result of a four year research project working in collaboration with the Canadian Council for Refugees, Life Stories of Montreal and community organizations working directly with refugees in Montreal and Toronto including; the Canadian Council for Refugees, the Youth Center of Cotes-des-Neiges AGIR, the Life Stories Project, the YWCA of Montreal, Project Refuge, Express - a support group for LGBTQ Youth Refugees in Toronto, and AGIR, a LGBTQ support group in Montreal.

In the first year we developed the web site to feature our on-going work and help future potential partners understand our methods. Critical to the process was to develop the site in a flexible and accessible format. We designed the site on DRUPAL, a free content management system that permitted the site to grow over time while also permitting us to embed various forms of media including maps, images, audio, and video.

In all of our workshop trainings we used open source technology to ensure that participants could access software programs after the workshop rather than invest in expensive software programs. When we first began our participatory research project we conducted a survey of groups providing services for youth in Montreal to understand the gaps in services and discovered the paucity of creative projects for youth with refugee experiences.

To visualize our findings from our first step we mapped the organizations on line alongside media organizations available in Montreal. Once we began offering workshops, we quickly confirmed that collective peer to peer storytelling workshops were an effective way to simultaneously help foster peer networks, cultivate a sense of belonging, and discover more about the realities of these young individuals.

Sharing difficult stories amongst peers turned out to be a powerful means of building networks with the youth participants. We led the workshops at the community centers or at the digital storytelling center at Concordia. Our partners contributed by recruiting participants and ensuring that the participants were emotionally prepared to be involved in the workshop. Having the facilitators involved in the workshops was essential to foster trust within the group. The community facilitators provided the “trust factor” in our workshops by attending each workshop and also offering guidance, counseling and support before and after each workshop. At the end of the workshop series the community facilitators also identified venues where the resulting work could be shown and make a difference. As a professor in Communication Studies and an active documentary maker, I contributed my own technical experiences and recruited university students to assist in technical aspects. Concordia University provided materials and venues to conduct workshops and exhibit the work. We worked together by valuing our respective expertise and by ensuring candid communication and reflection throughout the process.

9. Please discuss the significance and impact of your product. In your response, discuss ways your product has added to existing knowledge and benefited the community; ways others may have utilized your product; and any relevant evaluation data about impact, if available. If the impact of the product is not yet known, discuss its potential significance.

The significance of this project is the contribution of compelling refugee youth narratives, which are largely under represented in both mainstream and alternative media venues. Personal stories help to counter myths and stereotypes that make it difficult for newcomers to integrate. We have also contributed to emerging trends in mobility studies involving community and virtual neighborhood tours that make use of increasingly accessible digital mapping tools. New media platforms such as digital cartography, streaming video and social networking sites call for new media literacies and new forms of engagement. By involving newcomers as tour guides in their communities and then translating physical tours to virtual tours we have not only provided empowering experiences for the youth involved but have contributed to the field of mobile and place based media.

We are also contributing to the field of on-line video advocacy using new media platforms and venues to reach audiences who are increasing accessing materials on-line.
The interactive website offers information in a form that is accessible and appealing to our target population – youth and individuals serving youth. The site offers tools and methods of working with refugee youth and media students in general.

In coordination with our partners and the Canadian Council of Refugees youth network (CCR) we will deliver these stories to individuals who can immediately benefit by knowing that they are not alone and that their experience matters. By sharing the work with the CCR network, educators, and organizers we will contribute to dialogues on tolerance, human rights, and mental health concerns of youth with refugee experience. More specifically we hope to contribute to an understanding of how creative projects can help foster a sense of belong and help strengthen peer networks.

The project builds on knowledge regarding participatory media ethics and consent regarding difficult stories and distribution models for participatory media. For example, broadcasting sensitive stories onto the Internet requires rigorous introspection and methods to ensure the safety and privacy of those involved.

Finally, the project contributes to the newly emerging genre of web documentaries that deal with issues related to health, migration, and refugees. There are very few resources available regarding the narratives and needs of individuals fleeing their countries because of their sexual identity and this site provides a unique contribution to LGBT issues, global health, and mental health.

10. Please describe why you chose the presentation format you did.

We chose a website to feature our projects so that we could share the project with an international audience. The site was created using a range of free open source technologies including DRUPAL – an open source content management system; KORSIKOW – a free platform for non-linear storytelling; AUDACITY– a free open source audio editing program. We made sure that the technology we used was both accessible and adapted to the needs of the group we were working with. While we were excited to explore cutting edge new media tools we were careful to ensure that the technology would not get in the way of a meaningful process where youth could be themselves and feel comfortable enough to share experiences.

11. Please reflect on the strengths and limitations of your product. In what ways did community and academic/institutional collaborators provide feedback and how was such feedback used? Include relevant evaluation data about strengths and limitations if available.

An important strength of this project was the time we had to gain trust with both our community partners and the youth involved. Our community partners involved the Canadian Council for Refugees, the Life Stories Project, the YWCA of Montreal, Project Refuge– a refugee residence program, Express – a support group for LGBTQ Youth Refugees in Toronto, AGIR – a LGBTQ support group in Montreal, and the Youth Center of Cotes-des-Neiges. Because the project took place over a four-year period we were able to develop trust and meaningful relationships over time.

An additional strength was the range of individuals who contributed their expertise. For example Michele Luchs, an employee of the Ministry of Education worked on the project as an educational consultant and has been instrumental in developing educational resources for the website. Michele has also been key in distribution. She shared the project with teachers from around the Quebec province at a series of media literacy workshops offered by Quebec’s Ministry of Education and asked them to consider how they would use the materials in the classrooms.

Colleen French of The Canadian Council for Refugees attended the majority of workshops and has promoted the site throughout their active youth network. She has also helped us to connect the individual stories to resources that are available on their website;
Refugee and Immigrants Glossary: http://ccrweb.ca/en/refugees-and-immigrants
Canada’s Commitments to Refugees http://www.ccrweb.ca/en/bulletin/09/07/14
“Who is a Refugee?” presentation http://ccrweb.ca/en/public_education

Sylvain Thibeau of Project Refuge, Rania Arabi of the YWCA of Montreal, and Robints Paul of the Cotes-des-Neiges Youth Center were involved in the recruitment, the ensured safety of the participants, and continue to be involved in the dissemination of the work.

The limitations of the website are varied. In some cases the final media projects do not offer enough context. Because we decided ultimately to value process over product we forged ahead despite this limitation. The advantage of the web format is that we can continue to improve and develop the project over time.

12. Please describe ways that the project resulting in the product involved collaboration that embodied principles of mutual respect, shared work and shared credit. If different, describe ways that the product itself involved collaboration that embodied principles of mutual respect, shared work and shared credit. Have all collaborators on the product been notified of and approved submission of the product to CES4Health.info? If not, why not? Please indicate whether the project resulting in the product was approved by an Institutional Review Board (IRB) and/or community-based review mechanism, if applicable, and provide the name(s) of the IRB/mechanism.

Sharing authority, mutual respect and shared ownership were guiding principles throughout the project. Oral historian Michael Frisch popularized the term sharing authority in 1990 to describe the dual authority of the oral history interview – the expert authority of the interviewer and the experiential authority of the interviewee (5). According to Frisch, “A commitment to sharing authority is a beginning, not a destination. There are no easy answers or formulas and no simple lessons” (5). Learning with, rather than learning about was pivotal to each of our projects.

To ensure shared ownership we use the website as a public bulletin board /magazine so that participants can could keep track of what programs or projects are offered and any other updates related to the project. Participants received a copy of all work created in the workshop and were trained in media so that they could continue to develop their projects even after the workshops. Youth participants were paid stipends for their contributions and also received a certificate upon completion. We left additional copies of all work completed in the centers where they work was created. At the public events where we have presented the work we have always involved the participants in the presentations. We believe that participation should take place at every phase of the project – from initial planning, to recruitment, to development of goals, to production, and dissemination.