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Disrupting the Circle: Action through Art started as a research project between West Central Women’s Resource Centre (WCWRC) and Dr. Shauna McKinnon at the University of Winnipeg. The goal of the research was to better understand the experiences of women, Two-Spirit, transwomen and gender non-conforming people during the pandemic in relation to housing safety, homelessness and housing precarity. As well, we were curious how services and programs had been affected and how organizations can adapt to a post pandemic reality.
This project built on “Connecting the Circle: A gender-based strategy to end homelessness in Winnipeg” which WCWRC completed in 2019. The report highlights strategies for working with a gender-based analysis and recommendations for ending homelessness from this perspective. Ali and Claire worked as artists and researchers on this project as part of their course work for the Urban and Inner City Studies degrees at the University of Winnipeg.
We used art making in this research as a way to connect, to see each other as artists and find ways of disrupting more traditional research methods. An arts based approach to research allows for engagement of a combination of intellectual, emotional, and embodied knowledge and therefore generates more holistic findings.
Grant: Community Economic Development in the New Economy - 2002-2004
Category: Education, Training, and Capacity Building