Using Community-Engaged Arts-Based Methods to Explore Housing Insecurity in Rural-Urban Spaces
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15402/esj.v10i2.70849Keywords:
homelessness, digital storytelling, Arts-based methods, point-in-time count, rural-urban, critical arts-based methods, community-engaged researchAbstract
This article explores how community-engaged, art-based research methods can enrich our understanding of homelessness, with a specific focus on housing insecurity in rural urban communities. Drawing on a digital storytelling project in Dufferin County, Ontario, involving twelve storytellers- ten with lived experience of homelessness - we explore the complexities of homelessness that are often neglected in official narratives of housing and home. We argue that the dominant methods of documenting homelessness - enumeration through point-in-time (PiT) counts - provide a limited understanding of homelessness and can contribute to the invisibility of these problems in rural-urban spaces. We explore how a participant-led critical engagement can help make visible experiences of housing insecurity as a form of homelessness, and direct focus to the intersection of individual circumstances with structural factors, pointing to key areas for policy change.
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