Community artmaking: Creating a sense of belonging among older supportive housing residents, university students, and community members

Grittner, A. L., Chateau, C., Slabé. M., & Walsh, C. A. (2022, July). Community artmaking: Creating a sense of belonging among older supportive housing residents [paper presentation]. Seventeenth International Conference on the Arts in Society, Zaragoza, Spain.

Walsh, C. A., Grittner, A., Shepperd, A. & Lees, W. (2022, June). Community artmaking: Creating a sense of belonging among older supportive housing residents and their neighbours [paper presentation]. 38th Annual Qualitative Analysis Conference and Couch Stone Symposium, St. John's, NL.  

Abstract

Drawing on qualitative arts-based methodologies within a community development framework, we explore community artmaking as an analytical approach towards understanding processes of belonging, inclusion, and community-making in the context of a homeless shelter with an embedded art hive. By providing free access to art, art hives act as a site for social change through access for all and community participation, fostering stronger and more inclusive communities through creativity. We conducted a series of arts-based elicitation interviews, co-facilitated by social worker students and professional artists, with shelter residents and social work students. Photovoice and art-based elicitation interviews were used to explore aging in place among older adults’ and their sense of identity, belongingness and social inclusion. Analysis of the interview and artmaking revealed pathways to community-building across class, gender, disability, and settler-colonialism. To mobilize the co-production of knowledge, as well as actualize social justice for those with lived experiences of homelessness, we shared photographs and art from the interviews across the community. Findings highlight community artmaking and art sharing as a methodological research tool to co-produce narratives of community belonging. This project embodies an innovative and participatory approach to understand connections and tensions across community differences.