An Artistic Response to EmpowerHER: composite heat map by Emily and Marnie

Since the conception of the project, it was known that these conversations with women would be translated into an artistic form. However, as is often the case with collaborative, community engaged research, how could we anticipate what form it would take? We reiterated that our methodology had to maintain a focus on centering the voices and experiences that were being amplified through creative workshops with community members. As such, the project took an organic, responsive form, the next steps being determined by discussion with community members and the needs and ideas identified. Our questions changed throughout the process as we found that a only a few questions that touched on beauty, safety, and services, opened the way for enormous amounts of dialogue. We narrowed our questions down, and the mode of representing these dialogues shifted as well: some contributors felt that beauty is best represented by red, other blue, etcetera. The representational form these attachments to place took on were being decided collaboratively among the women who were being prompted to visualize their stories, feelings, and knowledge. As such, intentional indeterminacy was a major part of the project.

Certainly, speaking to over 800 women and capturing huge numbers of maps, stories, concerns, and aspirations prompted critical and creative reflection: how can we represent such diversity, while recognizing that these stories are not ours? How do we create space for these contributions, knowing that we must be respectful of their integrity. How can so much be represented cohesively in an artwork?

Learning from various socially engaged arts practices and approaches, it was decided that we must be explicit in our creation: it is a response. It exists not as a simple representation off all the “data” that was found, but rather, integrates our position as facilitators who have not taken up the stories of the women involved, but steps back from those stories to position them into the larger dialogue that has been spurred by the research.

Working with a variety of materials enabled us to build up the social and affective layers that embed our community. Washes of blue encompass the landscape that surrounds us and became an often noted place of beauty. Red highlighted the services, homes, centres and neighborhoods where women have felt secure. Yellow becomes an apparent marker of a service that one may find useful. Recognizing that this map acts as a both a celebration of our community, but also as a testimony for desired change, X’s in graphite scattered throughout the city mark where women have felt unsafe or have witnessed activities that may be a danger to their well-being.