Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Community-engaged research and integrated arts-based knowledge translation share a drive to expand ways of cultivating and sharing knowledge beyond the boundaries of Western academic norms. Both approaches involve diverse voices and practices that require a flexible and interdisciplinary approach, which can feel difficult to execute and be rendered illegible within the rigid institutional processes and expectations of public health and health sciences programs, marking them especially hard to navigate for graduate-level researchers. In this article, we explore a community partner- and graduate student-led community-engaged research project that employed the DEPICT model within an integrated arts-based knowledge translation framework. This British Columbia-based research project formed a community research team with lived experience of incarceration to explore structural health inequities related to police violence. Focusing on the methods of our integrated and trauma-informed framework, we explore our ethical and procedural considerations, including our learning curves and limitations. We discuss how embedding DEPICT within integrated arts-based knowledge translation offered a powerful roadmap for research that interrogates structural violence by centering community voices, facilitating trauma-informed artistic processes that enhance trust and encourage community healing, and generating accessible, visceral, and targeted knowledge products that spur action for community benefit. We then reflect on the barriers that we experienced in combining these approaches and the facilitators that helped our team navigate those barriers. Barriers included misaligned expectations in institutional and community processes and high demands on time and resources which were met through relational facilitators. This grounded reflection offers supportive insights for emerging structural health researchers and their mentors who are interested in creating research environments that meaningfully involve diverse participants, expansive ways of knowing, and artistic knowledge translation planning.

Keywords

community-engaged research arts-based knowledge translation structural health inequities integrated knowledge translation participatory analysis trauma-informed public health research

Introduction

This paper reports on the methodological considerations and experiences of embedding participatory analysis within an integrated arts-based knowledge translation framework for research that interrogates structural health inequity. To support this discussion, we explore a community-engaged research project which took place in Maple Ridge, British Columbia in June 2024. Through participatory discourse analysis, this project aimed to better understand the impacts of and pathways for improvement in news reporting on police violence. The findings of that discourse analysis can be found in Community Voices: A Public Primer on News Reporting on Police Violence (Blyth et al., 2025) and are not our focus here. In this paper, we turn to the Community Voices project to explore the suitability of integrated arts-based knowledge translation and participatory analysis in research that interrogates structural health inequity. We present the benefits, barriers, and facilitators that we experienced while mobilizing these methods in a graduate research environment.

We believe that our subjectivities foreground how we approach this work and thus we foreground this paper with positionality statements from the research Co-Leads and Artistic Research Advisor. We offer these reflections on our connections to the research as a foundation from which readers may understand how our perspectives shape this work and thus better critically engage with the methods that we describe in this article. Throughout this article, we include reflective passages from the authors on our experiences in this work. Blyth’s fieldnotes represent ethnographic notes kept throughout the research process whereas Korchinski’s and Young’s personal reflections were written for the purposes of this paper. We then establish our entwined understanding of community-engaged research, participatory analysis, integrated arts-based knowledge translation, and structural health inequity. Having established the perspectives that drive this project, we enter into an in-depth discussion of how we mobilized our understanding of ethical community-engaged research in this project. We first discuss our approach to relational team building and the ethical considerations that guide our work before describing how we employed participatory analysis and integrated arts-based knowledge translation in our focus group procedures. The discussion section focuses on the benefits, barriers, and limitations that arose through this combined approach to participatory analysis and integrated arts-based knowledge translation.

Author Positionalities

To do research of any kind is not simply to ask questions; it is to let our curiosities drive us and allow them to ethically bind us; it is to tell stories and pay attention not only to which stories we are telling and how we are telling them, but how they, through their very forms are telling us. (Loveless, 2019, p. 24)

We know that our position and power as authors both limits and facilitates the story that we tell in this research. Our perspectives are formed and reinforced within prescribed and achieved characteristics, social location, and the interactions we have relative to our social position (Muhammad et al., 2015). In what follows, the three lead-authors share how we are situated within this work. This project was influenced by a wider team and we can only hope that seeking guidance across multiple knowledge systems (Fink-Mercier et al., 2024), being aware and humble where we have and do not have power, and acknowledging that our privilege and power will bring blind spots that we cannot identify nor rectify alone will allow us to remain accountable to the story that we tell through this research.

Emily R. Blyth (Graduate Co-Lead)

As a cis- White Settler from a middle-class background, I do this work in response to how police violence remained commonplace and allowable within my worldview for most of my formative years. As a Mad (i.e., a reclaimed term for people who experience mental health struggles and differences) (LeFrançois et al., 2013) scholar, my risk factors for police violence are often invisible. I have interacted with police while in mental health crisis and though I cannot claim I experienced kindness; I believe that my race and gender expression are the reason that I survived those moments. The story of police that protect and serve began to unravel for me through contrasting stories about other people in mental health crises dying at the hands of police—an unravelling that came fully undone with the teachings of the Black Lives Matter movement. As a graduate student, I acknowledge that this work brings me direct personal gain in the form of a degree, and this has constrained how I show up in this project. As a boundary spanner (Hoffmann-Longtin et al., 2022) with formal academic training in linguistics, communication, and public health—I believe that stories craft the worlds we inhabit (Loveless, 2019). In my Whiteness, I come from a long line of people who have benefitted from state violence and am protected from the danger that many who have supported this work experience. I come to this research with a desire to lead others through the internal process of dismantling the myth of police as de facto safety.

Mo Korchinski (Community Co-Lead)

As a person with lived experience of addiction, criminal behavior, and prisons, I have firsthand experience dealing with police. I have been involved with police and have experienced police violence towards me. I have also seen way too much police violence and believe that police violence happens to way too many people.

I believe that public dialogue on who is involved in addiction, who is living homeless, and who go in and out of the revolving door of prison shapes mainstream views about who we are as humans. We are stigmatized by the public through social media and news outlets. It doesn’t matter how much time has passed since crime happened, we’re still classified. I’ve been out of prison 19 years. I’m still classified as an ex-con. These views are all driven by stereotyping and show how people become judge, jury, and execution. In nearly 20 years since I’ve started this work, we still don’t see a change when it comes to our population, our peers.

Samantha Young (Artistic Research Advisor)

As a cis biracial settler of White and Chinese descent, with a second-generation immigrant background, my involvement in this research is deeply rooted in my personal and familial experiences with the impact of police violence, particularly in Vancouver’s Chinatown. Growing up visiting this area, I developed an awareness of the disproportionate effects of systemic violence on marginalized communities and of how the historic roots of this discrimination continue to extend through Chinatown and across Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. My mother, who grew up in Strathcona, shared with me stories of her own experiences of being chased and subjected to racial harassment, including being pelted with stones. These personal histories have shaped my understanding of the complex dynamics of race, policing, and community.

As someone who is not White-presenting, I acknowledge the role that racial bias and prejudice may play in my interactions with law enforcement. I am conscious of the privileges and challenges inherent in my identity, particularly as Vancouver undergoes significant shifts under political leadership like Ken Sim, the city’s first Chinese mayor, whose administration has pushed for increased policing and street sweeps, further escalating violence in marginalized areas.

Though I do not have direct lived experience of the issues addressed in this research, my connections to those who have been affected—through family, friends, and colleagues—have made me keenly aware of the need to center the voices of those impacted. This research is an attempt to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of policing and to support the collective effort to shift public perceptions and practices around law enforcement.

Background

While there is a growing interest in both community-engaged research and arts-based knowledge translation in Canadian public health research, there remain complex challenges to ethically applying these approaches in health research driven by structural determinants. There are distinct ethical considerations across the research cycle for both artistic and community-involved projects. When combined in research activities such as arts-involved focus groups, these ethical considerations can become particularly complex. Interrogating structural violence requires compassionate facilitation and a grounded understanding of what community members risk when they reflect on and share their personal experiences of violence—complex and experiential skills that are little taught within many graduate programs.

Community-engaged research and arts-based knowledge translation share an interest in combining multiple ways of producing knowledge toward impact-driven research that is legible beyond academic audiences. As these frameworks extend beyond Western research norms, each requires unique and overlapping skills and resources that may not be attended to within public health or health sciences graduate programs. A growing proliferation of well-defined models and approaches (Flicker & Nixon, 2015; Kukkonen & Cooper, 2019; Leavy, 2022; Vaughn et al., 2018) can help graduate students to overcome programmatic skill gaps. Still, adapting and executing these approaches in contextually situated work requires community and artistic buy-in and guidance, flexible timelines, robust financial support, and skillful relational research administration and facilitation. Mobilizing arts-based and community-engaged research to interrogate structural inequities adds to this complexity.

The social determinants of health represent the combination of structural determinants and conditions of daily life that influence one’s well-being (CSDH, 2008). Structural inequities are entrenched in societal hierarchies that dictate the distribution of “wealth, power, and prestige of different people and communities” (CSDH, 2008, p. 24). These inequities are systemically built into and reinforced within our social structures and imposed through “a toxic combination of poor social policies and programmes, unfair economic arrangements, and bad politics” (CSDH, 2008, p. 1). Studies that interrogate structurally imposed health inequities necessarily examine the impacts of structural violence, a concept that points to historic and ongoing systems of dominance, such as policy-imposed colonialism and racism (McGibbon, 2024), and “highlight[s] violence of hierarchical power structures in the creation and reproduction of inequality” (Fu et al., 2015, as cited in Herrick & Bell, 2020, p. 296). Research on the health impacts of structural violence can risk expecting community members to relive and mine personal experiences of violence for academic benefit (Gagnon & Novotny, 2020; Paris et al., 2014; Tuggle & Crews, 2023), raising questions about ethical research approaches.

Inequitable policing practices enact the structural violence that we interrogate in this research project and lead to systemic health disparities in populations that are strategically disadvantaged by state violence, including members of Black, Indigenous, Mad, and LGBTQIA2S+ communities and those with lived experiences of incarceration, illicit drug use, homelessness, sex work, and/or disability (Govender, 2021; Kanani, 2011; Kouyoumdjian et al., 2019; Mueller et al., 2019; Owusu-Bempah & Wortley, 2013; Pasternak et al., 2022; Salerno & Schuller, 2019; Singh, 2020; Stelkia, 2020). Inequitable police violence impacts health through direct immediate (e.g., injury, death), direct secondary (e.g., disproportionate incarceration, PTSD, anxiety, depression), and vicarious (e.g., traumatic responses to witnessing police violence and related media) means (DeVylder et al., 2022; Simckes et al., 2021). In the nation-state commonly referred to as Canada, the inequitable reality of police violence has been well documented. Evidence of police violence is growing through efforts that extend across impacted communities, journalists, advocacy groups, legal organizations, government, and academia (e.g., Govender, 2021; Owusu-Bempah & Wortley, 2013; Pasternak et al., 2022; Singh, 2020; Tracking (In)Justice, 2024; Wortley et al., 2021). However, when compared with public health inquiry in the United States (e.g., Alang et al., 2017; Cooper et al., 2004; DeVylder et al., 2022; Fullilove & Cooper, 2020; Haile et al., 2023; Simckes et al., 2021), there is limited public health scholarship on police violence in Canada. This community-engaged project understands consuming news stories on police violence as a pathway for vicarious and structural harm that functions beyond physical force and reporting practices therein as “less tangible institutional policies, practices, and processes which produce their own risks and/or threats to the well-being of persons” (Nonomura et al., 2020, p. 3).

Community-engaged research addresses ongoing histories of erasure, exploitation, and harm within Western academic research with strategically marginalized communities by redesigning the researcher-subject relationship to “center community priorities and leadership, and to ensure that the results are of mutual value” (Smith et al., 2020, p. 1). Extensive research has explored the ethical dimensions of research that engages interested and affected parties, community, and academic voices, with a range of resulting research paradigms (e.g., Participatory Action Research (Baum et al., 2006), community-based participatory research (Israel et al., 2005), community-partnered participatory research (Jones, 2018)). This project’s community-engaged research framework is most influenced by the Community-Engaged Research Initiative (CERi) at Simon Fraser University. Within community-engaged research, “university-based researchers must be committed to approaching each stage of the research process as part of an ongoing relationship-building process with the community” (Mahoney et al., 2021, p. 9). Community-engaged research is committed to seeking out and mobilizing knowledge beyond traditional Western academic (hereinafter extra-academic) norms. Community-engaged research questions the university researcher as gatekeeper of rigorous knowledge production and “centers local contexts and community expertise” (Mahoney et al., 2021, p. 8). It is situational, contextual, and motivated by subjectively relevant experiences in a way that defies dominant and colonial concepts of academic rigor defined by objectivity, replicability, and generalizability (Abo-Zena et al., 2022). While expecting community-engaged research to meet dominant standards of rigor can enact epistemic violence (Abo-Zena et al., 2022), this does not mean that this research is not rigorous. Instead, a decolonial approach to rigor centers relationality through self-reflexivity, historical and socio-political contextuality, and nimble research inclusivity (Abo-Zena et al., 2022). Community-Engaged research necessarily has distinct ethical implications, for which Grain (2020) posits ten ethical standards for engendering community-oriented care, engagement, and action in community-engaged research, and which guide our research.

Relevant to Grain’s fifth (power examination and active redistribution) and tenth (collaborative analysis and dissemination) principles, Flicker and Nixon’s (2015) DEPICT model offers a stepwise approach for participatory research analysis. While Flicker and Nixon acknowledge that analytical questions arise throughout research planning and data collection, they focus on participatory analysis as they have observed that is often where community involvement is most limited (Flicker & Nixon, 2015, p. 617). Participatory analysis contrasts approaches where community members may engage in knowledge production (e.g., recorded interviews or focus group meetings) and support analysis (e.g., reviewing themes) but do not conduct the analysis itself. The model features six key steps including; 1) dynamic reading; 2) engaged codebook development; 3) participatory coding; 4) inclusive reviewing and summarizing of categories; 5) collaborative analyzing; and 6) translating (Flicker & Nixon, 2015). Each step is clearly outlined through well-defined functions, roles, and guiding questions. While DEPICT requires skilled researcher coordination, facilitation, and power sharing, its democratic approach can be flexibly adapted to various theoretical orientations and participant groups, increase team productivity and task sharing, enhance rigorous and diversely voiced analysis, and facilitate action-driven research (Flicker & Nixon, 2015).

Relevant across Grain’s principles, trauma- and violence-informed (hereinafter trauma-informed) frameworks are essential for community-engaged research that addresses structural health inequities. Trauma-informed research centers the well-being of community members who participate in the work and can be guided by the following six principles,1) safety; 2) trustworthiness and transparency; 3) peer support; 4) collaboration and mutuality; 5) empowerment, voice, and choice; 6) cultural, historical, and gender issues (Nonomura et al., 2020). Trauma-informed research is nuanced and complex and should be approached with due guidance and practical support resources (e.g., Dowding, 2021). Moreover, ethical community-engaged research should aim to reach beyond trauma-informed processes that avoid harm and engage in trauma-informed processes that can actively promote healing and community benefit (Ardiles et al., 2025).

Arts-based knowledge translation shares research through a range of artistic practices “with the goal of catalyzing dialogue, awareness, engagement, and advocacy to provide a foundation for social change” (Kukkonen & Cooper, 2019, p. 296). While there can be significant overlaps, arts-based knowledge translation should be distinguished from arts-based research. Widely speaking, arts-based research speaks to methods that use some form of artistic creation to address and/or respond to a research question, whereas arts-based knowledge translation is a process focused on using diverse art genres to share research insights impactfully and accessibly (Kukkonen & Cooper, 2019). While the authors hold that knowledge production and dissemination can be collaborative, iterative, and expand across all stages of the research, a key difference here is the expectation in arts-based research that the primary research findings will arise specifically from the artistic process and/or product. An integrated approach to knowledge translation sees artistic practices oriented at public knowledge sharing take place throughout the research process, with benefits for both process and outputs (Jull et al., 2017).

Artistic research processes and outcomes can combat systemic barriers (e.g., academic jargon, journal and conference paywalls, academic exploitation, devaluing lived experience) that make research inaccessible to the communities that are most impacted by the work (Blyth & Korchinski, 2024). When trauma-informed, the creation process can have therapeutic and rehabilitative benefits and contribute to participant well-being, belonging, confidence, self-worth, self-expression, and transformation and can increase participants’ ownership and investment in the research (Brown & Timler, 2019; Coemans & Hannes, 2017; Conrad & Sinner, 2015). Especially in communities that have experienced social marginalization (e.g., incarceration), artistic expression can offer a powerful mode of engagement where participants may not have the desire, confidence, or comfort to participate in traditional Western academic knowledge production (Brown & Timler, 2019). In interdisciplinary and cross-cultural research, artistic processes and outputs can support cultural practices and unify interested parties involved in the research (Conrad & Sinner, 2015; Ontario Arts Council, 2016). Artistic research outputs can reach beyond academia, feel more accessible to general publics, and illicit empathetic, embodied, and intellectual responses that can spur powerful institutional and audience transformation (Coemans & Hannes, 2017; Conrad & Sinner, 2015).

This paper details experiences embedding Flicker and Nixon’s (2015) model for participatory health research analysis within a well-defined framework for arts-based knowledge translation (Kukkonen & Cooper, 2019) in a community-engaged project that explored news reporting on lethal police force. With attention to the influence of strong mentorship, we first discuss our ethical considerations and research procedures with open consideration of our setbacks and learnings therein. We then discuss how combining DEPICT and integrated arts-based knowledge translation supported our team in ethically engaging the community by centering community voices, engaging in trauma-informed trust-building and community healing processes, and orienting the research toward extra-academic action. We reflect on the barriers we encountered in deploying this approach within a graduate program of work, including misaligned institutional, arts-based, and community-based research expectations and demands on time and finances. Where possible, we link the relational facilitators that helped overcome these barriers. We mobilize this situated reflection to provide valuable insights for graduate students, their academic and community mentors, and established health researchers who are interested in exploring community- and arts-based approaches that interrogate structural health inequities.

Methods

Relational Team Building

Forming the Research Partnership

This study was first conceptualized through the Graduate Co-Lead’s doctoral research proposal and was not community-initiated. After proposal approval, turning to a community Co-Leadership model was a major project priority for which the Graduate Co-Lead turned to her relationships within the Transformative Health and Justice Research Cluster (THJRC).

My relationship with the THJRC began as a general member in the first semester of my PhD and developed into a core organizing member over the next two years. In my third year, I consulted with my supervisor, THJRC members, and CERi staff and graduate fellows, secured compensation funds, and disseminated a call for a Community Co-Lead among core THJRC members. Until this point, I worried constantly about community research uptake and decided that if this call was unsuccessful, I would reorient my dissertation. Mo, the Executive Director of the Unlocking the Gates Service Society, who has demonstrated mentorship skill and experience running community focus groups related to police violence, immediately answered the call. While I knew that the project was in great hands with Mo’s support, I underestimated how much I would develop as a researcher under her mentorship. (Blyth, Fieldnotes, July 30, 2024)

Both Co-Leads attended a three-day facilitation workshop, hosted in partnership with Continuing Studies at Simon Fraser University and Hollyhock Leadership Institute, to develop their relationship and support the Graduate Co-Lead’s development and confidence before the focus groups.

Finding Advisors from Multiple Knowledge Systems

As police violence impacts a range of populations and as a project founded in structural health inequity, communications, and arts perspectives, this project was interdisciplinary in nature. To support this expansive work, we formed a formal Community Advisory Board (CAB) and involved informal advisors throughout the research. The CAB grew relationally and included representatives from Justice for Jared (a Vancouver-based advocacy group that formed after Jared Lowndes was killed by Campbell River police and organizes against violent policing), CERi, No Cops on Campus (a Simon Fraser University student organization focused on ending police violence and oppression), the Simon Fraser University Faculty of Health Sciences (graduate students and faculty), and artistic and curatorial experts. CAB members held professional and lived expertise with police violence, news analysis for social change, community-engaged research, mixed-method health research in under-serviced populations, and artistic practice and knowledge translation. Informal advisors included the Graduate Co-Lead’s supervisory committee, additional representatives connected to Justice for Jared, and a subset of THJRC members including Indigenous Elders, peers with lived incarceration experience, and academic mentors.

Forming a Community Research Team

The project Co-Leads developed recruitment around their overlapping but distinct research priorities. The Graduate Co-Lead posited parameters for participation designed to identify those who are at risk of, and have been impacted by, police violence. The Community Co-Lead focused on the populations most related to her work at Unlocking the Gates Service Society (Unlocking the Gates). Rather than formulating one criterion that could encapsulate both priorities, we combined the Graduate Co-Lead’s parameters with targeted relational recruitment that supported the Community Co-Lead’s priorities.

The selection process thus sought out participants who 1) had witnessed police violence in the Greater Vancouver Area in the past five years; 2) identified with one or more of the following groups most likely to experience police violence in Canada: Black, Indigenous (First Nations, Métis, or Inuit), racialized, transgender, disabled/living with disability, Mad/experiencing mental health disorder, has lived experience in jail or prison, or has lived experience (currently or at any time) being unhoused, with sex work, with drug use and/or addiction; 3) were at least 18 years old; and 4) were comfortable conversing in English. While potentially limiting, English proficiency was seen as essential given that the focus groups would involve group discussions of English-language news articles. The call for research participants was disseminated among past and current Unlocking the Gates clients who identified with past experiences of police violence, identified with one or more of the groups most likely to experience police violence as listed above, identified with substance use experience, and were at a place in their journey with Unlocking the Gates that felt appropriate for conversations of police violence (i.e., not in crisis, no recent disclosures of acute police violence). In May 2024, a trusted Unlocking the Gates outreach worker facilitated the recruitment and consent procedures. This relational process allowed the outreach worker to describe the risks and assess safe participation while creating space for potential participants to openly voice concerns before joining the study.

Seven community members joined the project. All had past prison experience, all described current or prior experiences with mental health struggles, six described experiencing disability, six described experiencing homelessness, and six described experiences with drug use. As will be further discussed, participant withdrawal following a shooting that occurred in the research community leading up to the focus groups limited racial diversity, with one participant identifying as First Nations and six identifying with White Settler ancestry.

Integrating Undergraduate Learning

As an extension of the study’s commitment to integrated knowledge translation, we engaged five undergraduate students enrolled in Community and Health Service (HSCI 449), a fourth-year undergraduate health sciences course offered at Simon Fraser University, to support the focus groups. This partnership was borne from the Graduate Co-Lead’s connection to the Course Director, Dr. Paola Ardiles Gamboa, who was a member of her supervisory committee. Prior to the focus groups, the Graduate Co-Lead met with the students, introduced them to the health context of police violence, and instructed them on taking reflexive fieldnotes. Supporting the focus groups offered students a unique opportunity to experience research with communities who have experienced incarceration and substance use, research located at the intersection of health and justice, and research interested in community expertise. 1-2 students attended each focus group session and students learned to support research administration and transcription, use NVivo qualitative analysis software, and create infographics.

Expanded Ethical Considerations

Selection and Appropriate Use of Articles

A human life was stolen by police violence in the news reports we analyzed in this study. Jared (Jay) Lowndes life, and the tragedy of his death, are more than a data point. We turned to lived experience to select the articles that we included for analysis in this study. To do so, we contacted our CAB members from Justice for Jared to discuss the news coverage of his death and the impact that these articles had on his friends and family. With enthusiastic support from a member of Jay’s family, we selected three articles for analysis that this family member felt ranged from critical to uncritical coverage (Auger, 2021; Ball, 2021; CBC News, 2021). We included critical and uncritical articles for a strengths-based analysis that could point to what must be changed in news reporting and offer actionable examples of how that change can look and feel.

Addressing Harm

Reading news coverage of police violence, particularly uncritical coverage, required significant emotional labour from our community research team. Exposure to police violence was not novel for team members, who self-identified with personal experiences of police violence in their day-to-day lives. However, the impacts team members described when reading the articles made clear that spending time with these articles was taxing. In the formal consenting procedures, beyond informing participants of the emotional risks and providing support resources, we also provided materials and verbal descriptions on identifying the symptoms of burnout. Both Co-Leads encouraged team members to notify us and take time off from the study if these symptoms appeared or worsened following focus group sessions. At the beginning of each day, we welcomed the team with a reminder that their well-being was the highest priority in this work and that the research outcomes were secondary. Our Community Co-Lead and one participant with street outreach experience offered invaluable peer support throughout the study. As will be explored, our integrated arts-based knowledge translation was designed to reduce harm and the initial stress of participation for community members. Further, while we made clear that we could not guarantee impact, our approach to public scholarship reflects a commitment to mobilize community labour toward positive change.

Representation

Given the racialized nature of police violence, particularly as both Co-Leads are White Settlers, we planned recruitment for racially diverse representation in the community research team. However, last-minute changes led to a rapid restructuring of the community research team following participant drop out after a man was shot and killed in the community in the days leading up to the focus groups. The restructuring impacted racial diversity within the team. We discovered the low racial representation on the final day of the focus groups when we administered a demographic survey that was scheduled following analysis to emphasize that participation would not be sub-analyzed according to demographics. When the low racial diversity was discovered, the Graduate Co-Lead discussed the implications with two Indigenous advisors on the project. As the participatory analysis was complete, we discussed the practical and financial complications (e.g., participant honoraria, art supplies) of retroactively merging recommendations from a second and more racially diverse focus group with the existing and highly situated findings. Ultimately, as the parameters for participation were met and imbedded Indigenous representation existed among the advisors who planned and would review the research, we decided to move forward with the focus group findings despite the unexpected change. We consider this a limitation of the research, as will be further discussed in the limitations section.

Compensation and Recognition

Ethical compensation for community labour was a key project priority and involved a multi-tiered approach for the Community Co-Lead and community research team. The Co-Lead was compensated at an hourly rate commensurate with an early-career faculty salary at Simon Fraser University. For the community research team, we understood valuing lived expertise to necessarily mean setting honoraria above the living wage. To reduce the burden of participation, daily lunch, snacks, and transportation (where requested) were provided for all meetings. To ensure community members were properly acknowledged for their contributions, community research team members had the option to be acknowledged by name in research products.

Focus Group Procedures

From February to May 2024, the Co-Leads met weekly to draft research procedures and discuss CAB feedback. In these meetings, the Community Co-Lead’s expertise was essential to adapt the DEPICT model and the integrated arts-based knowledge translation framework to the study aims and the needs of the research population. Prior to this, the Graduate Co-Lead also received early and essential guidance from her supervisory committee (e.g., recommending forming the CAB). Leading up to the focus groups, the Graduate Co-Lead hosted consultation meetings with CAB members to help refine research protocols, responsibly select news articles for analysis (Auger, 2021; Ball, 2021; CBC News, 2021), and orient the research design toward impactful and accessible knowledge translation. Focus groups then took place in June and November. Three initial focus group meetings of four hours each took place in June 2024 and two subsequent focus group meetings were then held in November 2024 to review and seek feedback on knowledge translation materials, with each meeting lasting two hours.

Integrated Arts-Based Knowledge Translation

Kukkonen and Cooper’s four-stage framework (2019) guided our arts-based knowledge translation strategy. Our main goals (stage 1) were building awareness, accessibility, and engagement. These goals grew out of the Co-Leads connecting early in their relationship over a shared interest in leveraging artistic practices to support research with impacted communities and render experiences of colonial violence legible to wider audiences. Our arts-based genre and practices (stage 2) were steered by the Community Co-Lead’s experience as an established clay artist and by our Artistic Research Advisor’s experience as an established artist and arts-based community researcher. We fostered our growing partnership (stage 3) around a shared belief that our project demonstrated synergy between extra-academic community expertise, the extra-academic knowledge that artistic expression can convey, and the extra-academic dialogue needed to meaningfully share the impacts of police violence across wider publics. Integrated arts activities included sessions at the beginning of the first focus group meeting, during feedback meetings with the community research team, and during a reflection meeting with the Community and Health Service (HSCI 449) students. With the Artistic Research Advisor’s guidance, to mobilize the work toward measurable impacts (stage 4) the Graduate Co-Lead submitted an exhibition proposal to Gallery Gachet, a non-profit art gallery in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside with a mandate to “support artists and offer art programs addressing mental health and socio-political marginalization while promoting art as a means for survival, cultural participation and human rights” (About Gachet, nd). This proposal secured the means to publicly display the artworks and disseminate the research findings alongside interactive panels with journalists and health scholars in a relevant community setting (Figures 1 and 2).

Figure 1.

Cops slump punk by Tyler Lindgren

We hosted focus groups over three consecutive days in June. Three focus groups were held lasting During the focus groups, the Community Co-Lead mobilized her artistic expertise to support the community research team, Community and Health Service (HSCI 449) students, and the Graduate Co-Lead to create clay artworks alongside one another. No one was obligated to engage in the activity, and one community research team member refrained citing sensory discomfort. The Co-Leads co-created the prompt for the clay-making activity through extensive discussions during early research planning. In these discussions, the Graduate Co-Lead’s priority was for the prompt to be trauma-informed, while the Community Co-Lead’s priority was for the prompt to create space for the research team to express and process their personal experiences of police violence. Thus, to create opportunities for expression while ensuring there was no obligation to share personal experiences of police violence, we developed the following prompt: Create something that represents your experiences of police violence or your experiences of safety.

I was so concerned about being trauma informed that I wanted to restrict the activity prompt to: Create something that represents your experiences of safety. I thought we could launch into discussions of police and unsafety without asking the community research team to reflect on their personal experiences of violence. Mo was steadfast that the activity should offer participants space to express their experiences with police violence. While I felt uncertain, I embraced the advice. In the end, everyone made something that represented police or carceral violence. I came to understand that exploring these experiences together was a major reason that community members joined the study. By being overly controlling — even patronizing—I risked foreclosing their opportunity to speak openly about those experiences. (Blyth, Fieldnotes, June 15, 2024)

We then discussed our art pieces in a conversation that was securely audio-recorded and transcribed to form artist statements.

We gave the community research team the same prompt during our feedback sessions where we presented the public-facing report that conveyed the focus group findings and the artist statements for revision. During a reflection meeting with Community and Health Service (HSCI 449) students, we gave the students the option to respond to that same prompt with clay or to translate quotes from the articles that the community research team identified as impactful into collage, thus introducing the use of public policy collage (Mahoney, 2023) as an additional learning opportunity.

In total, the community research team created 12 clay pieces (Figures 1 and 2), the Artistic Research Advisor and Co-Leads created eight, and the Community and Health Service (HSCI 449) students created two clay pieces (Figure 3) and four collages. Each artist reviewed their artist’s statement from the transcribed recording or formulated a new statement to ensure their experience was well-reflected. We distinguish this process as a form of integrated arts-based knowledge mobilization, as the process and products of the artistic activities were not oriented toward answering our primary research question but toward conveying the importance of this work by sharing the reality of police violence in Canada. In this project, our primary goals were to understand the impacts and pathways for change in news coverage of police violence. To answer this question, we turned to participatory discourse analysis supported by the DEPICT model.

The DEPICT Model

We selected the DEPICT model (Flicker & Nixon, 2015) as we deemed its stepwise participatory approach particularly useful to guide an emerging community-engaged researcher and because of its demonstrated usage within populations with similar geographic and demographic locations (e.g., O’Callaghan, 2023) as those in this study (i.e., disproportionately subject to police violence in the Greater Vancouver Area). The Community Co-Lead’s situated understanding of the research population and strong facilitation experience were essential to adapting the model. For example, knowing that low reading confidence created resistance in past studies, rather than approaching discourse analysis in individual or small groups, the Community Co-Lead suggested we divide the articles into small sections, read each section aloud as a group, and then have a circle discussion about each excerpt. Likewise, we reformed the DEPICT prompts away from inaccessible language that could inadvertently diminish community involvement and expertise. Table 1. describes these changes.

Table 1.

Adapting DEPICT (Flicker & Nixon, 2015) to the Community Context

DECPICT terminology	Community-oriented terminology	Adapted key prompts and questions
Dynamic Reading	Group Reading	Read the articles one section at a time. In each section: What feels helpful? What feels harmful? Highlight the relevant text.
Engaged Code-Book Development	Comparing what stood out to find patterns	Each person will read their highlighted text aloud.
		As we read, use 1-5 words to describe why the text stood out as harmful or helpful. These will be the patterns we are noticing in the reporting, so it is totally fine to use the same 1-5 words more than once if different quotes feel similar. (Facilitator records the responses in two lists: helpful and harmful.)
		Take time to look at the articles, are any other patterns standing out that are not in these lists?
		Let’s go over the patterns and what they mean. (Facilitator to record meaning.)
Participatory Coding	Looking for our patterns in new articles	Let’s go over the patterns again. Is there anything that others noticed and want to add before we continue?
		Now, the facilitator will read sections of a new article aloud. As she reads, look for patterns.
		If you see one of our patterns, highlight the text and write the pattern name beside it. If you see a new pattern, highlight that and write a new pattern name. If a section doesn’t have any new or existing patterns, that’s totally ok.
Inclusive reviewing and summarizing of categories	Describing and finalizing our patterns	What existing patterns did people find? Do we all agree?
		What new patterns did people find? Do we all agree?
		How do we feel about the patterns we have listed? Is there anything missing or anything that doesn’t belong? (Facilitator to record any new patterns, meanings, and changes.)
Collaborative Analyzing	Creating standards/recommendations	Based on the patterns we’ve seen – what suggestions would you want to share with reporters and journalists?
		What are the most important findings?
		What structural/societal factors can help us understand the stories and reporting styles?
Translating	Sharing the work	Create something that represents your experiences of police violence or your experiences of safety.
		Can you tell the group about what you made and what it represents for you?
		How can this work inspire change for journalists?
		Who is already doing heart-based journalism, or interested in this work, and how can we support them?

We analyzed the articles following DEPICT to collaboratively generate and define patterns and standards related to reporting on police violence. The community research team identified and defined thirteen helpful and nine harmful reporting patterns through the first four steps of DEPICT (dynamic reading, engaged codebook development, participatory coding, and inclusive reviewing and summarizing of categories). They then articulated the five standards for journalists and one recommendation for editors in the fifth step (collaborative analyzing). Beyond the terminal knowledge translation outputs (public report, art exhibition, academic articles), we integrated the final step (translating) throughout the focus groups. This included our artistic processes and conversations about the research process and desired outcomes at the end of each session. During one of these conversations, a community research team member shared skepticism on whether journalists would care enough to leverage our report for change. The discussion that followed helped solidify our target audience as journalists already doing heart-based journalism and those interested in this work, as well as wider publics who are unaware of inequitable police violence. These conversations also revealed the 16 adverse health impacts that community research team members felt when reading the uncritical articles and four areas of positive impact related to the critical reporting and conducting the study together. Due to time constraints (see Discussion), we recorded these conversations and the Graduate Co-lead listed the impacts from verbatim transcriptions.

Discussion

Benefits

Embedding the DEPICT model within an integrated arts-based knowledge translation strategy facilitated robust community involvement in our data analysis and interpretation and prioritized community voices, healing, and action while interrogating the vicarious and direct health impacts of police violence as a pathway for structural health inequity (Table 2). While the DEPICT model is participatory, it is meant to be embedded within a larger research program, and we did not find it to be particularly salient for community members without prior research experience nor attentive to trauma-informed work. Integrated arts-based knowledge translation addressed these gaps through a democratizing framework that supports extra-academic expression in research processes and knowledge sharing.

Table 2.

Summary of Benefits

Phenomenon	Actors	Description
Guidance for participatory analysis	Graduate Co-Lead	Following the DEPICT model offered a clear roadmap for valid and rigorous analysis, which led to flexible and confident facilitation, especially for emerging researchers.
Centering community voices	Community researchers	Discourse analysis led by the DEPICT model increased participation in analysis, which led to community-developed insights.
Rapport and trust building	Full research team	Creating together and discussions about the personal meaning behind the artworks constituted a trauma-informed artistic process. It created space for the Co-Leads to meaningfully acknowledge community members’ experiences of police violence. Together, this led to relationship building across the research team.
Community healing	Community researchers	The artistic activity offered dedicated time to process and express personal experiences of police violence through art and discussion.
Facilitating grounded feedback	Community researchers; Community Co-Lead	Creating together during our feedback meeting offered an opportunity to reflect on the research, which helped bridge the time the Graduate Co-Lead needed to draft the research report.
Public and action-driven knowledge translation	Full research team; Community audiences	Integrating artistic knowledge translation early in our meetings with the community allowed the Co-Leads to demonstrate our commitment to action outside of standard academic dissemination.
		The plans for a public art show spurred the community researchers’ and Community Co-Lead’s interest and investment in the project.
		The resulting artworks offered a visceral knowledge translation products that could be accessibly shared through a public-facing channels (e.g., the art show; the public report)

The DEPICT model offered a well-defined, yet flexible discourse analysis strategy that could be responsively adapted to this contextually situated project. Highly technical data analysis norms stood to foreclose participatory analysis, as our community research team did not have the time nor desire to learn skills such as qualitative analysis software or reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006, 2021). DEPICT’s clear process offered a consistent touchpoint around which the Co-Leads could adjust the program of research as the community research team’s pace, interests, and communication style required. While facilitating this analysis was complex, following DEPICT allowed the Graduate Co-Lead to adjust while remaining confident about analysis validity and rigor. This confidence allowed her to remain connected to the team and ensure they had the tools they needed to appropriately and accessibly engage with the articles.

Engaging in an arts activity that contextualized our work within personal experiences before turning to article analysis proved especially powerful. Creating clay pieces together through a trauma-informed approach allowed the Co-Leads and community members to sit together in informal conversation, and in comfortable silence, while creating alongside one another. Discussing the personal meaning behind the artworks allowed community members and Co-leads to approach difficult discussions about police violence by using the art as a proxy to share experiences. This allowed our team to engage in early trust and rapport building and gave us a way to process and meaningfully acknowledge team members’ personal experiences with structural violence before turning to the analysis at hand.

Involving the community research team and using artistic activities to do so was important to hear from them, to give them a voice which empowers them and shows them that they matter and that they are heard. Sharing their stories with their peers helped the community research team members to feel less alone, to tell the stories, and learn and heal. (Korchinski, Personal reflection, June 30, 2025)

Aligning with existing research on the healing affordances of arts-based ((Brown & Timler, 2019; Coemans & Hannes, 2017; Conrad & Sinner, 2015)) and community-engaged (Ardiles et al., 2025) research, the reflective artistic activities throughout analysis and feedback meetings offered generative space for community healing along the research process. Further, writing the public report with CAB input took time and starting feedback sessions by repeating the initial artistic prompt allowed the Co-Leads and community research team to reflect and refresh before reviewing. Community research team members described the initial clay activity (Figure 2) as a good icebreaker, something that formed connection, and a break from the monotony that they associated with research. Overall, the community research team described the clay activities as therapeutic, enjoyable, and fun; given that the project explored personal experiences of structural violence, we see this as a major benefit.

Figure 2.

“If I can take time to make handcuffs, including the key and the chain part… then the cops should take the time to have a conversation with us without handcuffs on. It’s the first thing, it seems to me, that they do, is put you in cuffs. Detained. That right there scares the [life] out of you.” (Christina Sinopoli, Abridged artist statement, 2025)

As a knowledge translation strategy, the artwork offered a visceral and impactful way to contextualize our analysis in lived experience. Coupling personal artistic expressions of police violence with a report on the impacts, patterns, and recommended standards for reporting on lethal force allowed us to powerfully invite audiences to consider the human impact that this violence carries and emphasize what is at stake without action. As Gallery Gachet is in one of the areas of Vancouver upon which disadvantage and police violence are most disproportionately imposed, featuring the works at a free-to-access Downtown Eastside gallery also intentionally made the research accessible among impacted communities. Further, the confirmed exhibition provided a concrete way to enter the focus groups with a demonstrated commitment to impactful public scholarship. Knowing that their art and artist statements would be displayed in a gallery alongside the findings from our analysis generated a sense of interest, ownership, and pride in the research among the community research team that we do not believe could be achieved in a written report alone.

I find it amazing how art creates a space for storytelling, for sharing of experiences, and a different way of expressing oneself. Through participating in the clay workshops, I was able to listen, but not just listen, hear. I was able to hear stories and see stories through the artwork created. This was not just clay to the participants, it was a way to share their stories, their trauma, their experiences. (Young, Personal reflection, March 7, 2025)

Barriers and Facilitators

Community-engaged and arts-based research processes both require flexibility, uncertainty, and valuing of diverse knowledge systems that contradict colonial paradigms of rigid and academic-led research. In short, community-engaged research requires a relationally driven approach and a value for lived expertise while artistic knowledge translation requires an emergent approach that values embodied expression; all of which falls outside of Western academic norms in public health research. When combined, these frameworks compound barriers related to institutional processes, timelines, and resources (Table 3).

Table 3.

Summary of Barriers

Phenomenon	Actors	Description
Concurrently navigating institutional and community expectations.	Graduate Co-Lead; Community research team; university personnel	Misalignments between rigid university expectations and emergent, relational research approaches.
Combined resource demands for research that involves artistic processes and community involvement	Graduate Co-Lead	Financial and time requirements for research that engages lived experience (e.g., costs for partner compensation, honoraria, meals; time needed to build partnerships and research relationships) and artistic processes (e.g., costs for art supplies; time needed for artistic creation, aligning research and gallery timelines).

The ethics approval process is endemic to these barriers. Our Graduate Co-Lead led the formal ethics review processes and found herself struggling between institutional and community expectations. The combination of arts and community activities seemed, at times, completely illegible to the Simon Fraser University ethids review board, as one review board member expressed during a consultation, “Is this research?” (personal communication). Misaligned expectations between controlled colonially defined rigor and emergent relationally defined rigor created significant friction for our team. The detailed and rigid research procedures required for the ethics approval were one source of anxiety that initially steered the Graduate Co-Lead away from the flexible, situated, and relational approach that this project needed. The Co-Leadership model and CAB helped combat this anxiety and steer the research toward procedures that prioritized community building and community participation, rather than procedures that could lead participants to feel like study subjects. Boundary spanning community mentors with knowledge of the academic environment were essential to centering art and community throughout the ethics process. For example, the Artistic Research Advisor guided the credit and ownership procedures for the artistic outputs during the ethics amendment. A humble approach to CAB and Co-Lead meetings helped the Graduate Co-Lead remain flexible when her academic training left her in a state that the Community Co-Lead would (gently) call over-prepared. With patience and understanding from the Community Co-Lead during the weekly planning meetings and throughout the focus group sessions, the Graduate Co-Lead began to untangle and overcome the colonial habits of her Western academic research training. Supportive and flexible academic mentors with community- and arts-based practices further modeled possibilities and provided guidance that empowered the Graduate Co-Lead to continue pushing institutional boundaries. For example, upon reviewing the research protocols, one community researcher offered the sage advice to have a detailed plan, but to know your minimum viable outcomes for when that plan would inevitably need to change.

Time and financial demands constituted another barrier that compounded when combining arts- and community-based approaches. Simply put, ethically compensating community members, artistic expertise, and providing arts supplies is expensive, especially for an independent graduate project outside of larger research team, grant, or lab settings. The CAB, Co-Lead, and Graduate Co-Lead’s supervisor were instrumental in identifying and supporting diverse granting opportunities for the project. Still, additional time with community members meant sourcing additional funding for honoraria and supplies and thus, was not always feasible. Further, delays that may be typical within the art world and are needed for robust and ongoing community consultation are difficult to navigate within graduate program timelines. Clay takes time to dry, paint, and fire, feedback with diverse interested and affected parties takes time to collect and implement, and our art show was rescheduled multiple times according to gallery programming needs, leading to a 12-month delay. Our only advice for navigating these delays is to engage a supervisory committee that understands them. Partnerships within the university can also reciprocally support resource intensive work. This is illustrated by our Community and Health Service (HSCI 449) partnership which provided focus group support, research administration support, and—importantly—motivation as integrated knowledge translation demonstrated immediate impact. The Community and Health Service (HSCI 449) students described the study as an eye-opening experience that extended their understanding of public health and community research team members shared open appreciation for the opportunity to share their experiences with a new generation of public health researchers. The Community and Health Service (HSCI 449) students demonstrated their learning through the artistic activities (Figure 3) and through a final presentation where they discussed artistic practice and forming trust, food sharing and relationship, equity and historical disadvantage, media and police inequities, and their experiences developing empathy through experiential learning. As one student described, “Instead of waking up in the morning like ‘I don’t need to know any of this,’ it’s like ‘How do I carry this forward?” (personal communication). The student artworks further demonstrated their understanding.

Figure 3.

“My artwork symbolizes the powerlessness of individuals when faced with unjust and intolerant violence by the police…blood and a skeletal face represent the devastating consequences of such violence—pain, suffering, and death.” (Gwyneth Law, Abridged artist statement, 2025)

While these facilitators made the barriers surmountable, many required additional labour and time from the Co-Leads and advisors. This labour came in the form of grant and proposal writing and administration, long-term relationship building, extensive Graduate Co-Lead mentorship by the Community Co-Lead and advisors, undergraduate mentorship by the Graduate Co-Lead, duplication of efforts to craft research programs that were salient to institutional and community processes, and extensive and layered feedback processes in both project planning and finalizing the resulting public report. We mention this not to deter future researchers, but to speak to the inherent rigor that is required of institutionally recognizable research that takes community and artistic involvement seriously and to point to skills that graduate students, and their mentors, may most need to support and cultivate.

Limitations

As discussed in the Representation section, Indigenous representation in the community research team was low and some communities that experience higher rates of police violence were not represented (or identified), including participants who are Black, transgender, or engage in sex work. While, according to our community partner’s priorities, this work was focused on recruiting community members with drug use and incarceration experience, in future work we would prioritize working with a community-embedded outreach team made up of multiple members from different populations of impact. A more complexly layered approach to relational outreach would ensure better representation and enable teams to react dynamically to sudden changes, such as the community shooting that impacted our recruitment process, while maintaining commitments to robustly diverse representation. In particular, robust racial representation would better reflect the disproportionate impact that policing has on racialized groups in Canada, with a necessary emphasis on Indigenous and Black populations. Further, this study did not include team members from the relevant professional knowledge systems, namely journalists or editors. Future research would do well to explore perspectives from diverse communities impacted by police violence and those involved in reporting on this phenomenon. This paper is focused on methodology and does not discuss findings at length; we encourage readers to review those outcomes through our public report Community Voices: A Public Primer on News Reporting on Police Violence (Blyth et al., 2025).

Conclusion

This article explores the process and considerations of a research project that embedded the DEPICT model within an integrated arts-based knowledge translation framework. Combining DEPICT with integrated arts-based knowledge translation supported our team toward centering community voices to interrogate structural violence through trauma-informed artistic processes that encourage trust and healing with accessible, visceral, and targeted knowledge outcomes that spur action for community benefit. The resulting knowledge products are oriented towards mobilization in extra-academic settings with a focus on journalists as change-makers and community members as those most impacted. The barriers experienced included a misalignment between rigid institutional processes and emergent relational processes, and extensive financial and time demands. These barriers were met through relationships formed around the principles of community-engaged research, including relationships with supportive and flexible academic mentors with community- and arts-based practices, boundary-spanning community partners and advisors with knowledge of the academic environment, and reciprocal partnerships within the university environment. These findings may be particularly relevant to members of research ethics boards who are interested in supporting innovative research, emerging researchers and their mentors, established researchers embracing arts-based and community-engaged methods, and community partners who are interested in collaborating with academic institutions. Further, these findings may be of relevance for academic leaders and program directors who have the capacity to influence support structures that are available to graduate students and researchers who wish to engage with artistic and community-related work. For a grounded example, in pursuing this project, our team found that honoraria are considered an ineligible expense under the conditions of the institutional award meant to support graduate research activities in our faculty. While the Graduate Co-Lead was robustly supported in this project by an interdisciplinary and attentive supervisory committee and extended network of mentors, we acknowledge that not all students have this benefit. Without pathways to support the financial demands of arts-based and community-engaged research, understanding for the time commitment that is required to engage community and pursue artistic knowledge mobilization, and recognition of the time that goes into securing external grants to support community involvement and artistic knowledge translation, it is unlikely that projects that take seriously the role of community and art in research will be viable or sustainable.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental Material - Embedding the DEPICT Model Within an Integrated Arts-Based Knowledge Translation Framework: Exploring the Tensions and Benefits in Community-Engaged Graduate Public Health Research

Supplemental Material for Embedding the DEPICT Model Within an Integrated Arts-Based Knowledge Translation Framework: Exploring the Tensions and Benefits in Community-Engaged Graduate Public Health Research by Emily R. Blyth, Mo Korchinski, RSW, Samantha Young, BFA, Paola Ardiles, PhD, Krista Stelkia, PhD, Syrus Marcus Ware, PhD, Lyana Patrick, PhD in International Journal of Qualitative Methods.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, we acknowledge the members of our Community Research Team and staff members at Unlocking the Gates Services Society who were alongside us in this process. We are also indebted to our formal and informal project advisors, without whom the level of depth, respect, and reciprocity of this work would be greatly diminished.

ORCID iDs

Emily R. Blyth

Samantha Young

Paola Gamoa Ardiles

Krista Stelkia

Syrus Marcus Ware

Lyana Patrick

Ethical Considerations

Ethics approval was obtained from Simon Fraser University’s Office of Research Ethics on April 23, 2024 (study number: 30002358). An amendment was approved November 21, 2024.

Consent to Participate

Informed verbal consent was obtained from all Community Research Team members prior to the focus group and following the amendment. Ongoing consent was renewed verbally at the beginning of each meeting.

Consent for Publication

Consent for publication of our research process, outcomes, and photographed artworks was included in the consent to participate for the Community Research Team. All named artists consented to being identified in the research outcomes. Additionally, written consent for the named inclusion of the undergraduate artwork and consent for image inclusion from all of the artwork photographers has been obtained.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: We acknowledge the support of our funders: University of British Columbia’s Transformative Health and Justice Research Cluster and Office of Community Engagement, Simon Fraser University’s Faculty of Health Sciences and Community-Engaged Research Initiative, Michael Smith Health Researchers BC, and acknowledge that this article draws on research supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

References

Abo-Zena

M. M.

Jones

Mattis

(2022). Dismantling the master’s house: Decolonizing “Rigor” in psychological scholarship. Journal of Social Issues, 78(2), 298–319. https://doi.org/10.1111/josi.12519

About Gachet . (n.d.). Gallery Gachet. Retrieved November 1, 2025, from. https://gachet.org/about-gachet

Alang

McAlpine

McCreedy

Hardeman

(2017). Police Brutality and Black Health: Setting the Agenda for Public Health Scholars. American Journal of Public Health, 107(5), 662–665. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2017.303691

Ardiles

Damot

Azemoudeh

(2025). Digging in, Diving Deep: Community Engaged Learning and Teaching in Health Promotion through Equity-Centred Design. In Pederson

Lapalme

Frohlich

Ferlatte

Dupéré

(Eds.), Health Promotion in Canada, Fifth Edition. Towards a Well-Being Society in an Accelerating World: Canadian Scholars. (chapter 25).

Auger

(2021, July 13). More concern for the dog than for the human’s life that was lost. IndigiNews. https://indiginews.com/vancouver-island/jared-lowndes-killed-by-police-remembered-as-loving-uncle-father-friend

Ball

D. P.

(2021, July 13). Mother of Wet’suwet’en man killed by Campbell River RCMP seeks answers and an inquest. CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-mother-wetsuweten-man-shot-by-police-1.6098800

Baum

MacDougall

Smith

(2006). Participatory action research. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 60(10), 854–857. https://doi.org/10.1136/jech.2004.028662

Blyth

E. R.

Korchinski

(2024). CER & Public Art: Collaborations that Mobilize Community-Centered Knowledge. In Creative Approaches to Community-Engaged Research (pp. 16–20). Community Engaged Research Initiative. https://www.sfu.ca/content/dam/sfu/ceri/images/Archive/Publications/CERI-PUBLICATION-Final-shorter-Web-F2.pdf

Blyth

E. R.

Korchinski

Baryluk

J. D.

Lindgren

Mitchell

J. K.

Sinopoli

Thompson

(2025). Community Voices: A Public Primer on News Reporting on Police Violence. Community-Engaged Research Initiative, Simon Fraser University. https://www.sfu.ca/content/dam/sfu/ceri/images/Archive/Publications/2025-Publications/community-voices.pdf

10.

Braun

Clarke

(2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77–101. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa

11.

Braun

Clarke

(2021). One size fits all? What counts as quality practice in (reflexive) thematic analysis? Qualitative Research in Psychology, 18(3), 328–352. https://doi.org/10.1080/14780887.2020.1769238

12.

Brown

Timler

(2019). Work 2 Give: Fostering Collective Citizenship through Artistic and Healing Spaces for Indigenous Inmates and Communities in British Columbia. BC Studies: The British Columbian Quarterly, 202, 21–40. Article 202. https://doi.org/10.14288/bcs.v0i202.190439

13.

CBC News . (2021, July 8). One man, police dog dead following confrontation in Campbell River. CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/man-dead-campbell-river-1.6095406

14.

Coemans

Hannes

(2017). Researchers under the spell of the arts: Two decades of using arts-based methods in community-based inquiry with vulnerable populations. Educational Research Review, 22, 34–49. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2017.08.003

15.

Conrad

Sinner

(2015). Creating Together: Participatory, Community-Based, and Collaborative Arts Practices and Scholarship across Canada. Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press.

16.

Cooper

Moore

Gruskin

Krieger

(2004). Characterizing Perceived Police Violence: Implications for Public Health. American Journal of Public Health, 94(7), 1109–1118. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.94.7.1109

17.

CSDH . (2008). Closing the Gap In a Generation: Health Equity Through Action on the Social Determinants of Health (Final Report of the Commission on Social Determinants of Health.). World Health Organization. https://iris.who.int/server/api/core/bitstreams/cb08095c-55c8-484e-bff6-0e9c78fd38dd/content

18.

DeVylder

J. E.

Anglin

D. M.

Bowleg

Fedina

Link

B. G.

(2022). Police Violence and Public Health. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 18(1), 527–552. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-072720-020644

19.

Dowding

(2021). Trauma-Informed Social Research: A Practical Guide. Fulfilling Lives: Sout East Partnership. https://www.tnlcommunityfund.org.uk/media/insights/documents/Trauma-informed-social-research-A-practical-guide-2021.pdf?mtime=20220711144114&focal=none#:∼:text=Trauma%2Dinformed_practice_is_a,have_often_experienced_complex_trauma

20.

Fink-Mercier

Leblanc

M. L.

Noisette

O’Connor

Idrobo

Bélanger

Del Giorgio

P. A.

De Melo

Ehn

J. K.

Giroux

J.-F.

Gosselin

Leblon

Neumeier

Sorais

Humphries

M. M.

Peck

Davis

K. E.

Guzzi

Galindo

Kuzyk

Z. Z. A.

(2024). Cree-driven community-partnered research on coastal ecosystem change in subarctic Canada: A multiple knowledge approach. Arctic Science, 10(4), 731–748. as-2023-0061. https://doi.org/10.1139/as-2023-0061

21.

Flicker

Nixon

S. A.

(2015). The DEPICT model for participatory qualitative health promotion research analysis piloted in Canada, Zambia and South Africa. Health Promotion International, 30(3), 616–624. https://doi.org/10.1093/heapro/dat093

22.

Exeter

D. J.

Anderson

(2015). The politics of relative deprivation: A transdisciplinary social justice perspective. Social Science & Medicine, 133, 223–232. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.12.024

23.

Fullilove

M. T.

Cooper

H. L. F.

(2020). From Enforcers to Guardians: A Public Health Primer on Ending Police Violence. Johns Hopkins University Press. https://doi.org/10.1353/book.72591

24.

Gagnon

J. T.

Novotny

(2020). Revisiting Research as Care: A Call to Decolonize Narratives of Trauma. Rhetoric Review, 39(4), 486–501. https://doi.org/10.1080/07350198.2020.1805558

25.

Govender

(2021). Equity is safer: Human rights considerations for policing reform in British Columbia (p. 92). British Columbia’s Office of the Human Rights Commissioner. https://bchumanrights.ca/wp-content/uploads/BCOHRC_Nov2021_SCORPA_Equity-is-safer.pdf

26.

Grain

(2020). Community-Engaged Research Ethical Principles. Community Engaged Research Initiative, Simon Fraser University. https://www.sfu.ca/ceri/resources/ethics/cer-ethical-principles.html

27.

Haile

Rowell-Cunsolo

Hyacinthe

M.-F.

Alang

(2023). “We (still) charge genocide”: A systematic review and synthesis of the direct and indirect health consequences of police violence in the United States. Social Science & Medicine, 322, 115784. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2023.115784

28.

Herrick

Bell

(2020). Concepts, disciplines and politics: On ‘structural violence’ and the ‘social determinants of health. Critical Public Health, 32(3), 295–308. https://doi.org/10.1080/09581596.2020.1810637

29.

Hoffmann-Longtin

Kerr

A. M.

Shaunfield

Koenig

C. J.

Bylund

C. L.

Clayton

M. F.

(2022). Fostering Interdisciplinary Boundary Spanning in Health Communication: A Call for a Paradigm Shift. Health Communication, 37(5), 568–576. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2020.1857517

30.

Israel

B. A.

Eng

Schulz

A. J.

Parker

E. A.

(2005). Methods in Community-Based Participatory Research for Health. John Wiley & Sons.

31.

Jones

(2018). Commentary: 25 Years of Community Partnered Participatory Research. Ethnicity & Disease, 28(Suppl 2), 291–294. https://doi.org/10.18865/ed.28.S2.291

32.

Jull

Giles

Graham

I. D.

(2017). Community-based participatory research and integrated knowledge translation: Advancing the co-creation of knowledge. Implementation Science, 12(1), 150. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13012-017-0696-3

33.

Kanani

(2011). RACE AND MADNESS: LOCATING THE EXPERIENCES OF RACIALIZED PEOPLE WITH PSYCHIATRIC HISTORIES IN CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES. Critical Disability Discourses/Discours Critiques Dans Le Champ Du Handicap, 3, 1–14. https://cdd.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/cdd/article/view/31564

34.

Kouyoumdjian

F. G.

Wang

Mejia-Lancheros

Owusu-Bempah

Nisenbaum

O’Campo

Stergiopoulos

Hwang

S. W.

(2019). Interactions between Police and Persons Who Experience Homelessness and Mental Illness in Toronto, Canada: Findings from a Prospective Study. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 64(10), 718–725. https://doi.org/10.1177/0706743719861386

35.

Kukkonen

Cooper

(2019). An arts-based knowledge translation (ABKT) planning framework for researchers. Evidence & Policy, 15(2), 293–311. https://doi.org/10.1332/174426417X15006249072134

36.

Leavy

(2022). Research Design: Quantitative, Qualitative, Mixed Methods, Arts-Based, and Community-Based Participatory Research Approaches. Guilford Publications.

37.

LeFrançois

B. A.

Menzies

Reaume

(2013). Mad Matters: A Critical Reader in Canadian Mad Studies. Canadian Scholars’ Press.

38.

Loveless

(2019). How to Make Art at the End of the World: A Manifesto for Research-Creation. Duke University Press.

39.

Mahoney

(2023). A Field Guide to Public Policy Collage. Community-Engaged Research Initiative, Simon Fraser University. https://www.sfu.ca/content/dam/sfu/ceri/images/Archive/Publications/Public_Policy_2023.pdf

40.

Mahoney

Grain

Fraser

Wong

(2021). Community Resource Handbook [Zine]. Community-Engaged Research Initiative, Simon Fraser University.

41.

McGibbon

(2024). Structural Determinants of Health: Towards a Political Economy of Health Perspective for Nursing. Witness: The Canadian Journal of Critical Nursing Discourse, 6(1), 1–7. https://doi.org/10.25071/2291-5796.164

42.

Mueller

C. O.

Forber-Pratt

A. J.

Sriken

(2019). Disability: Missing from the Conversation of Violence. Journal of Social Issues, 75(3), 707–725. https://doi.org/10.1111/josi.12339

43.

Muhammad

Wallerstein

Sussman

A. L.

Avila

Belone

Duran

(2015). Reflections on Researcher Identity and Power: The Impact of Positionality on Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) Processes and Outcomes. Critical Sociology, 41(7–8), 1045–1063. https://doi.org/10.1177/0896920513516025

44.

Nonomura

Giesbrecht

Jivraj

Lapp

Bax

Jenney

Scott

Straatman

A.-L.

Baker

(2020). Toward A Trauma- And Violence-Informed Research Ethics Module: Considerations And Recommendations. https://kh-cdc.ca/en/resources/reports/Grey-Report---English.pdf

45.

O’Callaghan

(2023). Gatekeeping safe supply: A community-engaged qualitative study of the perspectives of people who use drugs and frontline workers on the barriers to access, uptake, and retention of prescribed safe supply. Simon Fraser University. https://summit.sfu.ca/item/38369

46.

Ontario Arts Council. (2016). Framing Community: A Community Engaged Arts Workbook. https://www.arts.on.ca/oac/media/oac/Publications/Framing-Community-A-Community-Engaged-Art-Workbook.pdf

47.

Owusu-Bempah

Wortley

(2013). Race, Crime, and Criminal Justice in Canada. Oxford Handbooks. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199859016.013.020

48.

Paris

Winn

M. T.

Tuck

Yang

K. W.

(2014). R-Words: Refusing Research. In Humanizing Research: Decolonizing Qualitative Inquiry with Youth and Communities (pp. 223–248). Sage Publications, Inc. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781544329611

49.

Pasternak

Walby

Stadnyk

(2022). Disarm, Defund, Dismantle: Police Abolition in Canada. Between the Lines.

50.

Salerno

A. C.

Schuller

R. A.

(2019). A mixed-methods study of police experiences of adults with autism spectrum disorder in Canada. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 64, 18–25. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijlp.2019.01.002

51.

Simckes

Willits

McFarland

Rowhani-Rahbar

Hajat

(2021). The adverse effects of policing on population health: A conceptual model. Social Science & Medicine, 281, Article 114103. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114103

52.

Singh

(2020, July 23). Deadly Force. CBC News. https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/features/2020/fatalpoliceencounters/

53.

Smith

Poyntz

S. R.

Johal

Kelly

Dooley

(2020). Whose Knowledge Is It? Community-centered approaches to research in practice at Simon Fraser University. Stanford Social Innovation Review. https://doi.org/10.48558/y00n-n292

54.

Stelkia

(2020). Police Brutality in Canada: A Symptom of Structural Racism and Colonial Violence (Vol. 4). Yellowhead Institute.

55.

Tracking (IN)Justice . (2024). Tracking (In)Justice: A Law Enforcement and Criminal Legal Data and Transparency Project. https://trackinginjustice.ca/

56.

Tuggle

A. C.

Crews

D. E.

(2023). Ethical Considerations in Population Health Research With Vulnerable Communities and the Added Value of Community-Engaged Methodology. Healthy Populations Journal, 3(1), 9–12. Article 1. https://doi.org/10.15273/hpj.v3i1.11481

57.

Vaughn

L. M.

Whetstone

Boards

Busch

M. D.

Magnusson

Määttä

(2018). Partnering with insiders: A review of peer models across community-engaged research, education and social care. Health & Social Care in the Community, 26(6), 769–786. https://doi.org/10.1111/hsc.12562

58.

Wortley

Owusu-Bempah

Laming

Henry

(2021). Police Use of Force in Canada: A Review of the Data, Expert Opinion, and the International Research Literature. Canadian Criminal Justice Association. https://www.ccja-acjp.ca/pub/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2021/08/Full-Report-PUF.pdf

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.48 MB