“Storytelling Trans Futures: Facing Crisis and Dreaming Thrivance with Digital Worlds” was a qualitative, community and arts-based research project that used film to co-imagine possible futures for Two-Spirit, transgender, nonbinary, and gender non-conforming (2TNG) people in Alberta.
Project Overview
The Storytelling Trans Futures project assembled a group of ten Two-Spirit, transgender, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming (2TNG) Albertans to co-imagine possible trans futures when confronting difficult social issues such as COVID-19, climate crisis, war, and acute moments of colonial and racialized violence. Through a series of workshops and individual support sessions, our 2TNG participants produced 8 multimedia films, each their own creative reflection on trans thriving. The facilitation team guided participants through each stage of the process, and was also made up of majority trans and diversely identified researchers. This project was in partnership with ReVision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice at the University of Guelph. ReVision is a cutting-edge arts methodology lab that uses story to facilitate meaningful conversations about systemic injustice.
The team worked closely with 10 participants, who learned technical skills to execute their digital story, including filming, sound, and video editing. The project ended with a private group screening, where we collaboratively envisioned trans futures.
The research design sought to amplify the experiences of individuals who carry diverse marginalized identities, including those who are Indigenous, Black, People of Colour, disabled and neurodivergent people, intersex people, sex workers, working class, poor, houseless, precariously housed people, and individuals who live rurally.
These outputs did not require researcher interpretation, data analysis, or academic publication to be valuable. They stand on their own and have been circulated widely in various digital realms and shared within Albertan 2TNG community, close kinship networks, and even simply kept as a private testimonial.
This project was in partnership with ReVision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice at the University of Guelph and supported through a Partnership Development Grant with the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). We also received valuable support from the GROWW Patient Engagement Supplement Grant, with the full grant awarded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). The Athabasca University research centre provided resources with the IDEA Lab Grant and the AVPR Special Research Opportunities Fund.
The findings from this project were presented at several conferences, including “philoSOPHIA: Feminist Making, Doing, and Sensing” (2024), “Women and Gender Studies et Recherches Feministes Annual Conference, Congress” (2023), and the “Faculty of Humanities and Social Science Research Talks” (2023).
Author: Phantasma
Author: L
Author: Natal Rox
Author: Bailey
Author: Vic
Author: Jade A.
Author: Jack
While the 2021 “Transgender Mental Health during COVID-19” interview-based research captured 2TNG Alberta’s use of digital worlds for resilience and survival during the pandemic, this storytelling project took a step further by co-creating transformative 2TNG digital worlds. To support this work, I successfully applied for an AU IDEA Lab grant. My research assistant undertook a cloud training for the use of emergent technologies in design and digital research. The remainder of my SSHRC funding will assist in the development of an accessible, interactive website to further disseminate the Trans Futures stories and provide a digital home for the TransLab, which is a research cluster I am establishing at AU. A trans-storytelling methodologies publication is underway. The findings from this project have thus far been presented at philoSOPHIA: Feminist Making, Doing, and Sensing (2024), Women and Gender Studies et Recherches Feministes Annual Conference, Congress (2023), and for my AU colleagues at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Science Research Talks (2023). This research project was supported by several successful internal and external grants, including:
Pending
The research team for this project was made up of Dr. Tobias Wiggins (he/him) Principle Investigator; Dr. Melissa Jay (she/her) Collaborator and storytelling facilitator; and Juliana Kaneda (they/them) Research Assistant and storytelling facilitator. We also worked closely with staff at ReVision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice, including several additional storytelling facilitators and artists. Carla Rice was the Principle Investigator for “Stretching our Stories: Digital World-making in Trouble Times,” the SSHRC Partnership Development Grant that funded this project. We want to thank Elder Blue Waters for opening our workshop space, and the team at the Transgender Achieves (University of Victoria) – including Dr. Aaron Devor (Chair in Transgender Studies) and Michael Radmacher – for providing inspiration with trans archival histories.
This research was generously supported by a SSHRC Partnership Development Grant; a GROWW Patient Engagement Supplement Subgrant, with the full grant awarded by Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR); and the Athabasca University Research Center with an “IDEA Lab Grant.”