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By Tara Sharpe
 Ken Josephson of UVic’s geography department (on ladder) and Maeve Lydon of UVic’s OCBR (in white shirt holding map) visited Havana, Cuba, in July 2006 to assist members of a community mapping and health project. Community or green mapping provides a vivid and culturally textured map of an area, city or region. These maps have been created all over the world, including for UVic, and the topic itself was well represented at CUexpo 2008 with various presentations by UVic, European and Latin American delegates. Credit: Mapa Verde, Cuba The University of Victoria was the site of a major international gathering last month, thanks to a prodigious effort on the part of numerous organizers including the team led by UVic’s Office of Community-Based Research (OCBR).
CUexpo 2008 took place at UVic from May 4–7 and was the largest assembly of university- and community-based researchers in Canadian history. Over 500 delegates from more than a dozen countries including India, Cuba, Turkey, the US, the UK, Belgium and Sweden were on campus taking part in roundtable discussions, poster exhibits, workshops and presentations as well as off-site walking tours and field trips.
Community-based research (CBR) is literally rooted in communities: research stems from projects being carried out collaboratively on the front lines of social, economic and environmental activism to influence positive change locally, nationally and globally. CUexpo 2008 was a natural expression of this in its stimulation of new ideas, sharing of struggles and successes, and fostering of existing collaborations that inspire action-oriented solutions.
The range of topics covered at CUexpo 2008 reflected the immensity and importance of the issues explored by CBR, including workshops or presentations related to low-cost housing solutions across Canada, restoring troubled neighbourhoods in North America and building a community-based online atlas of cultural narratives by youth and elders of Arctic Bay, Nunavut.
Launched in June 2007, UVic’s OCBR acts as a catalyst for such projects. The OCBR’s activities to date have included the creation of a six-part symposium series on CBR with Aboriginal communities; assistance with the production of UVic’s first Community Green Map; development of a UVic CBR database directory; support for the establishment of a UVic working group on housing and homelessness; assisting with the launch of a new e-journal on community-engaged research (www.manifestationjournal.org), and leading the creation of the Pan-Canadian Network for Community-Based Research. The OCBR also hosted the Science and Civic Engagement Symposium at CUexpo 2008 which brought together researchers and leaders of the European Science Shop Movement, an initiative first established in the 1970s in The Netherlands to link science and technology with non-profit organizations and other community-driven agencies.
A tangible example of UVic’s involvement in CBR rolled out at a skateboard park on the northern tip of Vancouver Island several years ago. In 2005, Anne Marshall (educational psychology and leadership studies) began a SSHRC-funded research study of transitions experienced by youth in coastal communities.
Along with other aspects of the study, she and her team have been researching how the establishment of the Port Hardy Skate Park helped skaters face local social and economic challenges.
“The skateboard park is a positive inspirational story and a great example of the community-based approach,” says Marshall. “You don’t just walk in as the expert. The communities are the keepers of expertise and experience.”
She adds that funding is one of the toughest issues for CBR, as travel expenses and time commitments associated with these types of projects can be quite high. The skateboard park project was presented as a poster exhibit at CUexpo 2008.
Another UVic example of CBR is the “Aboriginal Perspectives and Issues of Cultural Diversity” project presented at CUexpo 2008. UVic assistant professor Sandrina de Finney (child and youth care) and the Surrounded by Cedars Child and Family Services agency are developing an adoptions model for Victoria’s urban, off-reserve communities. It is meant to address the issue of high numbers of Aboriginal children being placed in non-Aboriginal homes.
CanAssist, a non-profit program for devising innovative technology and mobility solutions for persons with disabilities, was another UVic highlight at CUexpo 2008 and is profiled on page 3 of The Ring.
In the background of CUexpo 2008, a social media experiment offered an array of networking tools and treats to CUexpo 2008 participants. A Facebook profile was set up in advance to get the online chat started and to connect participants with discussions, photographs, videos and more.
A dedicated CUexpo 2008 weblog continued the conversation in blog format, and interviews with CUexpo 2008 participants are available on YouTube through a link on the blog site.
“Social networking online is clearly an important part of the way we now communicate,” says UVic Web Initiatives Officer Robin Sutherland (UVic Communications) who oversaw the CUexpo 2008 social media experiment. “It was a very good fit with a conference on networking universities and communities and has preserved many of the voices and perspectives that were important here. We are strongly encouraging others to explore this way of collaborating publicly and sharing their expertise with their communities.”
The imprint left by CUexpo 2008, embedded within the experience of its participants and on the pages of the social networking pages, will serve as a legacy of knowledge and insight that can be taken back to communities and enhance programs that flow from the invigorating and invaluable research of civic engagement.
See related article "Q & A with Budd Hall".
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