Urgent! From the Day in the Life Photography and Story Collective
Nancy Viva Davis Halifax is an interdisciplinary researcher, scholar and artist. Her work is located at the intersection of the arts (broadly conceived), the body, healthcare, and the ordinary places of daily living in the context of urban communities.
She completed her Post-doctoral Fellowship Innovations in Cancer Education, Using Drama, Storytelling and the Arts for Information Dissemination on the Internet working with people with colon cancer using documentary methods in the development of textual and photographic expressions related to the cultures of disability and illness challenging both medical and popular representations of the stigmatized body. This work shares a place of being and body not in accord with dominant medical, social and cultural discourses.
She completed her Post-doctoral Fellowship Innovations in Cancer Education, Using Drama, Storytelling and the Arts for Information Dissemination on the Internet working with people with colon cancer using documentary methods in the development of textual and photographic expressions related to the cultures of disability and illness challenging both medical and popular representations of the stigmatized body. This work shares a place of being and body not in accord with dominant medical, social and cultural discourses.
Nancy Viva Davis Halifax held conversations with
people living with colorectal cancer, interviewing them and asking them to represent their experiences through journal writing and photography. What they revealed is represented on
the website "Things That Matter" http://www.storiesthatmatter.com/ This web site is in the form of creative non-fiction and photographs. The stories are built on the experiences, photographs and language of the participants.
Nancy Viva Davis Halifax was also Principal Investigator on the Wellesley Central Urban Health Enabling Grant A day in the life: Photovoice and the social determinants of health, partnering with Street Health Community Nursing Foundation. Together they engaged in a community based research inquiry supporting a research agenda identified by a community of underhoused and homeless individuals. Through their inquiry they documented three social determinants of health: poverty, social exclusion and the lack of secure housing. This research resonated with her Post-doctoral work as she continued with her determined grace to work with vulnerable communities, translating knowledge using photodocumentary and narrative methods.
Source: Centre for Global EHealth Innovation
Visit website "Stories That Matter"
Visit blog site by Nancy Davis Halifax, Anagraphia/Photography and Story
http://anagraphia.blogspot.com/index.html
What dreams appear here?
"I took down Urgent on Friday night. Wrapped it up. Literally. Looked over the comments and began to think about how we provide space for stories that are "out of place" in the larger social and cultural memories of a citizenry. Each of the photographs shows place in a way that disrupts central concepts of its daily use.These forgotten people - but how can we forget people who are in plain sight? How are we able to construct an account of life that leaves them out of any rights-based sociey where social justice matters? How have we forgotten their belonging? Their place?In this photograph a person re-creates their nightly ritual of going to sleep with a blanket, by taking off their shoes and carefully placing them by their side for the night. This space feels too open for my personal safety, yet it was chosen deliberately because it is safe. And I wonder what dreams appear here?"
Nancy Viva Davis Halifax, read more at blog http://anagraphia.blogspot.com/index.html
Read about Urgent! and see photos from The Day in the Life Photography and
Story Collective, from Reconstruction Studies in Contemporary Culture Realistic Possibilities of Passing Interest, Nancy Viva Davis Halifax, Fred Yurichuk http://reconstruction.eserver.org/071/halifaxyurichuk.shtml
Read Report "Failing the Homeless Barriers
in the Ontario Disability Support Program
for Homeless People With Disabilities"
http://www.streethealth.ca/Downloads/FailSum.pdf
Info. about Photovoice http://www.photovoice.com/
We featured a story about Nancy
in our June 06 issue of the CCAHTE Journal
"Honouring the Creative Arts in Life and in Practice"
access full June issue as well as recent and archived
issues free by subscribing with an
email "please subscribe" to ccahte@cmclean.com
And this news just in from Rebecca Fortin by way of Sandra Knol HCTP, University of Toronto
Students Use Photography and Blogging to
Raise Awareness about Young Parents/homelessness
"With my summer placement at Toronto Public Health, I am working on a
project called: I WAS HERE. This project puts digital cameras and
online blogging into the hands of young parents, who are experiencing
homelessness. I have just met all of the artists on Friday and they
are some of the strongest, most beautiful, and talented women you
could ever meet. This project has also produced a "declaration of
needs" and has received overwhelming attention from the City of Toronto.
There is an opening reception for the I WAS HERE exhibit at the
National Film Board this Thurs. at 6:00 pm (150 John Street). I will
be there, and I would love for you all to hear about the project first
hand. If you cant make it the photos will be exhibited for the entire
month of May as part of the Contact Festival."
Rebecca Fortin
See video Filmmaker in Residence NFB
http://www.nfb.ca/filmmakerinresidence
http://www.nfb.ca/filmmakerinresidence/blog/?page_id=9
See info about "I Was Here"
