This is a community-based research project using staged photography exploring how women and transwomen who are homeless and marginally housed build support networks with each other in order to survive. The research team collected data and identified key themes that were then explored in an art making process with other women/transwomen at drop-in centres across the city. The project set out to learn the following: How do women/transwomen form and use friend (social support) networks?; What is the impact of differences among women/transwomen (e.g., Aboriginal heritage, immigration status, drug use) on women’s membership in informal support networks?; How can social services assist women in enhancing these friend networks?; What do homeless women envision safe and appropriate housing to look like? Emerging themes were explored through participatory-action research involving service users, as a way of potentially bridging gaps between formal and informal supports and challenging existing perceptions of homeless women as “victims” with no apparent strengths or agency. This project integrates a community-based participatory research approach using the grounded theory method and an Arts-Based approach determined by the Advisory Committee and Peer Researchers.

For more information on an Arts-Based aproach to community-based participatory research visit The Arts and Social Work Research Initiative (ASWRI) [0], Faculty of Social Work, U of T.

The researchers at ASWRI have also provided us with posters of the Advanced Research Report, Coming Together: Homeless Women, Social Support and Housing [0], please download and distribute:
Courage through Friendships [1]
Strength and Healing through Helping [2]
Surviving Addictions [3]
Home Should be Safe and Fun [4]