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Live Work Well Research Centre, News that Nourishes, Issue 2, Spring 2019

Dear <<First Name>>,

Welcome to the Spring 2019 issue of News that Nourishes, a quarterly newsletter from the Live Work Well Research Centre, located within the College of Social and Applied Human Sciences at the University of Guelph! 

This newsletter begins with just a few of the important questions that are on our minds, are reflected in our research, and are at the heart of action we believe is essential to create and strengthen families and communities that flourish: 

  • What does living and working well mean to your family and community, and to families near and far, in all their diversity?
  • What might the impact on families, communities and our living environment be if we related more deeply with our food and the land on which it is grown? 
  • What are some of the diverse ways we can think about well-being and how it is measured? 
  • How are caring relationships supported, encouraged and strengthened?

These questions, and the discussions that followed, were front and centre at the Families in Canada Conference, a gathering in March of community members, researchers and practitioners, co-hosted by the Live Work Well Research Centre and the Vanier Institute of the Family. We are excited to share details of this conference with you, along with the many other activities that the Centre has undertaken and has planned in the next few months.

We hope you do find our News Nourishing, and if you do, please share it widely. We look forward to receiving your feedback, suggestions and updates!

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Families in Canada Conference 2019


On March 27 & 28, 2019 the Live Work Well Research Centre co-hosted the Families in Canada Conference 2019 with the Vanier Institute of the Family. This was truly a pan-Canadian conference with delegates in Ottawa along with several other satellite conference locations across the country, including the Live Work Well Research Centre at the University of Guelph. Satellite conference locations co-hosted local events and discussions, and then joined together via livestream to hear keynote speakers and panel discussions from Ottawa.

In Guelph, the Live Work Well Research Centre gathered local community members, researchers and practitioners to discuss opportunities and challenges for families today across four broad themes: well-being and families; work and families; care and families; and food and families. We are excited to share a few photos and reflections from our panel discussions below. Read the full report and see additional photographs (below) of our time together.
Deborah Stienstra, opening the Conference with a few remarks to panelists and attendees
Dr Deborah Stienstra, Director, Live Work Well Research Centre and Jarislowsky Chair in Families and Work.
Our discussions were thoughtful and brought diverse perspectives and experiences. Together, our panelists and conference attendees drew connections across panels, reinforcing how care is often articulated through food and meal-sharing, and reflected the diverse ways that families are formed. Family is how we each uniquely define it, and the well-being of family is complex and nuanced. Our policies must reflect those nuances.
- Deborah Stienstra, Director, Live Work Well Research Centre

Well-being and Families Panel

Panel Background: Community well-being depends on the well-being of its families, but it is not always clear what well-being is, or what it feels and looks like to diverse forms of families. Additionally, policies and systems that affect families and their well-being are often based on statistical data, which can erase and/or hide the unique and diverse experiences of families.
Rohan Thompson, Sarah Haanstra and Ruth Cameron, panelists who are chatting after the well-being and families panel
Left to right: Rohan Thompson, Sarah Haanstra and Ruth Cameron.
We need to ask, Who is around the table to interpret [well being] data? And importantly, who decides what problem we are trying to solve? How do we share power? When sharing power, we need to remember I don't want to come to dinner, I want to plan the grocery list. 
- Rohan Thompson, Panelist
Leah Levac, who was a panelist on the well-being and families panel
Too few community investments have long-term views of economic and social well-being. We are always in a perpetual cycle of short-term projects.
- Leah Levac, Panelist
 
An image of the full group of panelists on the well-being and families panel
Left to right: Carol Dauda, Ruth Cameron, Rohan Thompson, Leah Levac, Sarah Haanstra.

Work and Families Panel

Panel Background: Diverse forms of livelihood, through paid work, providing care, volunteering, community gardening, agriculture, artistry, trading or bartering, and fishing, among other types, provide families and communities with capabilities, assets and activities required to sustain life. Diverse forms of livelihood, and the relationships they often support, also provide important protection against stress and shock during unforeseen social or economic challenges. Livelihood participation depends on the degree to which opportunities are accessible and available to diverse ways of being for individuals and families.
An image of the full group of panelists on the work and families panel
Left to right: Ruth Neustifter, Thomas Sasso, Tammy C. Yates, Roz Vincent-Haven and Skylar Sookpaiboon.
 
Tammy C. Yates, panelist on the work and families panel
Researchers and practitioners need a shared language to learn from one another. Otherwise there is a risk of alienating individuals and making the research work inaccessible. Shared language requires cohesive, national working definitions of concepts like disability, work, and family.
 
- Tammy C. Yates, Panelist
Thomas Sasso, panelist


There is recognition that true diversity and inclusion at work requires understanding how people feel at work:

Do they feel heard? Do they feel welcome?

- Thomas Sasso, Panelist

Care and Families Panel

Panel Background: Most Canadians provide and/or receive care at some point in their life. Relationships are at the heart of care-providing and receiving. Caring relationships are complex and unique to diverse families. They are affected by regional, social and economic locations, among other often intersecting situations of race, class, family type among others. These relationships are often left out of or made invisible by policy and decision-makers at all levels of government.
Abbigail Wright-Gourlay, a panelist on the care and families panel, shown laughing
Left to right: Abbigail Wright-Gourlay and Sue Bhella

When it comes to caring relationships, community supports are essential; they shape families. There can be issues related to 'ageing out' for those of us who are young and in care-giving or care-receiving roles. We need to make sure supports are there at all ages.
- Abbigail Wright-Gourlay, Panelist
 
Image of all panelists on the care and families panel
Left to right: Fitsum Areguy, Kim Wilson, Andrew Wright-Gourlay, Abbigail Wright-Gourlay, Sue Bhella and John Beaton.
Sue Bhella, panelist on the care and families panel
We can't make assumptions about care. We don't always know who the carer is; it may not be a biological family member. Sometimes this makes it difficult to access services.
- Sue Bhella, Panelist

Food and Families Panel

Panel Background: While food is a foundation to physical health, it also nourishes and strengthens bonds within and between families, communities and living environments, contributing to well-being. The recent release of Canada’s 2019 Food Guide highlights that cultures and food traditions are part of healthy eating; however, inequities among and across families and communities raise questions about access and food stability.
Gail Hoekstra, panelist on the food and families panel, with Jess Haines in the background, who moderated the discussions.
Left to right: Jess Haines and Gail Hoekstra.

Food and friendship form strong bonds. These bonds have a way to push thinking outside the box. To help us understand how we make food accessible for all. And, when we build these relationships, we can more easily see where people are, and realize we don't need to teach people about food. They already have knowledge. Our focus ought to be on building community and making food truly accessible for all.
- Gail Hoekstra, Panelist 
Andrew Judge, panelist on the food and families panel, along with Andrea Reed, panelist.
Left to right: Andrea Reed and Andrew Judge.

Disrupting food systems starts with our own hearts. It requires us to examine how we think about food; the relationships we have with food. We are taught how to keep a home with pristine grass, but what about creating foodscapes in our own backyard? We build parks with baseball diamonds and acres of grass, but what about designing these spaces as complete food systems, as places of gathering, learning and nutrients?

- Andrew Judge, Panelist
Word cloud representing answers to the question, In one word, what does family mean to you?
When community members, panelists and attendees registered for the Guelph satellite Families in Canada Conference 2019, they were asked, In one word, what does family mean to you? This word cloud reflects their answers. The most common five answers were:

Family is...
  1. Love
  2. Everything
  3. Chosen
  4. Care
  5. Support

Around the Centre

Canning a beautiful harvest
Photo credit: Hannah Tait-Neufeld


Indigenous Researchers Plant Seeds of Hope for Health and Climate

The relationship between Indigenous peoples and the land encourages practices and traditions that perpetuate healthy families and communities. Brittany Luby, Kim Anderson, and Hannah Tait-Neufeld, in collaboration with other Indigenous faculty, students and a growing urban network, are working to expand gardens in the wider Grand River Territory and the University of Guelph — on the ancestral lands of the Attawandaron people and the treaty lands and Territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit. They are collaborating to strengthen land-based relationships and local food sovereignty. 

Using food as a starting point for action, they launched a community-based research program to promote conversations and opportunities across geographic and social spaces that forge and rekindle relationships. While this work is rooted in relationships, it also involves hands-on labour, both of which are critical to Indigenous teaching. With Indigenous community partners, Brittany Luby, Kim Anderson, and Hannah Tait-Neufeld engage social science, nutrition and engineering students in hands-on work in Indigenous food and medicine gardens and in wild rice fields.

"It’s the land that brings us together, the land that teaches relationship-based ways of knowing about the natural world and its food systems. With the increasing uptake of post-secondary land-based education, we may just change the way upcoming generations envision our environment and shape the future that unfolds on it." Learn more about how Indigenous land-based learning offers hope and pathways for action to address climate change!

Kim Anderson and Hannah Tait-Neufeld are Centre members and lead our "All My Relations": Indigenous Ways of Knowing research cluster. 

 



On the Move!

The Live Work Well Research Centre is home to students, staff, community members and researchers. We value the contributions and creativity of all those who join in our work and our mission to anticipate and respond to the changing needs of families, work and well-being in all their diverse forms.

This spring we celebrate and thank Shauna Sanvido and Fitsum Areguy, students whose energy, enthusiasm and commitment greatly expanded the capacity of the Centre. Their achievements are considerable: research assistance, knowledge mobilization, inclusive events planning and training, and out-of-the-box thinking that ensured the Centre was always moving forward in its goals. We are grateful for your lasting contributions and wish you well in all your future endeavours!

The Centre will soon be welcoming a Research and Knowledge Mobilization Manager - a new role for the Centre. And, at the same time, Tara Sutton will be transitioning out of her role as Managing Director. Tara began as a graduate student at the Live Work Well Research Centre and quickly became part of its fabric. Having graduated, Tara stayed on, contributing to the Centre's re-visioning, embodying its values and pursuing its new vision with creative energy and passion. We wish her every success!

 

Research Spotlight


Combining Feminist Intersectional and Community Engaged Research 


Drawing on a four-year community-university research collaboration called ‘Changing public services: Women and intersectional analysis’, Leah Levac and Ann B. Denis' recent article explores the importance of using feminist intersectional and community-engaged research frameworks and methodologies when undertaking secondary data analyses.

They discuss the use of these methods across all stages of design and analysis, highlighting the importance of language throughout the process. Their use of feminist intersectional and community-engaged methods – including prioritizing community benefit and self-reflection – revealed gaps in the data.

Levac and Denis' work reinforces the imperative to use feminist intersectional frameworks when completing secondary data analyses, but also highlights some of the challenges. For example, variables within these datasets are dichotomised into narrow categories, which is problematic. Too often the data we collect makes different experiences within and beyond these narrow categories invisible.

Read the full article in International Journal of Community Research and Engagement, an open access journal.



Strengthening Impact Assessments for Indigenous Women


Leah Levac and Deborah Stienstra, co-leads of the Displacements, Emergence and Change research cluster at the Live Work Well Research Centre, have contributed to a recently released report that considers how the implementation of new environmental impact assessment legislation can better engage with Indigenous women.

The report, entitled Strengthening Impact Assessments for Indigenous Women, provides guidance for implementing new requirements in the Government of Canada’s proposed Impact Assessment Act. Research highlights that there are some positive, but largely negative, social, economic, health and cultural impacts of resource development projects for Indigenous women. 

The report uses in-depth case studies to provided evidence of some of the negative impacts of resource development and presents six core elements that should be part of every stage of the Impact Assessment process in the future:
  1. Recognize, Value and Incorporate Indigenous Knowledges
  2. Recognize and Value the Expertise of Indigenous Women
  3. Conduct GBA+ Analyses [gender-based plus analyses]
  4. Include the Diversity of Indigenous Women
  5. Provide Resources so Indigenous Women can Engage in Impact Assessment Processes
  6. Recognize Resistance 
Read the full Strengthening Impact Assessments for Indigenous Women Report.

Upcoming Events


Accessibility Conference

May 28th and 29th, 2019 | University of Guelph

Ensuring that Ontario reaches its goal of full accessibility and inclusion for people with disabilities will require a dedicated, informed and resourceful community of supporters and advocates. The Accessibility Conference is a yearly event hosted at the University of Guelph to bring together experts to share best practices, knowledge, and research. The conference brings together traditional and non-traditional ways of teaching and learning to talk about the AODA legislation, and other issues surrounding diversity and inclusion. To keep up to date on the latest news join the Accessibility Conference Contact List.


Sexuality Conference

June 20th to 21st, 2019 | University of Guelph

The Guelph Sexuality Conference is recognized as Canada's leading, annual training and education forum for sexual health professionalsIt provides opportunities to share information, research, skills, experiences, programming, and strategies that include an anti-oppression framework to foster health and wellness, and resists shame. 

Call for Submissions

Societies Special Issue


Special Issue:
Families, Work
and Well-being

Deadline: June 15, 2019
 
Call for manuscript submissions for a special issue exploring the interconnections between and among diverse forms of families, challenges as a result of changing forms of work and livelihoods, and how these affect individual’s, families’ and communities’ well-being.

This special issue, edited by The Live Work Well Research Centre's Director, Deborah Stienstra, invites authors to begin from the perspectives of those who have often been at the margins in discussions of families and work.

This special issue is now open for submissions. Manuscripts should be submitted online at the Societies Special Issues website.

Workshop & Paper Proposal


Universal Vulnerability and the Politics of Public Health
Deadline: May 17, 2019
 
Call for papers to consider the limits inherent in dividing humanity into populations and drawing categories of difference that often also signal "deficiencies." A workshop - especially interested in expanding concepts that have emerged from disability scholarship, such as accommodation and universal design - will be hosted by the University of Lund, Sweden, September 19-20, 2019

Deadline to submit proposals is May 17, 2019. Learn more about the workshop and proposal submissions
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liveworkwell@uoguelph.ca

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Live Work Well Research Centre · 50 Stone Road East · MacKinnon Building, Room 501 · Guelph, Ontario N1G 2W1 · Canada

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