Doing it together, but in a queer way: joyful worldmaking with 2SLGBTQI + folks in Atlantic Canada

Abstract

This paper explores the joyful worldmaking that circulated between a group of 35 queer and trans adults and youth from across Atlantic Canada—New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador—who came together in February 2023 for a do-it-yourself (DIY) archiving and artmaking workshop on unceded and unsurrendered Wolastoqiyik territory in Fredericton, New Brunswick—as part of an ongoing participatory visual research initiative called Pride/Swell+. Exploring this worldmaking through frameworks of queer joy, we ask: How does worldmaking circulate within the Pride/Swell + workshop space and archives? Why is queer and trans worldmaking valuable to 2SLGBTQI + youth? What is the importance in remembering and archiving the things that queer and trans folks are doing to craft their everyday lives? Through DIY artmaking and participatory methodologies, we explore how Pride/Swell + fosters spaces for 2SLGBTQI + folks, including youth, to think about their lives and queer communities in celebratory and joyful ways. Ultimately, we argue that uplifting everyday moments of queer and trans worlds in our project promotes a more complicated and nuanced understanding of what it means to be 2SLGBTQI + in Atlantic Canada.

Keywords:

• Queer worldmaking
• queer and trans joy
• participatory visual research
• DIY queer artmaking
• art and activism

Disclosure statement

The authors declare there is no Complete of Interest at this study.

Additional information

Funding

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

Notes on contributors

Melissa Keehn

Melissa Keehn (she/her) is a lesbian, high school teacher, and graduate student at the University of New Brunswick. Her research engages sexuality education, queer joy, and participatory visual research for social change.

Casey Burkholder

Dr. Casey Burkholder (she/her) is a bi femme Associate Professor at the University of New Brunswick whose research sits at the intersection of resistance and activism, gender, sexuality, DIY media-making, art production, queer joy, and participatory archiving, Casey engages in research for social change through participatory visual approaches to local issues with youth and pre-service teachers.

Katie MacEntee

Dr. Katie MacEntee scholarship spans the areas of health and education with a focus on the use of participatory visual methodologies to study queer community-building, HIV and AIDS, sexual and reproductive health, gender-based violence, youth homelessness and inclusive education. She has worked internationally and in diverse rural and urban settings with youth and adults to explore these topics. She has a special interest in cellphilm method, which integrates mobile technology into participatory video-making. Using everyday technology and Do-It-Yourself techniques, these approaches leverage everyday media production practices for knowledge creation and mobilization.

Megan Hill

Megan Hill is a recent graduate from the Trent University master’s program in Canadian Studies and Indigenous Studies. Her research is at the intersections of queer theory, critical aging studies, and crip studies, and draws upon participatory arts-based methodologies. Megan lives in Tiohtià:ke and works as a research assistant for the Aging Activisms Collective and Pride/Swell+.

Aaron Beaumont

Aaron Beaumont (they/them) is a white settler living in Wolastokuk, the traditional and unceded territory of the Wolastoqiyik and Mi’kmaq peoples. Aaron is a queer and trans, fat, crip multi-disciplinary artist, research assistant, community organizer and aspiring art therapist attending Toronto Art Therapy Institute.

Symone Hunt

Symone Hunt (she/they) is a Two Spirit teacher from Newfoundland and Labrador. They have been a part of Pride/Swell+ since 2022.