Cultivating Care-Full Futures Research Program
The Cultivating Care-Full Futures Research Program website is a space for sharing events, scholarship, and other works co-produced by Kimberly J. Lopez. With co-researchers, investigators, and community partners, this research program aims to facilitate efforts toward: body-care labour praxis, bodymind restoration, and alternative kinship formations.
Email us at cfutures@uwaterloo.ca for more information.
Ginhawa: /ɡinˈhawa/ [ɡɪn̪ˈha.wɐ] (Baybayin spelling ᜄᜒᜈ᜔ᜑᜏ) According to , “Ginhawa is a Filipino concept originates from the Visayan language that signifies breath, life, ease, and well-being, encompassing physical, social, emotional, and spiritual aspects”. While there is no direct English translation for Ginhawa, it is described and embodied by Filipinx peoples as the ease of breathing, wholeness, wellness, prosperity, peace, comfort, freedom, and “life itself” (Salazar). Towards ginhawa, a series of gatherings will be organized for bodymind reprieve to recuperate from the demands of capitalism. Events will be offered when funding and facilitators are available, so may fluctuate over time. Please visit this home page for details on upcoming offerings.
The Towards Free-from-Harm Care Labour Project is supported by a team of scholars, stakeholders, and community members working together to improve labour experiences of long-term care (LTC) staff in direct resident care across Ontario LTC homes. In collaboration with LTC homes across Ontario, we work to make LTC more supportive, inclusive, equity-oriented, and safe with input from individuals working as care partners.
Individuals through their labouring bodies tell corporeal stories of invisibility and marginalisation, from intricate, complex, intersectional oppressions of racialising, gendering, and classing in settings of care. The purpose of this study was to reveal genderacialisation and to: (1) understand how it works to structure narratives of PSW care in Canada and (2) create hopeful change-spaces with PSWs.
Cultivating Care-Full Futures: Projects
This collection of projects aims to facilitate individual and community well-being through understanding and enacting caring, resting labouring bodies, imaginings of post-work, and affirming needs for relief, ease, and liberation. The links below reflect collaboratively planned and implemented research initiatives/events. Each offering is supported by a different collection of individuals. Click on any of the projects below to learn more. If you would like to share an idea for an event, please feel free to contact Kimberly Lopez.
Artist statement
Cultivating Care breathes with the rhythm of Ginhawa, a Visayan concept embodying breath, life, ease, and well-being. In this work, breath becomes both liberation and connection: the air that flows through care labourers, healers, and dreamers across geographies as they make roots in new homes. Layered linework, water, nature and hands weave together scenes of labour and rest. A bird exhales flowery energy over sprouting rice, nourishment in shared communion with a kitten at rest who purrs and sends waves of healing vibrations. Ripples extend from a paper boat echoing migrations movement while a raised fist blooms beneath a radiant sun. Tea steams beside an open book, a hammock, and a window filled with flora that becomes a portal to restoration.
The design honours the labouring body and its need for reprieve, the invisible gestures of care that sustain life beyond productivity. Drawing from diasporic produce - cotton, pineapple, gingko, banana, and rice - each element speaks to abundance, kinship, and the right to rest through adversity. Cultivating Care envisions home not as a structure, but as a sensation of warmth, nourishment, and breath shared between bodies. It invites us to imagine futures built through care-full reciprocity where healing is collective, rest is radical, and every inhale is an act of resistance.
Meet the artist
Jasmine Vanstone is a Jamaican-Canadian multidisciplinary artist and arts facilitator who inspires, impacts, and amplifies marginalized voices through arts mentorship, community arts programming, and public art. In her artistic practice, she experiments with various mediums -primarily collage, murals, poetry and paper crafts- to share visual reflections of identity, wellness, and the natural environment with deeper interests in food sovereignty.
Jasmine’s artistic journey began with a BFA in Visual Art and a Certificate in Cultural and Artistic Practice for Social and Environmental Justice from York University. After interning at North York Arts, she pursued Arts Management at Centennial College. Her talent, along with the power of mentorship, has earned her awards and features at Nuit Blanche, TOAF, KUUMBA, DesignTO, YZD, Finch Station, and Pearson Airport. Most recently, Jasmine was awarded the JAYU Arts For Human Rights Award and co-founded Verse & Visual Expressions to amplify equity-deserving artists in their interdisciplinary creative collaborations across poetry and visual art.