Futures through Liberatory Methodologies, Restorative Working Space, and Relational Mentorship for Healthy Communities | Recreation and Leisure Studies

Supported by the EC3R Grant: Establishing Capacity, Connection and Collaboration for Early Career Researchers working at the intersection of the Arts, Humanities, and Health (University of Toronto)

This project involved facilitating a feminist community of relational support/restoration with emerging scholars (graduate students); all of whom identified as queer, of colour, or with a politic of radical care. Each had interests in engaging transformative justice and liberatory frames toward the reformation of social infrastructure for healthy communities.

The proposed project took place at a 3-day intensive writing-learning retreat. The aim was to engage graduate students in discussions on the following areas: mentorship on critical and liberatory qualitative methodologies, creating restorative writing/working spaces and relationships, and discussions about care for self as inquirers and community connectors. Our time will be structured around healthy meals and rest. We shared meals and cleaning responsibilities. Each day we had approx. 5.5 hours of writing/reading/mentorship time, approx. 1 hour of teaching-learning large group time focused on methodologies, and three meals with snacks.

Mentorship on critical and liberatory qualitative inquiry

Mentorship time for transformative justice projects that centre ethics, emphasize articulation of philosophical influences, and how to engage different media/methodologies. Mentorship involved discussions on dissertation/thesis project planning, manuscript and conference presentation mentorship, and/or how to build sustainable relationships in community. From discussions with graduate students, specific methodologies and methods from humanities of interest included archival research, art, collective memory work, walking and other mobile methodologies, non-representational methodologies, post-qualitative methods, or approaches to production pedagogies.

Restorative writing/working space

Secondly, we hoped to engage creating, practicing, and learning approaches from literature to working that are sustainable, humane, soul-full, care-full, and non-extractive (from ourselves and communities with whom we work). The attendees/mentors worked to address their respective research interests towards improving community health and well-being.

Care for self as inquirers and community connectors

A third aim was to create a coalition of students and mentors to support and celebrate work as a community of inquirers. We needed a space where we could resist and navigate intentionally away from burnout and moral residue from engagements in the neo-liberal academy. Specifically, we engaged one another in discussions about avoiding burnout and prioritizing health as queer, women/non-binary, first gen, ECR of colour interfacing with emotionally labourious research topics.

Mentor publication

Lopez, K. J., Leighton, J., Berbary, L. A., & Pirruccio, M. M. (2022). Relational mentorship for justice-oriented scholarship: space for care, reckoning, and supported discomfort. Leisure/Loisir, 47(1), 67–84. https://doi.org/10.1080/14927713.2022.2141834

Timeline

2023
1. Apr
  1. April 19-21
    
    Retreat to build coalition and cultivate/articulate a culture of relational mentorship and expectations for our relations
2. May
  1. May 15
    
    Develop plans for Spring work
3. Jun
  1. June 1 & 15
    
    Mentorship check in
4. Jul
  1. July 1 & 15
    
    Mentorship check in, collectively share progress with larger group for celebration
5. Sep
  1. September 15
    
    Mentorship check in, develop plans for Fall term and pursue funding/resources to sustain meet-ups

Inspiration

Barrie, H. (2020). No one is disposable: Towards feminist models of transformative justice. JL & Soc. Pol'y, 33, 65.

Berbary, L.A., & Mohamed, L.A. (2022). Longing as Method: A Rant on Yearnings for Our World, Academia, and Utopian Futurities Beyond Liberalism (s). Qualitative Inquiry, 10778004221111379.

Berbary, L.A. (2022). Theorypracticing differently: Re-Imagining the public, health, and social research. Leisure Sciences, 44(7), 906-914.

Hersey, T. (2022). Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto. Hachette UK.

Peers, D., Joseph, J., McGuire-Adams, T., Eales, L., Fawaz, N.V., Chen, C., ... & Kingsley, B. (2022). We become gardens: intersectional methodologies for mutual flourishing. Leisure/Loisir, 1-21.

Peña, L.G. (2022). Community as Rebellion: A Syllabus for Surviving Academia as a Woman of Color. Haymarket Books.