Reimagining Livelihoods is an outreach project that shares results from community-engaged research on different forms of livelihoods and how they shape the experiences of diverse people in Canada and around the world. The Reimagining Livelihoods project has two main components: a livelihoods forum and a multimedia platform.
The Reimagining Livelihoods Forum, held August 23–24, 2023, was designed with accessibility, inclusion, and community engagement in mind. An organizing committee made up of community and academic partners guided its development. The overall goal of the Forum was to share, discuss, and engage with diverse perspectives, experiences, and knowledges about livelihoods.
The Forum solicited proposals that addressed three themes: (1) Exploring different forms and dimensions of livelihoods, including labour, employment, and livelihoods; parenting and livelihoods; graduate and mature students’ experiences of livelihoods; well-being in and outside of institutional and formal work spaces; and material and non-material barriers to well-being; (2) Using an intersectional livelihoods approach to understand topics including influences of social contexts on livelihood choices; tensions around family support; in-person and online social networks; intersections of culture, race, ethnicity, and accessibility; health and disability; poverty, precarity, and homelessness; age and aging processes; gender and sexuality; gender-based violence; education and training; and thinking through ways of making a living beyond paid employment; and (3) Reimagining livelihoods through asking how we can live and work well despite existing crises (e.g., growing economic inequality, climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic); identifying and challenging power dynamics; creating new common grounds for building solidarity and resistance; and generating space and opportunities for creativity, care, and fulfilment within our homes, communities, and institutions.
The two-day Reimagining Livelihoods Forum was a hybrid event, with in-person components taking place at 10 Carden Shared Space, 42 Carden St., in Guelph, ON. The program consisted of 18 sessions provided by over 35 presenters, both online and in-person. The event was attended by 38 people in-person and 46 online.
Sessions included numerous presentations, three workshops, a panel, and an art display from LWWRC’s Art in a Just Recovery project. Organizations represented a broad range of interests and focus on livelihoods, including Sustainable Livelihoods Canada; DAWN-RAFH Canada; t6talk Spinal Cord Injury, The Sexuality and Access Project 2023; Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work (CCRW); Peel Institute of Research and Training—Family Services of Peel; and the Ministry of People Empowerment and Elder Affairs, Government of Barbados.
Researchers who presented their work on a variety of life and livelihood topics were from the University of Guelph; Wilfrid Laurier University; University of Toronto Scarborough; University of Toronto Mississauga; University of Ottawa; University of British Columbia; Northern New Mexico College; University of Groningen, the Netherlands; and University of Cape Town, South Africa.
The second component of the project, a multimedia platform, is in the planning stages, to be co-created by project partners and hosted by LWWRC to share the presentations, insights, and other outcomes of the forum in creative ways as well as to provide opportunities for ongoing engagement, contributions, and learning about livelihoods, and to serve as a resource for community leaders and decision-makers to support education, advocacy, and policy work.