00:00
Fella Hadj Kaddour (FHK): Hi everyone and welcome to our podcast " En fleurs, plus en feu». My name is Fella Hadj Kaddour and I will be your host for today’s episode. "En fleurs, plus en feu" is a podcast that aims to put forward the work of the Promotion des Actrices Racisées en Recherche Partenariale project in Québec, the PARR Project. And now, today's episode.
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00:44
FHK: Before starting, I would like to acknowledge that we are gathered today on the unceded territory of the Kanien:keha'ka nation, here on turtle island. We liked, sorry, we would like to express our solidarity with Indigenous communities that are fighting for self-determination. Of course, we honor the traditional guardians of this territory. " En fleurs, plus en feu» is a project that aims to put forward the work of the Promotion des Actrices Racisées en Recherche Partenariale in Québec, the PARR Project. This project was born out of a realization: that the production of knowledge by Black, Indigenous and racialized women and non-binary folks is invisibilized and underrepresented. The goal of the PARR Project is to understand what these challenges are and put in practice strategies of collective and individual resistance, but also create self-care and personal fulfillment spaces.
Before entering into the heart of the matter, I would like to start with some definitions. When we talk about racialized women and non-binary folks in collaborative research, first, about non-binary folks. A non-binary person does not define their gender identity in exclusive binary frameworks that define men or women, and I quote: " non-binary people may feel themselves to be neither male nor female, both, or any combination of the two. Non-binarity includes identities related to gender fluidity. Non-binary people may identify as trans according to their self-identification". Also, when we talk about non-binary or racialized women, when we reference racialization, we are referring to the alteration process of individuals or groups of people according to their real or supposed origin, which proceeds to distinguish them as racially different. About collaborative research, or partnered research, it implies a lot of approaches, objectives, and practices in social sciences. Collaborative research involves a multitude of social actors, such as organization leaders, militants, civil servants, professionals in social intervention or pedagogy, with the purpose to ultimately reclaim any academic resources necessary to carry out research related to their concerns or practices.
Today we gather for our first episode, where we will address the genesis of the PARR Project, the " Promotion des Actrices Racisées en recherche partenariale", project, the challenges faced by this project, and all the steps involved for the project implementation. To this end, I have the pleasure to be accompanied by the PARR Project’s team. With us, Félicia Ça, researcher within the project. Hi Félicia.
03:36
Félicia Ça (FC): Hi!
FHK: Also with us, Saaz Taher, researcher within the project, hello Saaz.
Saaz Taher (ST): Hello Fella!
FHK: Maud Jean-Baptiste, coordinator of the PARR Project, hi.
Maud Jean-Baptiste (MJB) : Hi.
FHK: *laughing* and Ornella Tannous, sorry, community life and event coordinator, hello Ornella!
Ornella Tannous (OT): Hi Fella!
FHK: We welcome Alexandra Pierre, community-based worker, author, and the person at the origin of the conception of the PARR Project. Your presence here was important to discuss this, thank you for accepting the invitation.
Alexandra Pierre (AP): Thank you for the invitation!
04:13
FHK: Without further ado, we will start with the questions and enter the nitty-gritty. I will start by asking my first question to you Alexandra, the instigator of the project. Why this project, can you come back on the first reflexions that you had around this project?
AP: Well, this project was born in summer 2021. During this time, I was working at Relais-Femmes. Relais-Femmes was undergoing a process to integrate, in a more, let’s say systematic, intersectionality in all its practices, with all the challenges it brings. And I was also working on many projects, as is often the case at Relais. I was working on a project about the fight against racism in a feminist organization, I was also working on two other projects. One around intersectionality and its practical meaning in Québec, and the other one on obstetrical and gynecological health of Black women in Québec. And among all these projects, one of the concerns was that all of these issues were directly impacting racialized people, racialized women, racialized non-binary folks, also, but there were very few academic writings or just writings, that were mobilized in the various projects in which I participated. So, the observation is that I would be very surprised that racialized women and non-binary folks have not written anything, or not thought about that, but clearly, it is not visible, it is not mobilized, we don’t know where to find those references, or it’s difficult to find those references. So, there is this aspect of, well, are we looking the way we should be looking? There’s this aspect, but there was clearly the aspect of the invisibilization, so it gave me the idea to submit this project, and as is often the case in community organization, there was a call for projects, and we had this reflection, that was not at all complete, that was still in the works, plus a call for projects where we could get money. So, we submitted a project with Relais-Femmes. One of my colleagues with whom I was working a lot, Josiane Maheu, contributed a lot too, so this is how these reflections were born, simultaneously in community settings and in research.
FHK: Ok so, this was for the question about the reflection around the project. So, the first steps were really to respond to the call for projects, what were the other steps of the implementation of the project?
07:26
AP: Well, the first steps were to get money, obviously. Afterwards, there was a whole reflection on recruitment. Who, how do we recruit. In the recruitment, we tried to have practices that were coherent with the project. We also put in place a committee, you will help me, I don’t remember…an advisor committee, yes that’s it. An advisor committee to help us in the recruitment process, but also in the process of refining the ideation of the project. A committee composed of women, there were no non-binary people, but women both in academic and community settings, that had a certain sensibility to epistemic injustice issues and the way that knowledge, people’s knowledge, racialized women and non-binary people, were welcomed both in academic and community settings.
FHK: Thank you, Alexandra. We will come back to the definition of epistemic injustice for our audience. I would like to come back to… First, the project focuses on the experience of women and non-binary folks in research settings, so academic research, but also in community settings. What are the issues that they experience in these settings? Did you find commonalities or differences in terms of experience?
AP: Well, the starting point was to say that they were not visible, so these people were not visible. Clearly, there was an issue, about this absence of visibility, particularly in Quebec, where racialized people represent 10% of the population. In Montreal it is almost 33% of the population by sight, we were reading the texts, interventions, all the research we could find on these topics and just in research, collaborative research, we could not see it. So, it was the starting point; afterwards, for the research, we found a lot of other things…
FC: Yes, and even before the research; in fact, I remember that in spring then summer 2022, we were asking ourselves these types of questions, as in, who are we including in this research? Racialized women, Black women, non-binary folks? Can we talk about non-binary people, if we ourselves are not non-binary? It was part of our questioning. Are we also considering Indigenous women, non-binary indigenous people? Are we considering people that are broadly doing research, not just collaborative research? So, there were a lot of questions about that, precisely, to what extent after, when we put all these results together, can we make analyses to compare these different groups? It is different realities for different racialization, or different gender identities, so in the end, how can we compare all that, if we include all these profiles. That was a lot in our questioning.
After, in the research, in the research and then in other PARR events, so BIPOC days, Cohort days, the Forum, we saw that the sampling we had, so women and non-binary racialized people, had a lot of realities in common, so a lot of things that Saaz and I heard in our interviews or in the focus groups came back in the events. So, at this moment, it was like a sort of validation of the choices that were made in the beginning. About the challenges mentioned in the research, Saaz, I suppose you can complete, but what Alexandra mentioned about invisibilization, tokenization, it came back a lot, both in community and academic settings. So…yeah, issues regarding the timeline also, as we well know, since we just finished a research project. In the beginning, you have a schedule, and you end up with billions of unexpected events, but at the same time, you have your money, your funding for a fixed time, so how can you navigate all that to meet all the deadlines and everything that comes with it. And in collaborative research there’s this challenge about the fact that the community and academic sector do not have the same challenges in terms of time…So…Where the academic is more pressed to publish, the community sector wants tangible results, immediately, to cope with different challenges that they live in their everyday lives.
12:36
ST: Yes absolutely, and I would say, in the continuity of what Felicia just said, it’s that also that one of the major differences was the question of the resources, in both academic and community settings. What really stands out as a major difference is that in the community sector, there is a lack of human but also financial resources, to have the time and the luxury to carry out projects. And we are always in this race, because our needs are different, whereas here, the money goes in research projects, the funds are mostly in the universities.
FHK: So, we understand that this project answers the needs of people, well, racialized women and non-binary folks. Alexandra, you were also talking about epistemic injustices so is it…I know it is a little bit at the core of your reflection. Can you come back to that, what does epistemic injustice mean?
ST: Yes, I can begin with the first reflection. At the root, it is a concept that was founded by an American philosopher, Miranda Fricker, but it must always be reminded that it is a concept that poses a problem, because it overlaps the question of silencing, invisibilization of voices, experiences and contributions of people according to their social setting. This whole question of silencing was developed well before Miranda Fricker, by Black activists and researchers. And then, by racialized and decolonial researchers and activities. So, yeah, it is an important point to mention. But so, the concept of epistemic injustice, or epistemic violence, this idea to understand that these are situations in which the testimonies of people are not sufficiently believed or understood, based on biases that we have, because we associated them to a special social setting, that is not dominant in the society. So women, racialized people, sexual minorities, etc., are people that are going to endure epistemic injustice in society, and we focused on how it more specifically materializes in the research sector.
FHK: And in the sector of collaborative research, how does this materialize, are there any specific issues ?
FC : Well first of all I think that there might be two aspects, specifically for the PARR Project. First, who are we talking about, racialized women and non-binary folks. Like Saaz said, since they are from marginalized communities, they are most likely to be victims of epistemic injustice. Collaborative research also unites two worlds together, so community and academic. At this level, to what extent the voices of the community are heard by the academic sector, which has more resources like Saaz was saying earlier. So, there are these two portraits in which we can clearly witness epistemic injustice.
FHK: More marked in the community sector?
FC: Well according to our research and our results, testimonials coming from the community sector repeatedly mention that they feel that they are not really understood or heard by the academic sector. Several issues come into play, linguistic issues for example. If the community we try to talk to speaks English, but the university with which the project is associated speaks French, how can they understand each other? Not all universities or all projects are making the effort to try to really understand what’s being communicated by the community sector. Or the importance of the community sector in the research project. Do we just take what we need, so extractivist patterns of the academic sector, take what we need and then goodbye community, we got what we wanted; or is it really a partnership with both sectors? So yeah, I’d say that there were a lot of issues at that level that came out.
17:09
FHK: Okay thank you. Alexandra, you wanted to add something.
AP: No, well it was more on the origins or the start...
FHK: Yes yes.
AP: ..of the project. What I found interesting is that...Often, in research projects, is to start with a hypothesis and then having it confirmed or not. But it is clear that at the beginning, when I wanted to develop this project, it is because I was talking with other researchers, non-binary people in research that were telling me, they were expressing some of the results of the research, but at the beginning it was also this perception, this feeling that your knowledge, your expertise, how you phrase things, are perceived unfavorably, but they are also copied and co-opted. And I thought it made a good connection with Miranda, I don’t even remember…Miranda Fricker? who puts into place, develops this concept of epistemic injustice, but who, I don’t remember her approach, if she acknowledges it or not, but who ends up using the knowledge of Black women to develop her own knowledge, and its aura too. I think that this is mirroring what I was hearing, which made me want to develop this project.
FHK: Thank you. And so about...I understand what you are saying Félicia, about the issues between the academic and the community sector. Are there any issues specific to collaborative research, sorry, epistemic injustices. So, less in comparison, but more specifically on collaborative research.
FC: Well, I am comparing them because it is the type of collaboration that we analyzed in the project. But I would add something that I did not say earlier, that is related to publications, who contributes to publishings and who participates in what will come out of the research; it is also an issue that is very linked to collaborative research because we have a lot of partners from different sectors. If all the writing portion is done at the university, to what extent do we have a say in that, do we contribute to how things are formulated. So that is maybe an issue that I did not name, Saaz I don’t know if…
ST: One of the issues that is coming out of…and, it seems to me, was at the core of collaborative research between academic and community sectors, it’s the question of the relation and how we take time to build relations between us, people that are doing the research, and people that are research subjects. And so, that is something that really came out as problematic, that rekindles the gap between academia and the community, because given what we were saying earlier, since the temporality is different, at the academic level we have very tight deadlines. It raises a challenge when we study the realities of populations that we are not familiar with, and so, there’s this denunciation, this criticism to academic researchers who don’t take the time to build relationships. It reproduces these instrumentalization practices, to co-opt the knowledge, and once the research is over, there’s no follow-up, no feedback, no long-term relationship is being built.
AP : One thing, in my opinion, that is specific to collaborative research when we talk about epistemic injustices, is the discrepancy between the intentions and the reality. In other words, collaborative research is supposed to be collaborative, more horizontal, very close to the realities of various groups in Quebec, community groups that are, that should, pretend to act with the “by/for/with”. So, when we talk about collaborative research and we think about epistemic injustice, we realize that this “by/for/with” approach, and this idea of horizontal collaboration poses a problem, especially for racialized women and non-binary folks, because they are, because we are not in the “by/for/with”, clearly.
22:15
FHK: Thank you very much. To continue with the origins of the project, what obstacles did you come up against when you started thinking about it and implementing the first steps?
AP: Well the obstacles...They were more challenges, let’s say. There was a challenge around the reflection, around the place of Indigenous people. Did we have the legitimacy, or not, to include them in the sample we wanted to work with. We thought a lot about that, with all kinds of back and forth, so we decided to work and try to maintain relations with them, to work with them if they wanted to, and if it’s part of their priorities because that was also an issue, to work with people and groups rather than completely including them in our sample. It was one of the challenges and reflections that was a bit continuous. Another challenge was the place of this project at Relais-Femmes. Relais-Femme is a feminist organization that is mainly white, so since the beginning, the idea was to say, we start this project, and I think everyone around this table agreed that ideally, this project should not be at Relais-Femmes. But considering the resource gaps between minority and majority groups, we are in this situation, so how can we benefit from the work of our allies? Concretely, the idea was that this project would be autonomous at Relais. But concretely, in real life, especially when we mention financial means, types of work, this notion gets complicated quickly…Yeah, this was a challenge.
FHK: Within the project too, you have chosen a target audience, so racialized women and non-binary folks. So why did you make this decision and was it important to think about a project by and for Black people and racialized non-binary people, and can you explain the approach.
AP: At the beginning, the idea was to really work on the intersection of gender and race. So yeah, that is a simple answer. It included the question of cisgender women, but also gender, more broadly. So, we wanted to include non-binary people.
25:36
FHK: One of the conditions of the PARR Project was to have a team entirely composed of racialized and Black women and non-binary people. Can you explain this process?
AP: I will try something, and then I will let my colleagues answer. But yes, the idea was really to be "by/for/with", a project "by/for/with", so all the different steps, the advising committee, different committees…different ethical committees, the whole project, we wanted to center them. Afterwards, the question of non-binary people throughout the process, we did not necessarily succeed to have in each committee, or at every stage, but it was really the goal.
FC: I would add that it is also part of the questionings in Spring 2022. To begin with, racialized and Black women in collaborative research are very niche, and then we add non-binary people… and you know, even in the advisory committee or initial advisor, there were no non-binary people, so we were asking ourselves: are we capable of recruiting enough non-binary people in the project to say that we included them ? Are we repeating what we are trying to denounce in terms of tokenization and all that, so it was also part of the questions we had at the beginning. And then we said to ourselves, let’s give it a try, and if no one participates, it’s going to be one of the limits of our research. But this is definitely part of our questioning when we say that we do "by, for and with", and then there’s a group that we don’t necessarily see, it is definitely part of our initial questions.
FHK: I want to talk about the reflection, the first steps of implementation. My next question would be about the fact that the research was done in a community organization, outside of any university authority. So, I would like to hear from you on that choice.
FC: I can start, and then Alex you could continue. I think that the conversation about that, when I was part of the team, really started when we started discussing ethical concerns. I know that we will come back to that later, but in our advisor committee, we have a lot, well maybe 2 or 3 members of academia who were suggesting we go through them in order to attempt the university ethical process. And then we questioned ourselves a lot about that too, trying to stay true to our initial idea and our mission, and to not be too affected by academic biases that we do not control. And then, if it’s the PARR team leading the project, but it is…I don’t know, the university, UQAM for example, imposing ethical restrictions on us or whatever, how capable we are to remain independent. So, the question of independence all along the project, I knew that it is something that stayed. We talked about epistemic injustice earlier too, and there was that issue. We are in community organizing, we have a vision. If we include academia in that vision, how capable are we of maintainning that vision? So, that was part of our preliminary conversations.
29:24
AP: Absolutely. It was an autonomy issue, but also, like you said, epistemic injustice, in the sense that why should we put ourselves in an ethical academic process that will judge the value of the knowledge that we put forward, our practices. So for us, it was really important to try – it wasn’t easy -, trying to have a real ethical concern, that was closer to the community organizing and feminist networks that we knew, and that demonstrated multiple times that they could do research, even if their practices and the purposes are different from the academic sector.
FHK: So, you were talking about the question of independence and autonomy, including ethical concerns. Could you maybe come back on that, more specifically, how did you develop your ethical reflection for the PARR Project?
FC: Maybe I could begin. During Spring 2022, we were already questioning ourselves on ethical concerns. Then, we had our first data collection. We had an ad-hoc committee early June, to whom we asked questions about ethical concerns. So, what were their thoughts, what we should…Should we turn to academia because in the advisory committee, we had multiple suggestions leaning that way, or should we create something ourselves. The members of the ad-hoc committee were very excited about us creating something, but there was time…So, we mentioned it earlier, with COVID, the project started later than we expected. So, there was this situation; how can we fit an ethical committee when the goal was that in July, we would start interviewing people. It doesn’t give much time, a month, to try and organize an ethical framework, do an ethical evaluation, create an ethical committee, and yeah, we decided to do it. Maud, I don’t know if you want to elaborate…
31:46
MJB: So, we had that idea that we wanted an ethical community committee outside of academia. Because we had a project “by/for/with”, there were two things. First, some of us are part of the studied community, so we had access to some networks that we wanted, which can sometimes be seen as far too biased for it to be scientific research or whatever, so there was this thing. There was also the fact that the evaluation from academic ethical committees focuses more on the protection of individuals, but when we are in the “by/for/with” approach with racialized communities, it is necessary to take the racialized community in its entirety, because when there’s risks, when there’s…. how do they call that in ethical academic evaluations…individual risks are not just individual risks. There’s also a committee that can suffer, especially when it’s already marginalized in society.
FHK: Very interesting your reflection on an independent ethical committee. How does your research fit into the landscape of partnership research? Is there a lot of research being done with a “by/for/with” approach for example? Where do you fit in?
AP: Me, I think that it’s groundbreaking *laugh*, but I am completely objective. *laugh*
ST: No well, it’s that there aren’t enough projects yet that adopt this kind of approach while focusing on these research topics. At the core of this methodological framework, well the goal behind it, or at the least the objective, is to see the social world, to see topics that surround us with humility. And to say to ourselves that the experiences, the realities to which we have access in life are the ones we should in principle be capable of working on, on which we should be able to collaborate.
MJB: What needs to be specified is that collaborative research, or “by/for/with” research, did not start with us. I think that at the present time, and with Relais-Femme’s reputation, we have visibility with this research. And then because for one, we have access to Relais-Femmes’ visibility who conducts research and has much larger distribution channels, but also funding. I’m convinced that there were other researches like ours, but that they did not necessarily get the funding, or the money, or the visibility to put the research on the map. So, it is also that, to put all of that forward, and to not…We do not pretend that we invented everything and that we are the first project to do that. It is important to mention it.
35:08
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35:16
FHK: We return for the second part of our podcast with Alexandra, Félicia, Maud and Ornella. We will focus on the community action component. Multiple community events took place. Can you talk about each of these events, Félicia mentioned some earlier, can you talk about it more precisely.
OT: Yes of course. So, we had a research portion, that was important, but above all that, there was also this question of making tangible all that was collected, to share and broadcast the results. That is how we thought about organizing a three-day forum, in April 2023. We started with a conference from Marie DaSylva. We had this idea when we attended an Harambec event, before it was called the Harambec Collective. So, we were at this anti-conference hosted by Marie DaSylva. Maud and I looked at each other, and we said: this is what we want, this is what we need, because the format allowed a lot of people to share and interact, but there was also that thing of hearing other people’s testimonials and thinking "ah! But that’s what I’ve been through!". To hear solutions suggested to other people and to realize that there’s a part of these solutions that could be applied to ourselves, to our issues. Marie DaSylva is the founder of Nkaliworks, an agency that specializes in supporting racialized women in the workplace. She addresses everything that is impostor syndrome, assertiveness problems and recognizing your own worth. Personally, she is someone that was referred to me when I first burned-out in 2016, but to whom I couldn’t have access to because she was in France. We thought that it wasn’t that much of a bad idea to make her presence accessible in Quebec, especially when we talk about the living experiences and challenges of racialized people, women, and non-binary folks in collaborative research. Her presence was more than important. We reached out to her, she agreed, we were very happy! And that is how we started to plan the forum.
Not only did she host the conference, but that was open to all racialized people from all genders doing collaborative research in Quebec. Then, we offered two days of activities, still with her, but also other activities. We thought about art-therapy, because we were asking participants to the forum to open up. To co-create sharing spaces, communities of practice, but before that, you need to be comfortable to let your guard down, so we can open up a little and listen to what is going on around us. That’s how the forum was created. So, how can we make sure that people feel safe, that they feel supported, listened to, and valued. That their living experiences are taken into consideration, and that concrete and tangible solutions were offered to them.
We talked about power dynamics, we talked about living experiences, but we mostly co-created and shared strategies. We also offered all kinds of activities, art-therapy, workshops, sound therapy, and we also had a DJ, for the fun side, to free ourselves physically. All that was good for the conference, and for the workshops and the forum, but there were so many strategies collected in the research that was done by Saaz and Félicia. In the forum, there were also subjects and themes that came out, like tokenization, or how can we make sure that we are carrying out or participating in a good collaborative research. It gave us the idea to create a PARR Cohort, for people that attended the forum, that we continued to support. And this cohort, we offered two days of workshops in Fall 2023 to address the issues and realities around tokenization, and develop strong practices in collaborative research, concrete strategies that were co-created and supported. So, there were people that were supported by people that are…I don’t like that word, experts, but that had some knowledge in these themes. We wanted to offer concrete and practical solutions, like how to write an intellectual property agreement that looks like me, how can we, quote unquote, benefit from tokenization, how to not internalize it. They shouldn’t crush us, but sometimes some situations are difficult to avoid, especially tokenization. So, also accepting that it will happen. But how can I protect myself, my community, how can I use it.
So here are the workshops that were offered. And then, we needed to share the results of our research to other BIPOC communities and provide a space where these communities could share their strategies. Because there’s individual strategies, community strategies, but it would be practical to share these strategies in-between communities. That is why we created the BIPOC days, with the last one happening this week. It’s a day of presenting the results of panels and workshops, to co-create and share strategies and lived experiences. We really insist on the possibility of proposing safe and non-mixed spaces for reflection and sharing.
41:51
FC: I would also add...I like what Ornella says about concrete solutions and strategies. Something that came back often from the participants in our research, like we mentioned earlier, is that "oh, well, we participate in a project, and we never hear of it again". Well, the forum, BIPOC days, cohort days, they were all events where we came across people who took part in the interviews, the first ad-hoc advisory committee, focus groups… It was cool for the participants to see their criticisms answered in concrete terms, to have access to the aftermath of a project like PARR.
OT: I would like to talk about an event that is coming for Spring 2024. We had a lot of, quote-unquote, communities of practice, validation between the communities and their work, but we also think that it is important to get together and recharge our batteries. So, not only meet to complain, to put it crudely, but also meet to share good memories. In that optic, we are organizing a retreat in Spring 2024, where we won’t work. We will relax, we will rest, we will acknowledge each other ourselves, and we will acknowledge that it is in fact important that we rest, since rest in community is important.
FHK: Without a productivity target.
OT: Without a productivity target, exactly.
43:23
FHK : Ok, that is super interesting. So, on the research front and then on the community action front, several projects have been set up, notably to disseminate knowledge. A card’s deck has been created to gather the resistance strategies that were collected during the activities you were talking about, Ornella. Can you tell me more about this deck project?
MJB: Yes, we call that a deck, because apparently it is known here. But in a nutshell, it is a deck of cards, to self-learn, on various themes. Most of the time, it is things linked with meditation, self-care and whatever, and then we said to ourselves that it would be nice to adopt it and put it in practice for our target population. And then, seeing all the strategies we gathered from the forum, there was always a type of hunger to have more, because these are spaces that we’re not accustomed to, that we need. So, what we will do, thanks to the cohort and the forum, is to have really precise axes of situations that we would like to collect and put in practice, so that someone in a situation could draw the cards. Well, draw the cards, not like, but you know, draw cards in the card deck. They will be sorted by themes like tokenization and self-care. So for example, if I, Maud Jean-Baptiste, find myself in a tokenization situation, I can take the deck and go in the relevant chapter and read all the strategies that were shared in the cohort and BIPOC days, in Saaz and Félicia’s research, to see what is possible on an individual, community, and even intercommunity level as we also had our BIPOC days.
OT : No but that’s it. The idea is to have an accessible tool. Because a deck of cards, we draw, well we don’t draw cards like tarot cards, but it is strongly inspired by that too. There are so many strategies that were shared, we know that people won’t necessarily remember exactly everything that has been said, even if they were present during our events, even if they know. It happens to everyone to freeze in situations, for example, of tokenization. But to know that we have a tool like this at our fingertips, we breathe a little bit and *floup*! You can draw a card, read it, remember, and put it into practice. It’s easy like that. The idea is also to make the strategies we collected accessible, and we will do it through the deck of cards as well.
MJB: And this deck of cards will be handed over, because again, we have this dynamic of giving back during our last event in March 2024, to people that took their time and energy to testify, to participate in our co-creating activities. During the retreat, we want to give them the paper version, even if we hope that it will be available online, well…wherever it’s going to be, it will be available for other people that are conducting research, not just collaborative research, but always racialised folks..Well, these strategies are not only specific to… Because it is also the, how can I say it, the benefit of a project like that, it is not specific to racialized women and non-binary folks doing collaborative research. It is also valuable for community organizers, members of academia, professors, whatever. But of course, it is aimed at racialized people.
FHK: There is also another project, we’re in the thick of it, the podcast. Why was it important to you to use this broadcast channel which includes both sound and video ?
MJB: Well, once again, the podcast, because in projects like this, there is always the evaluation report submitted to the donor… We thought that it could be a good opportunity, even if the first episode is different from the others, because we needed to explain the origins of the project, why the podcast, etc… So yeah, that’s it, but the rest of the episodes are focusing on the feedback of the people who participated in our events, Cohort and BIPOC days, about their lived experiences, but by themes. So, I am giving examples like that, I don’t have them all in mind, but why was it important for them to be in non-mixed spaces to share their lived experiences of violence in X or Y spaces. Also, what solidarity bridges can be created between Indigenous, Black and racialized people, because we also had our BIPOC days. So yeah, to bring this to life, not only for the donor, but for all the people involved, and I will not repeat myself because I think because by now everyone knows that we say, "racialized non-binary folk in collaborative research are our target audience".
And then have access to people that have experienced the project, because once again, the PARR Project is not only research, but also community organizing. So that the efforts we've made in terms of community organization can be seen from the experience of the people who took part in it, so that we can, that's it, have their experience on it, and then why not, that's it, more collective avenues of reflection for other kinds of projects, because once again, it's not just one project. We do not aim to be THE reference for collaborative research with racialized people and bla bla bla. There are a lot of people that did a lot of things. It’s also a way of adding a small stone to the edifice, leading to further conversations.
I also want to add, because it’s also from Sonia, Sonia Alimi, about the visual aspect, because the podcast could have been only audio. But we told ourselves that there are not a lot of spaces where it’s possible to see racialized people testifying about their work, their expertise, their experience… There are a lot of obstacles for us there, so, to be able to personify through the visual, record the podcast, it’s also to make our experiences alive and that’s it. So, I give back to Sonia what belongs to Sonia.
FHK: Thanks to Sonia Alimi. Yes, to finally showcase your work too, which looks…Well, you’ve been working hard since the beginning of the project, congratulations to you all!
PARR team: Thank you.
51:32
FHK: Thank you all for listening to this episode. Thanks also to our guest for this wonderful exchange, and I speak on the behalf of the PARR Project who would like to thank all the people involved in the project, without whom this podcast would not have been possible. At every stage of the PARR Project’s activities, they have done a remarkable job of supporting and bringing their experiences and expertise to a significant number of Indigenous, Black and racialized women and non-binary people. As for us, we’ll be seeing you in a future episode, very soon!
**music**
THE END