They were taken in Hai Phong, Vietnam, by youth participating in a month-long photovoice project facilitated by UofL students and faculty. The youth, aged 12-19 years old, have all lost parents to an HIV epidemic in Hai Phong. The project used photography and different forms of storytelling to help them explore themes they identified in their lives.Ìę

“What was interesting to me was that we covered so many heavy subjects, but what showed through was the youth’s ideas related to their bright futures, social change and pride in what they and their families have been through and what Hai Phong has been through,” said Lesley Harris, assistant professor at the Kent School of Social Work.

Harris worked with community organizations serving grandparents and youth affected by HIV in Hai Phong10 years ago through the nonprofits Save the Children and the HIV and Health Care Support Centre (HHCSC).

Hai Phong, a port city with a seafaring economy, is located in a high traffic area for opioids moving from Middle Eastern to Asian markets. The influx of drugs resulted in an HIV epidemic that has left a large generation of orphans.

Harris wanted to serve that population again, many of the children now grown into adolescents, using photovoice, a participatory research methodology designed to empower small groups through photography and storytelling.

She teamed up with Marion Hambrick, associate professor in the College of łÉÈËֱȄ and Human Development, and Kyoungmee “Kate” Byun, who was a professor of interior design at Hite Art Institute, but now teaches at Northern Arizona University.

The trio was awarded a grant from UofL’s Cooperative Consortium for Transdisciplinary Social Justice Research.   

Last summer, they mounted a month-long camp for 25 kids in Hai Phong focusing on positive youth development. Four graduate students assisted: Rebecka Bloomer, Sara Williams, Doroty Sato and Victory Osezua. The photovoice project was a large component of the camp.Ìę

“It became a much larger project than we anticipated,” Harris said. “But it was very worthwhile. Beyond research and program development, it was bringing something to the community that was needed and appreciated and gave the kids a program to be a part of for the month of July,” Harris said.

In the mornings, the team led activities in team building, goal setting and creative expression, which were informed by the youth development work of Williams and Bloomer, social work doctoral students. As the day progressed, the group focused on photovoice.

“We started with an introduction: What is photovoice, how you take and edit photos. We addressed safety, physical and emotional safety. Participants need to ask themselves, are you ready to revisit this place, or this difficult subject matter within your life?” Harris said.  

Pictures emerged from their everyday world, some of them gritty, real examples of the social ills their community and family faces, like bottles of booze in an alley or lines of powder on a mirror. Others are more introspective, like a girl’s down cast face and a picture of a toy.Ìę

The group discussed the photos and journaled about them. Together, they decided they ultimately wanted to use them to create educational videos and campaigns for residents of their city.

“Classically photovoice projects engage political leaders and people of influence, but that’s not really possible in Vietnam,” Harris said, as the country is communist. “We had to allow them to lead with what they wanted, and what is possible and safe within their cultural context.”

Byun curated the photos and narratives for the exhibition on display at Hite through Feb. 6 called, “.”

Byun plans to mount the show again at the Asia Institute-Crane House in Old Louisville and at a gallery in South Korea, further exploring the design and presentation of the exhibition.

Chloe Scoggins and Laura Coleman, both seniors in interior design at UofL, are now working with Byun on a research paper born of the project: “Does the Physical Setting of an Exhibition Affect Audiences’ Understanding of Narratives?” The team has been invited to present that work at the Environmental Design Research Association conference this April in Tempe, Arizona.

“” is free and open to the public 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday through Feb. 6 in Hite’s Schneider Hall galleries.

The day-camp students, who just completed fifth grade at three Jefferson County elementary schools, will apply their technical skills in workshops on this year’s theme, “Me in the Making.” The doctoral program in rhetoric and composition in the College of Arts and Sciences offers the free camp for students chosen from Lincoln Elementary Performing Arts School, Cochran Elementary School and J.B. Atkinson Academy for Excellence.

The campers will work on a “photovoice” project by setting up photograph scenes and then writing accompanying narratives to show through image and text what it means to be a girl in their community. The girls also will use Snapchat, collaborate on team movie projects and explore Speed Art Museum’s Art Sparks area.

Camp leaders are four UofL graduate students from diverse fields of study working with English professor Mary P. Sheridan to design, teach, operate and evaluate the camp; learn about meaningful team-teaching with technology; and later publish journal articles and share their research results. This year’s leaders are from rhetoric and composition, public health, exercise physiology and women’s and gender studies/social work.

Begun in 2014, the academy is designed to increase the girls’ problem-solving and storytelling confidence and technological competence as they learn to be producers as well as consumers. Their team-produced movies and individual photovoice projects will be shown in a public showcase that concludes the camp. Students will receive iPod Touch devices to keep; the work also is intended to help combat the oft-cited summer slide in reading and writing skills, especially in transitioning to middle school.

The two entities are working together to design, create and implement a Center for Art + Health Innovation within the CIK to help Louisville become a national thought leader and training site for the improvement of community health through art.

“One of the greatest challenges in public health is authentically connecting with communities, as well as communicating effectively,” said Monica Wendel, DrPH, MA, director of the Commonwealth Institute of Kentucky and associate dean for Public Health Practice at the UofL School of Public Health and Information Sciences. “Our best science is relatively useless if we can’t make it accessible and actionable for people. Arts and culture provide us with the language necessary to foster mutual understanding.”

“We believe artists are a catalytic force who shape and influence our cultural, political and economic environments,” said Theo Edmonds, co-founder of IDEAS xLab. “They have the ability to make new options visible, and with the right training and support, can (re)introduce humanity into policy discussions and shift how community members define and advocate for their health and well-being.”

is IDEAS xLab’s signature project, and uses arts and cultural engagement to help communities discover creative ways to identify their health priorities and develop a health equity action plan for sustainable impact.

Edmonds says although data suggests that arts and culture influence population health, an evidence-based model is needed, and CIK researchers will be important collaborators in the process.

Last year, the CIK and IDEAS xLab partnered to launch a photovoice exhibit at the

. The project featured photographs and written observations of West Louisville residents, and set the stage for community conversations on ways to reduce violence in their neighborhoods. CIK and IDEAS xLab hope to bring more of these initiatives to life under the Center for Art + Health Innovation.

“CIK and IDEAS xLab have our eyes on the same goal –social justice and health equity. We are bringing our unique skill sets together to advance that goal in a creative way,” Wendel said.

CIK is part of the with a mission of informing policy and practice that will improve the health of populations in Kentucky and beyond. IDEAS xLab is a Louisville-based artist innovation company that trains artists as social entrepreneurs to help create equitable places and nurture healthy communities.

This is one of more than 80 photographs taken by members of the West Louisville and St. Louis communities as part of a Photovoice project designed to provide an opportunity for expression and discussion about community concerns. The University of Louisville School of Public Health and Information Sciences’ (SPHIS) Office of Public Health Practice led the project, and about half the pictures are on display in a new exhibit, at the , a collaborator on the project.

“Communities struggle to address issues because we collectively lack the patience and humility to listen and to acknowledge that people have lived experiences that are different than ours,” said Monica Wendel, DrPH, MA, SPHIS associate dean of public health practice. “This exhibit creates space for people who aren’t usually heard to tell their stories, talk about their experiences – and if we invest our time in listening, we can learn things that help us know how to create meaningful change in our community.”

The UofL SPHIS Office of Public Health Practice invited various community groups to take photographs representing aspects of justice, safety, hope, and racial equity. Office staff then asked the participants to discuss the meaning of the photos, and propose action associated with identified problems.

Trinidad Jackson, MS, MPH, SPHIS senior researcher, wanted to launch the local Photovoice project after collecting images and stories from his hometown of St. Louis, Mo., during the week of the Ferguson protests triggered by the grand jury decision to not indict police officer Darren Wilson for crimes in the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown.

“The images in this exhibit characterize real-life situations that impact all of us in some way, but some of us cannot easily escape the real consequences attached to certain social phenomena such as having dark skin or living in a certain zip code,” Jackson said. “Data generated from places like police departments and hospital emergency departments often project damaging narratives of populations that have, for centuries, been inequitably impacted by Eurocentric systems that facilitate community destruction.”

Jackson says he hopes the exhibit will provide a means for the local community to create its own narrative about historical and contemporary positives and negatives to present “a more comprehensive context — one that includes the community’s truth and power.”

“‘Yet We Live, Strive, and Succeed’ is a brilliant exhibit of photography from community members sharing their lived experiences,” said Aukram Burton, executive director, Kentucky Center for African American Heritage. “It is my hope that this exhibition will facilitate productive conversations and dialogue that will lead to new ideas and partnerships in solving community issues like excessive force by police and the unacceptable level of gun violence.”

Originally developed by Caroline Wang, DrPH, at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, the goal of Photovoice is to use photographs as a tool to reflect on community strengths and weaknesses, serve as a platform to discuss important community issues and act as a catalyst to reach policymakers.

UofL’s Office of Public Health Practice Photovoice project exemplifies one of multiple community-based participatory research efforts facilitated by the office. Their research team plans to analyze data from the Photovoice project and other community forums to provide actionable information to local leaders and mobilize local residents for community improvement. On Sept. 18, the office plans to invite the community to learn about their findings and engage participants in developing solutions to identified problems.

The Kentucky Center for African-American Heritage is providing the space and IDEAS xLab is curating the exhibit. “Yet We Live, Strive and Succeed,” is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and runs through Sept. 23. Admission is free. More information is .Ìę

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