‘In Between the Fireflies’: Community art with senior women of chinese heritage around issues of culture, language and storytelling

Participants were empowered through their engagement in the process of two recent separate community art research projects that highlighted the benefits of dialogue in art-making and increased participation as facilitators ceded authority to participants. Both projects used ethnography and narrative methods. The participants were senior women of Chinese heritage in Western Canada who could not fluently speak Canada’s dominant languages and some could not read or write in any language. Their involvement focused around issues of culture, language and storytelling. Reflecting on the projects suggested new avenues of research to learn more distinctly about such empowerment, and facilitated our personal creative work. Based on this learning, we continue to develop new initiatives for the education of pre-service teachers that will involve possibilities for transformation and the counter-hegemonic. Dialogue benefits art-making, and the possibilities for participation in creative community education projects are increased when planners surrender power to participants.