Contents
Reimagining Livelihoods Project
“Reimagining livelihoods” is an outreach project from the Live Work Well Research Centre (LWWRC) 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 project has two components:
1) A Livelihoods Forum in August 2023 designed with accessibility, inclusion, and community engagement in mind. An organizing committee made up of community and academic partners guided its development. The forum included workshops, presentations, artistic contributions, and other sessions related to exploring livelihoods, using a livelihoods framework, and reimagining livelihoods.
2) A Multimedia Platform 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.
Who is this multimedia platform for?
- Community partners and leaders
- Academic and non-academic researchers
- Students and early-career researchers
- Practitioners
- Policy and decision makers
- Anyone interested in livelihoods and living well
Project history
This outreach project builds from a previous research partnership (Disability and Livelihoods in Canada) that brought together local organizations in Guelph-Wellington county, disability-arts organizations, and national employment organizations and advocacy organizations (DisAbled Women’s Network of Canada, Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work, People and Information Network, Lakeside HOPE House Guelph) with the University of Guelph’s Live Work Well Research Centre (LWWRC), Community-Engaged Scholarship Institute (CESI), and the Re•Vision Centre for Art and Social Justice.
The Reimagining Livelihoods project, funded by a SSHRC Connection Grant, presents an opportunity for representatives from these organizations and institutions and their respective community networks to collaboratively explore new insights and questions about diverse people’s experiences of livelihoods. It also strengthens interdisciplinary connections within and beyond the university to support policy development, analysis, and advocacy that centres intersectional identities and lived experiences of peoples who experience historical and ongoing marginalization.
Understanding livelihoods
Livelihoods are about making a living and a life. They describe the means to secure the necessities of life—through practices such as paid work, caregiving, volunteering, market gardens, fishing, artistry, and others. Livelihoods are not only the capabilities, assets, and activities required to maintain life for oneself, families, and communities, but also the ability to sustain these in the context of stress and shocks and to contribute benefits at the local and global levels over time and for future generations.
Livelihoods are best understood through an intersectional, inclusive framework that considers the experiences of those with diverse, often intersecting, identities, including disability, gender, race, ethnicity, age, and Indigenousness. These identities interact with structural and political dynamics to influence multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination and barriers that shape livelihoods.
We are living in a time of extreme change and uncertainty, given rising sociopolitical conflicts and intensifying climate change. This presents an opportunity to reimagine what comprises “livelihoods,” and collaboratively identify the necessary supports, structures, and systems for living and working well in these current contexts. By reimagining livelihoods from diverse, intersectional vantage points, we can begin systematically to identify questions and ways to bring these diverse experiences into policies and practices.
