Who We Are

Walk With Me is an arts based community-engaged research and social change project designed to reduce harms associated with the toxic drug crisis, housing crisis and other related social and ecological crises facing communities, and catalyze forms of community wellness. We operate as a not-for-profit society in B.C.

Our work began in 2019, at the Comox Valley Art Gallery (public contemporary art gallery on Vancouver Island). A group of staff working at the Gallery had borne witness to the increase in drug-related incidents in the community experienced by youth, artists and people living just outside the Gallery. After hosting several celebrations of life, we began asking "what can arts-based researchers and community developers do to spur change?".

We posed this question to our long-term harm-reduction partners at AVI Health and Community Services, collaborators within Island Health, and a group of cultural mapping researchers at Thompson Rivers University, as well as to People With Lived and Living Experience (PWLLE) involved in the Gallery. From these conversations, the project was born.

Purpose

Walk With Me exists to:

Uncover community-defined pathways towards wellness in the midst of social and ecological crisis, including the toxic drug crisis and housing crisis.
Reduce harm and generate improvements in care and quality of life for people at the heart of these crises
Activate leadership in research, art, and innovation towards community regeneration and crisis response
Cultivate systems change
Honour and amplify the voices of People With Lived and Living Experience (PWLLE)

Our work involves sitting in-person with PWLLE of social and ecological crises, as well as their family members and friends, and health and community leaders. We listen to stories and insights, glean wisdom from them, and share this wisdom with decision-makers in social, political and health domains, as well as with the wider public. We hold space for difficult conversations that bring people together in new ways towards progressive social outcomes.