Grant: Planning and Dissemination Grant - Institute Community Support

Canada's HIV/AIDS epidemic accelerated intensely starting in the mid-1980s, and brought an unprecedented level of sickness, death, and loss. Many different marginalized populations have been disproportionately impacted by HIV. There is a need for a critical oral history that challenges accepted versions of histories of HIV in these various communities. There is a need to ensure that the knowledge gained from oral histories is actively shared and used to improve policy, services, and access for people living with HIV (PLHIV) today. Our team has conducted an HIV/AIDS oral history project in British Columbia called "HIV In My Day". We work in partnership with PLHIV and organizations serving PLHIV in order to support intergenerational knowledge exchange. Our team has trained eight community-based peer researchers - who are diverse in terms of gender, sexuality, and race/ethnicity - who helped to conduct, transcribe, and create a digital public archive of 115 oral histories of PLHIV diagnosed in BC before 1996. A novel verbatim theatre piece called "In My Day", written by Rick Waines, was developed using the original oral histories. This grant seeks to facilitate expansion of community-oriented knowledge mobilization activities through a new revised "In My Day" production in Victoria and related arts-based activities. The proposed dissemination activities aim to share our main project findings with communities disproportionately by HIV, healthcare workers and trainees, and the public to catalyze conversations about HIV stigma and current HIV prevention and health service approaches. The four key activities this grant will support are: 1) community access to a new revised production of "In My Day" in Victoria, 2) intergenerational and intercommunity gathering to coincide with the play, 3) art exhibition of multimedia artworks previously produced by women living with HIV, and 4) storytelling exhibition based on the oral histories collected through "HIV In My Day".