Grant: Team Grant: Pathways Implementation Research Team - Component 2 - LOI

Popular Theatre is a relevant though understudied suicide prevention strategy for Indigenous youth. It offers a means of promoting health and self-advocacy through a collaborative, arts-based approach, grounded in local realities, that engages both the youth actors and community members. We will investigate if a Popular Theatre-based primary prevention strategy promotes youth resilience and positive development, as well as community strengths and community-based solutions for youth suicide. This research represents a partnership with four diverse communities representing a range of Indigenous identities, geographies and governance systems: (1) Gunn Métis Local 55; (2) Frog Lake (Cree) First Nation; (3) Yellowknives Dene First Nation (including the communities of Ndilo and Dettah); and (4) Siksika (Blackfoot) First Nation. This research will use a Community Based Participatory Research approach that will involve all team members as equal partners in the development, implementation, interpretation and dissemination of this research. Conceptually it will be based on a Positive Youth Development framework. The community will be engaged through: (1) consultations and workshops with youth and other community members to further explore Popular Theatre as a suicide prevention intervention and appropriate means for implementation in each community, and (2) active participation of community members and knowledge users in the youth theatre performances. Youth will participate in multi- week workshops to plan the performance. During the performance, actors and audience members will be encouraged to re-enact scenarios to find solutions. We will evaluate the strengths and resilience factors that are most enhanced at the individual and community level, and how these translate into action, through questionnaires and discussions with the youth and audiences.