Eimear O’Neill

Community Art Installations: Coming Home to Epistemological Equity and Validity          
Together  

March 15, 2008  

This workshop used community art installations that allow research to
integrate the particular, the communal, and the universal. The use of
artful materials to address complex subjects like "coming home" increases
epistemological equity and research validity. The multi-model, multiple
parts of self allow diversity within community to be represented. Of
interest to heuristic researchers developing a way to hold dynamics of
their interests together and to phenomenological researchers wanting to
hold experiences together, participants created community art installations with
the focus being a hands-on participation.

"Coming Home" invited participants to create miniature hearth/heart places
that hold some sense of their own journeys in becoming more indigenous to
their particular body, peoples, and places. Workshop participants were
encouraged to bring photos, memorabilia, history documents, artifacts,
images and objects that represent personal journeys to becoming more at
home (or not) in their bodies, in their complex identities, and in their
memberships within particular communities and places. The day
concluded with discussions around communal display options both locally and
abroad.

Dr. Eimear O'Neill is a psychotherapist, educator and consultant in
transformative processes at personal, communal, and cultural levels.