Research as Activism

This chapter draws on upon a series of conversations among people labelled/with intellectual and developmental disabilities, with experience as co-researchers, from several inclusive research projects in Toronto, Canada, and an academic researcher involved in these projects; attending to the struggles and potential of inclusive research as activism, as a way of moving forward. Inclusive research may make a difference by drawing attention to the experiences of labelled people in these areas. Through participation in inclusive research projects, people labelled/with intellectual and developmental disabilities can re-think and re-make themselves. The co-researchers stressed the power of less traditional, arts-based/informed means of knowledge sharing and exchange, practices understood to be more effective at getting people’s attention, at evoking different emotions and/or supporting different kinds of engagement and interaction between co-researchers and audience. The multiplicity of possible interpretations means it is difficult to get a sense of the effect any of the work might have on other people.