Announcing our 2025 SSHRC Insight Grant from the Government of Canada!
- Krista Heide
- Apr 8
- 4 min read
Updated: May 4
We are thrilled to announce that our Arts for Equity interdisciplinary team have been chosen as a recipient of the prestigious 2025 SSHRC Insight Grant! Dr. Kendra Rieger[1] and lead team members, Dr. Sheryl Reimer-Kirkham and Dr. Anne Tuppurainen, are very grateful for the contributions from our diverse team members and study sites, who made this project proposal possible.
The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) is the federal research funding agency that promotes and supports research and research training in the humanities and social sciences. Each year there is a rigorous application process for potential research projects, with submissions coming in from multiple disciplines across the country.
"A far cry from the idealised image most people have of a quiet studio environment, a sanctuary set apart from the rest of life. Instead, it is a studio smacked down, dead centre, in the middle of life . . . Against all the odds, and perhaps because the odds are against us, we make art."
(C. Moon, 2002) [2]
Our research exploring the intersection of art, spirituality, equity, and reconciliation takes an innovative path to human flourishing for people experiencing structural disadvantages, addressing SSHRC’s Imagining Canada’s Future challenge of “Shifting Dynamic of Privilege and Marginalization.”
Our previous research revealed that art can help people to heal and access spiritual dimensions in public spaces, promoting equity and access. This newly funded project will engage with three community organizations who are integrating inclusive and accessible art initiatives to support spirituality for diverse populations, including:
individuals experiencing homelessness at Surrey Urban Mission
individuals affected by substance use at a First Nation in the lands known as BC
individuals with disabilities at St. Amant in Manitoba
Using Art in Spiritual Care - Research Purpose
Our purpose is to investigate how people who experience structural disadvantages engage artistic expression to connect to the spiritual dimensions of life, with the overarching goal of fostering equity, reconciliation, human flourishing, and the social good.
Our specific research objectives are to collaboratively:
1) Explore how arts-based spiritual practices are experienced and valued by people with structural disadvantages.
2) Examine how institutions, spaces, and societal contexts shape, facilitate, and constrain how art is understood and enacted as a spiritual path for human flourishing.
3) Investigate the intersection of race, dis/ability, class, gender, gender identity, and religion in relation to experiences of arts-based spiritual practices.
4) Theorize new ways of understanding how and when art fosters spiritual wellbeing for structurally disadvantaged people to promote equity, reconciliation, human flourishing, and the social good.
5) Mobilize knowledge (project findings) with a range of audiences to imagine and enact more equitable spiritual support for people with structural disadvantages.
Ultimately, we want to spark not just understanding, but action - helping to reimagine what equity-oriented spiritual support can look like in real life.
Informed by Indigenous and critical perspectives and intent on praxis, we will use an arts-based engagement ethnography (ABEE) research methodology, taking a three-stranded approach (engage, explore, mobilize) over four years.
This novel, participatory methodology will allow our established team of health/social science academics, Indigenous mentors, spiritual health practitioners, artists/art therapists, and community members to critique deeply rooted assumptions and structures causing inequities, and explore how art and spirituality can advance equity and forge new, inclusive avenues for human flourishing and the social good.
We are so grateful for this award and its affirmation of the importance of our research around health, art, spirituality, equity and reconciliation. We look forward to sharing more developments from our work in the seasons to come!
Project Title - Critical Explorations at the Nexus of Art and Spirituality: Sites for Equity and Reconciliation
Project Duration - 5 years
Project Funding - $261,538
Principal Applicant: Dr. Kendra Rieger (Trinity Western University)
The full Art and Spirituality interdisciplinary research team includes:Lead Team: Dr. Kendra Rieger (TWU Nursing), Dr. Sheryl Reimer-Kirkham (TWU Nursing), Dr. Anne Tuppurainen (Providence Health Care); Indigenous Elders and Advisers: Mabel Horton (Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation), Michael Thibert (Metis, Health Sciences Centre), Switametelót Patricia Victor (Cheam First Nation, TWU), Val Vint (Métis, St.Amant); Full Team Research Members: Anabella Alfonzo (Providence Health Care), Carol Anderson (Providence Health Care), Alexis Budiselic (Providence Health Care), Dr. Madeline Burghardt (St.Amant and University of Manitoba), Beth Burton (Vancouver Costal Health Authority), Flavia Cionca (TWU Nursing), Alysha Creighton (TWU SAMC), Miriam Duff (CancerCare Manitoba), Erika Einarson (St.Amant), Marie Fennemore (Providence Health Care), Ryan Giesbrecht (Providence Health Care), LeeAnn Jespersen (Island Health), Dr. Beth Johnson Taylor (Loma Linda University), Rachel Jones (Providence Health Care), Eva Kwong (Fraser Health, Surrey Urban Mission), Anja Lanz (Providence Health Care), Nicu Liuta (Providence Health Care), Kathleen Lounsbury (Namgis First Nation, TWU Nursing), Francis Maza (Providence Health Care), Alysha McFadden (TWU Nursing), Lindsay McCombe (St.Amant), Melody Newcomb (Health Sciences Centre), Dr. Myron Penner (TWU FHSS), Dr. Richard Sawatzky (TWU Nursing), Kurt Schwarz (Health Sciences Centre), Sonya Sharma (UCL London), Dionne Shaw (Cheam First Nation), Sandi Smoker (Pender Islands Health Centre), Corrie Sondezi (Health Sciencex Centre), Dr. Katie Steeves (TWU FHSS), Nathan Stein (Surrey Urban Mission) , Andrew Terhoch (St.Amant), Lillian Vera Rugera (Providence Health Care), Dr. Christina West (University of Victoria), Katie Wilkinson (Elisabeth Bruyere Hospital), Leanne Witten (Providence Health Care), Dr. Gloria Woodland (MB Seminary) , Dr. Louise Younie (Oxford); TWU Nursing PhD students: Kathleen Lounsbury, Ibolya Agoston, and Briar Wiens; Research Staff: Jessica Wilson, Krista Heide, Evy Klassen, Abigail Broadhurst and Una Chang; and consultants from the Arts for Equity Team.
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[1]Dr. Kendra Rieger is also the grateful recipient of a Health Research BC Scholar Award that supports her program of research.
[2] Moon CH. Studio Art Therapy: Cultivating the Artist Identity in the Art Therapist. London: Jessica Kingsley; 2002.
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