CoMMuNiTy eNGaGeD LeaRNiNG & ReSeaRCH

HuMaNiZiNG CoMMuNiTY eNGaGeD LeaRNiNG aND ReSeaRCH

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Community Engaged Learning & Research: Connecting coursework and academic research to community identified concerns to enrich knowledge and inform action on social issues

Community engaged learning and research provides the knowledge and awareness needed to engage in effective and accurate social impact work. However, Western research methodology has often included mining vulnerable communities for helpful research insights, but maintaining barriers to their meaningful engagement in research outcomes. Additionally, service learning and community engagement practice has a history of engaging with communities in surface level ways that do not analyze systemic oppression, without the guidance and leadership of community leaders with lived experience, and in ways that promote savior mentality. Humanizing community engaged learning and research requires being in deep relationship with communities, portraying them as they wish to be portrayed, and leveraging privilege and access to amplify issues they seek to be amplified. The humanization of this pathway also includes making knowledge production widely accessible to communities, rather than gate-kept and obscured within traditional Western academic platforms. The production of the documentary Crip Camp is an example of a humanized process of community engaged learning and research. Crip Camp follows the stories of teens with disabilities that attended the Camp Jened summer camp. The participants described Camp Jened as a utopia, because of its intentional design to be a place of freedom and safety for those with disabilities, who often faced discrimination and bias in mainstream society. From summer romances to philosophical discussions, participants described memories in a place where they experienced their first feelings of full inclusion. This profound experience inspired many of the participants to become fundamental change makers and leaders within the disability rights movement, such as Judith Heumann, an activist who used her physical presence to help pressure policy change.

Crip Camp not only humanized individuals with disabilities by allowing them to narrate their own experiences through interviews, it also was co-directed by James Lebrecht, a Camp Jened alumnus. Accordingly, there was a level of cultural

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competence in the data collection and video production methodology that could not have been achieved without the documentary being directed by someone with lived experience. Interviewees were able to have candid and deeply human conversations around topics such as activism, sexuality, and revolution. For example, one of the interviewees shared that they would describe themselves as a sexual person, and felt frustration that people without disabilities commonly assume she is childlike and not able to have consensual sexual encounters. Surely, having Lebrecht behind the camera - a fellow member of the disabled community - helped bring such vulnerable conversations to the forefront.

This documentary exemplifies how community engaged learning and research can be directed by those from vulnerable communities, which recognizes their humanity and valuable leadership. It demonstrates the humanity in allowing those with lived experience to speak to their own experiences. Finally, it gives a great example of how such research and narrative production can be disseminated in ways that are accessible and relational, such as through a documentary that can be accessed by a wide range of people, in contrast to something like an academic journal, where jargon and article access may pose great barriers to underprivileged communities.