Brief Overview of Project

The partnership: City of Edmonton's RECOVER Urban Wellbeing (RECOVER), MacEwan's Dr. Jennifer Long (Anthropology), and the students from Ethnographic Research Methods Fall 2022 course.

Project overview: In late 2021, RECOVER was asked to explore individuals’ experiences of, and attitudes toward, SAFETY at City Hall. While RECOVER determines how best to engage with this request, they asked our class to conduct preliminary research on how, who, and in what ways different individuals use and conceive of the purpose of City Hall.

Background: 

• Different individuals use City Hall – which is a public use space – in different and sometimes contradictory ways. 

• How are Edmontonians' (and individuals currently living or residing in Edmonton) voices incorporated into projects seeking to understand  the purpose or use of iconic spaces like Edmonton's City Hall? Importantly, certain voices are prioritized over others. Which voices? Those that typically align with state structures and/or other powerful individuals, i.e., those who are seen to represent the majority community’s interests.

Our own project did not set out to focus on concepts or experiences of safety (although these themes surfaced organically). Instead, our class explored individuals’ perceptions on the purpose of City Hall. The goal of this proejct was to broaden the understanding of what safety might mean, to different people, for future research. 

What happened:

Students from the Ethnographic Research Methods course developed  a number of process and final outputs throughout the course. This website plays host to some of these outputs.  

Goals of the course:

The ultimate goal of this course was to give students the opportunity to practice research and data analysis techniques on behalf of a community partner, and to participate in a meaningful, local project. 

Students produced two kinds of outputs 

Outputs associated with the process of data analysis:

• Public use aggregate map

• Observations report

• Ethnographic interviews report

Final outputs associated with final data analysis and knowledge dissemination:

• Artefacts

• Community Report