Getting Started

If you want to use arts-based methodologies to create survivor-centred narratives.

If you want to use arts-based methodologies to create survivor-centred narratives, this toolkit offers a hands-on guide to rethinking how we document, interpret, and teach testimonies. Rather than approaching survivor testimonies as static archives of past events, our focus is on cultivating methods that honour the evolving, dialogic nature of memory. Here, you’ll learn how performance, graphic novels, comics, and other visual media can serve as powerful tools to reveal the complexities of lived experiences—enabling survivors to exercise agency over their own stories while inviting audiences into a shared process of understanding and healing.

This toolkit encourages you to embrace an interdisciplinary and adaptive mindset. In doing so, you’ll discover strategies that integrate trauma-informed practices, collaborative dialogues, and ethical representation of survivor stories into your work. By breaking down disciplinary silos and emphasizing iterative encounters with survivor narratives, you have a chance to develop more nuanced research and teaching methodologies, as well as create spaces where both survivors and learners can engage with history in a respectful and sensitive manner. Whether you are a researcher, educator, or artist, the approaches outlined here aim to empower you to use art as a medium for connection, care, and transformative learning.