Our Hustle,Our Struggle,Our Art: Reflections From an Arts-Based Participatory Research Project With Sex Workers in Vancouver,BC

Abstract

This paper provides insights into an arts-based participatory action research (PAR) project led by sex workers in Vancouver, BC. Sex workers have long advocated for community-driven, participatory approaches in producing meaningful, action-oriented research. At the same time, sex work activists have a strong history of incorporating art into their advocacy. However, there are limited examples of arts-based approaches to PAR done in collaboration with sex workers, and fewer published reflections directly from participants and community members. It is important to continually critique research methods, including PAR, and share emerging best practices. This paper details our involvement in an arts-based PAR project spanning five years, as part of, and in collaboration with, a diverse community of sex workers. We reflect on what the project has taught us about the use of arts-based methods, collaborative decision making, and challenging paternalism in research. From our reflections, we hope to offer both practical and epistemological considerations for future research and community collaborations.

Keywords

arts-based research participatory action research sex work community-driven research arts-based creative methods

Introduction

This paper provides insights into an arts-based participatory action research (PAR) project led by sex workers in Vancouver, BC. This paper details our involvement in an arts-based PAR project which ran from 2021-2025, as part of, and in collaboration with, a diverse community of sex workers. While outlining our participatory methods and knowledge mobilization projects, we reflect on what the project taught us about the impact of arts-based methods, collaborative decision making and challenging paternalism in research. From our reflections, we hope to offer both practical and epistemological considerations for future research and community collaborations.

Our participatory arts-based project aimed to investigate the experiences of sex workers of all genders and across work environments throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing overdose and drug toxicity crisis. We invited sex workers to produce art work which expressed their work and community experiences in order to explore: (1) How the effects of COVID-19 intersect with evolving laws and policies regulating sex work to shape occupational health and safety conditions in sex work environments and; (2) For sex workers who use illicit drugs, how the dual epidemics of COVID-19 and fentanyl-related overdoses intersect with work environments to shape overdose risk and access to harm reductions services. Participation in the arts-based project consisted of three components, including an information and consent session, art submission; and an in-depth art elicitation interview.

Background

Sex Workers as Activists and Artists

Decades of evidence have highlighted the pivotal role of criminalization in shaping the health, safety and human rights of sex workers (NSWP, 2014; Platt et al., 2018). Sex work criminalization and stigma restrict sex workers’ access to community spaces, the ability to connect with other sex workers and engage in advocacy (Berg, 2014; Blunt et al., 2020; Pearson et al., 2022; Savloff, 2022; Shimei, 2022). Despite such barriers, sex workers have a long history of activism, resistance, and collective action. Today, the sex worker movement continues to mobilize across the globe for decriminalization and improved labour rights. Historically, arts-based activism and advocacy have been a central component to the sex worker rights movement, including Carol Leigh’s legendary performance pieces (Leigh, 1998), Empower Thailand’s satirical animated films (Friedman-Rudovsky, 2016), and Jamie Lee Hamilton’s impactful “shoe dump” on Vancouver’s city hall steps (MacDonald, 2020). However, due to systemic marginalization, sex workers face additional barriers to arts-based advocacy, such as high costs of supplies, lack of free time or paid opportunities to produce art and inequitable access to safe and inclusive studio spaces.

Sex Work in Vancouver, Canada

Within the study setting of Vancouver, Canada, sex workers face barriers to safe work environments as well as community supports, due to intersecting impacts of international and local policies. After previous sex work laws were deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada for violating sex workers’ rights, the Canadian federal government implemented “end-demand” criminalization in 2014 (the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act). These laws take aim at the demand for sex work—criminalizing clients and most third-party activities surrounding the sex industry, but leaving its sale legal under narrow circumstances (i.e., in private settings) (Government of Canada, Department of Justice, 2014). This framing is based on the conflation of sex work and human trafficking and assumes sex workers as victims of gender-based violence. Ample evidence has demonstrated the ways these laws restrict sex workers’ freedoms under the guise of their protection and has severe consequences for sex workers’ occupational conditions, particularly for BIPOC, im/migrant (Machat et al., 2019; McBride et al., 2022), and queer and trans workers (Koenig et al., 2023; Scheim et al., 2023). End-demand approaches to sex work have been shown to reduce sex workers’ autonomy over working conditions by criminalizing collective workspaces and peer support between sex workers, while increasing sex workers' interactions with carceral institutions, (Agustín, 2006; Durisin, 2022; Raguparan, 2017).

Despite such barriers, sex work communities in Canada have demonstrated “decades of creative, collaborative, and revolutionary community-building, outreach and support, awareness raising, rabble-rousing, and legislative work” (Ferris & Lebovtich, 2019). Throughout Metro Vancouver, sex worker-specific services provide critical opportunities for mutual aid via sex work-led support and education programs, mobile outreach, drop-in spaces, and low-barrier occupational health and safety and harm reduction supplies (e.g., bad date sheets, condoms) (Kim et al., 2015; Krüsi et al., 2012).

There is a concentration of sex worker-specific services within the Downtown East Side (DTES), a neighbourhood within the City of Vancouver characterized by both social and economic inequities as well as significant community organizing and low barrier services (SWUAV Board Members, 2019). Though facing ongoing inequities, policing and gentrification, organizers within the DTES have, for decades, maintained sex work-specific supports that reach local and neighbouring community members. In this regard, Vancouver’s sex work community offers an important study setting, with a strong history of sex worker-led resources and activism.

Participatory Research by and for Sex Workers

Sex workers and allied scholars have long emphasized the importance of community-driven, participatory approaches in generating meaningful research (Benoit & Shaver, 2006; Bowen & O’Doherty, 2014; Ferris et al., 2021; Urban Justice Center, 2023). Borrowed from the disability rights movement, the phrase “nothing about us, without us” (Koontz et al., 2022) has been utilized by sex workers to encourage community collaboration with sex workers, particularly around law reform (Smith & Mac, 2018) and increasingly when conducting academic research (Mann, 2013). As an over-researched and historically exploited community, research with sex workers must be done in a way that meets the immediate needs of participants, often in the form of tangible support or monetary compensation for their time and contributions. Through centering community voices and expertise, PAR promotes collaborative efforts between researchers and community members in order to generate knowledge that meets a community-identified need, and operates with the underlying purpose of working towards social change and social justice (Brydon-Miller et al., 2020; Strand, 2003). PAR as well, focuses on the process as much as the outcomes of research, centering informed consent, reciprocity, and prioritization of experiential knowledge (Aldridge, 2015; Connelly & Sanders, 2020). This is of significant importance when working with sex workers, whose expertise and labor are largely underpaid and undervalued within academia. A focus on process helps minimize direct harm, while allowing equitable involvement of diverse community members.

PAR also values knowledge deriving from lived experience (Collins, 1986; Janes, 2016). PAR approaches therefore, can help counter the “epistemic injustice” faced by sex workers, whereas sex workers routinely experience deflated credibility, and whose experiences and narratives are assumed the result of a “false consciousness” (Fox, 2018; Webber, 2022). Meaningful PAR acknowledges sex workers as experts, in an effort to help legitimize what sex workers have to say about our own lives.

Arts Based Participatory Research

In community-based research, arts-based methods use creative modes of expression to examine lived experiences, either as a data collection technique or as a dissemination technique, and potentially both (Coemans & Hannes, 2017). A growing body of research has demonstrated that arts-based approaches can be an effective method for sharing lived experiences, encourage discussion of stigmatized topics and reach policymakers and the broader public through highly accessible knowledge mobilization (KM) outputs (Grittner, 2023; Phillips et al., 2022; Sitter et al., 2022). Arts-based methods are especially well-suited to a participatory approach, as in addition to producing accessible KM, they are accessible and engaging for participants, and offer opportunity for participants to learn new skills, fostering reciprocity (Povee et al., 2014), and require researchers to share power and control in the research process (Wang & Burris, 1994). However, there are limited examples of arts-based approaches to PAR led by sex workers (Desyllas, 2013), and even fewer published reflections directly from participants and community members. It is important to continually, and critically reflect on research methods, including PAR, and share emerging best practices, especially those identified by community members. Therefore, as a team of sex working artists and researchers, we aim to share lessons learned from a participatory research project that explored sex workers’ occupational conditions through a multitude of artistic mediums.

Positionality

The arts-based project is an extension of a longstanding relationship between PACE Society and the AESHA Project. Providing Advocacy Counselling and Education (PACE) Society is a peer-driven non-profit organization in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside that seeks to reduce the harm and isolation associated with sex work through education, support, and advocacy. AESHA (An Evaluation of Sex Workers’ Health Access) is a community-based research project hosted by the University of British Columbia. PACE and the AESHA Project have collaborated as community partners since 2010.

The authors of this paper represent PACE and AESHA and have supported the collaborative arts-based project in various capacities. We are a collective of current and former sex workers who have existing relationships and advisory roles with PACE and/or AESHA, and roles as PACE staff, and sex working graduate students and research assistants. We hold various and intersecting identities as white settlers, immigrants and refugees, Indigenous and racialized folk, queer and trans folk, as well as cis women and men. For those of us who are experiential, our experience in sex work ranges from five years to twenty years, and across diverse work environments. Many of us are also practising artists. Our lived experience and relative positions of privilege have shaped the work we do, our intentions for the project, and how we relate to each other as collaborators.

This paper was written similarly to how we have planned and executed the art project; by sitting down as a group and sharing food, usually sushi, and talking about what we wish to accomplish and what is important to us. Using meeting notes, we created a collaborative document that was updated between meetings, and then reviewed and revised at the following meeting. In this paper, we draw from principles of epistemic justice and standpoint theory (Gilbert & Sewpaul, 2015; Medina, 2013), by writing in a way that centres our collective and various ways of knowing, and acknowledges our capacity to describe our own experiences.

Methods

Project Development

The initial idea for an arts-based participatory action research project sprouted from a 2020 call for proposals from a local funding body that provides grants, varying in scale, to registered community organizations, collectives and individuals. This particular funding call was focused on participatory research, promoting collaboration between academics and registered charities and non-profits. The AESHA project reached out to PACE society to see if there would be interest in working together on an application. The willingness of both parties was facilitated by their long-standing relationship as community partners, trust between individual PACE staff members and members of the research team, and both organizations’ enthusiasm for exploring arts-based approaches to research and advocacy.

AESHA team members took on the heavy lifting of writing the grant proposal, based on input and feedback from PACE. While a polished proposal is necessary to secure funds, we were aware from the beginning that the project would evolve and adapt over time, adjusting to the needs and input of participants, as per the main principles of PAR (Janes, 2016). In this regard, we were lucky that our funders also acknowledge and promote an adaptive approach. When writing the proposal, we did not feel stifled by the expectation to stick too closely to our initial ideas, nor the pressure to, in three years’ time, produce the exact outputs we had imagined during preliminary planning phases. Our proposal and budget also took into consideration existing infrastructure that AESHA and PACE brought to the project. AESHA, in particular, as a well-established research project, was able to provide research staff, a community office, and administrative support needed to hold a large scale, multi-year grant.

Once the funds were secured, we began project development (see Figure 1 for a full project timeline). First, we recruited members of the Community Advisory Team (CAT). The CAT is a team of current and former sex workers who have connections to AESHA and/or PACE and have collaborated and advised on each stage of the project. In order to foster a collaborative approach to decision-making (Bowen & O’Doherty, 2014), the formation of CAT was an essential first step, as CAT members finalized our methods and broader approach and goals.

Figure 1.

Project timeline

The CAT has been meeting regularly at the AESHA community research office since 2021, during which we catch up and discuss what we as a group would like to accomplish as next steps. During the development phase, which took place from 2021-2022, we collaborated on the research protocol, further outlined below, including the parameters for the individual art submissions, the interview guide and consent process, all of which was submitted as part of our ethics approval. CAT members also took part in a pilot of the project, which helped us troubleshoot the process before we began participant recruitment.

Setting Intentions

Short Term Goals

During project planning, we spent a significant amount of time discussing what we hoped the project would achieve, in the short term and longer-term. This included both outputs we hoped to create, and methodological considerations that would help to ensure participants had a good time and overall benefited from taking part in the project.

A core component of PAR is focused on reciprocity, meaning that community benefits equally, if not more, from the research as do the academics (Varcoe et al., 2011). Therefore, our methods and project protocols were based on supporting the material and emotional wellbeing of participants, CAT members and community partners. Many of our short-term objectives were focused on meeting immediate needs of those who contributed their time and expertise to the project in the form of dignified stipends for participants, shared meals, paid roles for CAT members and experiential artists-in-residence, as well as financial support to PACE. We also acknowledged the importance of creating a network of support which included emotional support, but also abundant access to equipment, art supplies, and artistic training. We aimed to value participant-identified needs, and so it was more beneficial to provide folks with the supplies and skills training they actually wanted, rather than planning and purchasing supplies in advance. We also emphasized that the project was open to all artistic mediums, as not to minimize participant autonomy and self-expression. This level of flexibility helped ensure that the research outcomes were community-driven, while also reducing barriers to participation.

In addition to providing materials, we sought to help folks build or practice art skills through specialized training. To do so, the project was supported by two experiential “artists-in-residence”, who were available to help participants with creative or technical support in photography, drawing, or painting. Lastly, we aimed to provide a safe space for sex workers to share our own experiences and realities, through their art, within the interview and through collaborative group settings. We hoped our approach would help folks build confidence in their artistic practice, or feel more comfortable expressing themselves artistically and sharing their work with others. It was important to offer forms of community capacity-building that were separate from academic interests, in order to promote greater reciprocity throughout the project (Melro & Ballantyne, 2022; Varcoe et al., 2011).

Long Term Goals

Longer term goals included creating a template for art-based skill building and mentorship programs within PACE, while also developing lasting partnerships with arts organizations and advocacy groups to support sex workers’ creative and professional aspirations. Being led by a team of sex workers, and collaborating with sex working artists, we sought to demonstrate the value of experiential knowledge and create opportunities for sex workers to practice skills related to teaching and facilitation, research and project development.

Lastly, through arts-based creation, we aimed to produce a lasting collection of art works and stories that document sex workers’ experience and contribution to art and activism. A strength of arts-based methods is its amenability to high-impact and accessible knowledge mobilization outputs. For us, the arts-based submissions created by participants served as point for community discourse and celebration, as much as a data source (Coemans & Hannes, 2017; Melro & Ballantyne, 2022). The ultimate long-term goal is that this arts-based participatory action research project will contribute toward delineating the pathways towards the decriminalization of sex work and the reduction of sex work stigma. To achieve this, we emphasized creative, public facing outputs to increase understanding and generate public discussion about the impacts of criminalization on the occupational health, safety, and labour rights of sex workers. Our creative outputs aim to showcase the varied and nuanced experiences of sex workers in the context of criminalization with the goal to increase sex worker visibility, challenge stigma and provide insights into safer sex work environment interventions and increased access to services.

Our Guiding Values

During planning sessions, we discussed the need to reduce harm to participants by promoting participants’ individual agency and avoiding the re-stigmatization of sex workers. To do so, we acknowledged that the typical approach to anonymize all participant data may be counterproductive to our goals. Therefore, we sought approval from the research ethics board to update our participant consent form and art-release form to allow greater options for participants to be identifiable in their art-submission, at their own request, and for the ability to publish artworks featuring the faces/bodies of participants should they choose this option.

When using a participatory approach, researchers emphasize that confidentiality should not be imposed, but negotiated (Yanar et al., 2016). In certain circumstances, allowing participants to be identifiable may have a strengthening and empowering effect, especially in the case of marginalized communities whose experiences and knowledge have been devalued or dismissed (Aldridge, 2015). For some stigmatized groups, such as sex workers, being ‘seen’ can constitute a way to challenge stigmatization. Recent pornography scholarship has highlighted that among a group of porn performers, some of whom are already outspoken about their opinions of the industry in the news and on social media, most participants preferred to be identifiable (Webber, 2022).

During our development meetings, the option for participants to be identifiable in their artwork was noted as integral to artistic expression and autonomy. We discussed how participants who prefer to be identifiable in their artwork are likely to make such a decision based on their existing online visibility and comfort levels. We did not expect or require that all participants create artwork in which they are identifiable, or that all participants would consent to have identifiable visuals published, but rather that those who wished to be identifiable would do so as an active decision. We acknowledged that the risks of being identifiable should be explicitly expressed to participants, and that participants who do not want to be identifiable in their art, or have their likeness published, still have this option. Participants who do wish to be identifiable in their artwork, will have total control over how and where the artwork is shared. As a group, we incorporated these considerations into an “art release” form, that would be thoroughly reviewed with and signed by each participant (Appendix A).

Recruitment and Data Collection

Once we had piloted the project, and incorporated feedback into an updated ethics approval, we were ready to invite additional community members to take part as participants.

Recruitment

Artists (participants) were recruited through AESHA and PACE Society staff and members of the CAT. We used online and in-person posters to recruit a wide diversity of sex workers. Artists were also recruited through drop-in art workshops where our artists-in-residence and PACE counselor guided an expressive art making session, and information about the project was shared.

Participation in the arts-based project consisted of three components: (1) Information session; (2) Art submission; and (3) Art elicitation interview. All components took place in a location and format of the artists’ choosing, including virtual options.

Information and Consent Session

The initial 30–45 minute information session introduced potential artists to arts-based research methodology, explaining the objectives of the study and informed artists about the potential risks of participation. For those who expressed interest, we obtained informed consent. The participant then completed a short demographic survey, collecting information on work environment, racialization, gender, etc., to ensure diverse sampling as well as provide context for the in-depth interview. We then discussed the purpose and procedure of the art submission, reviewed an art submission workbook and answered any questions. Artists were able to take home needed art supplies or arrange a timeline for a future pickup or delivery of art supplies, and we discussed support needed from one of the project’s artists-in-residence. Artists received an honorarium of $30 for the information session, regardless of deciding to participate in the project.

Submission of Art Work

After completing the information session, artists were invited to provide an arts-based submission that depicts their work or work environment, and how it is shaped by criminalization and/or stigma. Arts-based submissions were accepted in a variety of mediums, including photo, video, audio, text, or visual art. Artists were invited to work on an arts-based submission within 1-2 months in whatever environment they preferred. The interviewer contacted artists over the phone/via email intermittently to check in on their experiences of completing the art submission, offer additional supplies, and connect them with the artist-in-residence should the participant ask for additional help or inspiration. When finished, artists submitted physical art or digital files. Upon submission, artists received an honorarium of $100 for their effort for the art submission. Artists retain full rights to their artwork and were asked to sign an art-release form if they consented to publishing their art in journal articles or for use in knowledge mobilization products, including a final gallery event.

Art Elicitation Interview

After submission of their art, artists were invited to participate in a semi-structured, 1-2 hour art elicitation interview. A semi-structured interview guide was used to direct conversations and draw out connections between the art work and experiences with sex work, online spaces, mutual aid and criminalization. Interviews were audio-recorded (with permission), transcribed, and reviewed for accuracy. Artists received an honorarium of $70 for the art elicitation interview.

Participatory Analysis

After receiving the majority of participant art submissions, the authors met to develop our approach to participatory analysis. Participatory analysis is a significant, but often under-utilized and underdeveloped component of PAR (Teti & Schatz, 2025), in which participants/artists have access to the data and assist or lead analysis (Jackson, 2008). Participatory analysis explicitly invites participants/artists to identify themes and meanings of the research data. Collaborative interpretations, through which participants create and share knowledge together, can produce findings that are more credible and useful to the community (Switzer & Flicker, 2021; Teti & Schatz, 2025).

Arts-based methods are particularly well suited for participatory analysis in a pragmatic sense, as it can be more accessible and efficient to collaboratively discuss and analyze visual and creative works. Group settings such as this can support “the active construction of categories and phenomena” (Munday, 2014), in a way that is far more collaborative and participant-driven than individual sessions. In the case of our project, which spanned several years, this approach also offered participants opportunities to meet each other and build community connections.

When brainstorming what the analysis session may include, we identified the importance of emotional and bodily responses, self-expression, and creating a safe space for collaborative dialogue. After two planning meetings, CAT members and artists were invited to take part in peer-analysis group sessions (Frith, 2000; Mkandawire-Valhmu & Stevens, 2010; Munday, 2014).

Based on interest and availability, seven of the artists met in person for participatory analysis. The session utilized all finished artworks accompanied by 1-2 paragraph vignettes drawn from in-depth interviews (Figures 2 –4).

Figure 2.

KindNess/Amy

Figure 3.

‘You ain’t a women! You’re a guy with mental and identity issues’/Alessa Silent Doll

Figure 4.

‘It’s much easier to fuck trannies than girls. Girls overcomplicate things. But you trans are desperate for attention.’/Alessa Silent Doll

Artists took part in several creative analytic activities, aimed at identifying similarities and differences within each other’s artworks and experiences:

(1) Review the goals of the project and the research questions

(2) Identify and define key concepts

(3) Gallery walk

• Walk around the room, and look at each artwork and read the quotes independently, reflect, and take notes.

• Prompts: What emotions were evoked? What is the most highlighted element? How is everything connected? Is the art relatable to your own experiences? How? What does it mean for you? By your own interpretation, how would you express the art in one or a few words?

(4) “How I Feel” colour mapping exercise- Independent (see Appendix B)

(5) “How I Feel” exercise- Group

(6) Sticky note coding

• Discuss each artwork as a group, using the same prompts as step 3. Sticky notes with key words/emotions/concepts will be pasted to each artwork as they come up in discussion (Figure 5).

(7) Summarize and debrief

Our participatory approach to inductive analysis was helpful in establishing community-identified themes that would inspire subsequent academic papers. Debriefing at the end of the day, artists enjoyed sharing their art with each other, while also offering their own interpretations. The day of analytic activities also served as a checkpoint in which participants could see the tangible outputs of the project (i.e., the diverse art submissions), thereby helping the project goals feel more concrete and achievable.

Figure 5.

“Sticky note coding”, December 2023

Themes that were captured during the group activities, including ‘Community Connection and Isolation’ and ‘Safety and Violence’, laid the groundwork for an initial coding framework that was finalized in collaboration with the CAT. This framework was then used in NVivo to code full interview transcripts. This round of coding was led by the first author. For subsequent research manuscripts, the first author, guided by principles of thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2019), conducted additional rounds of coding of the interview transcript data, to address specific research questions. These rounds of coding were both inductive, through a close reading of the data, and deductive, based on our interview guide and theoretical framework.

Project Outcomes

Following two years of recruitment and data collection, a total of 17 participants submitted art works (Figures 6 and 7) and completed an art-elicitation interview. Artists identified with diverse experiences of racialization, genders and had experience across diverse work environments. Almost all artists described experience working in-person (e.g. escorting, stripping, sugaring), while six also had experience with online work (e.g. camming, porn). Those with in-person work experience reported a range of work environments, including street-based work, massage parlours, hotels, in-call spaces and their own apartments. One artist had worked online only, in the form of camming and content creation. Eight artists were born outside of Canada and shared various experiences of im/migration. Eight artists also identified as having a disability. Lastly, all but four artists reported having additional income sources apart from sex work, including full or part time employment, gig-based or informal work, and/or governmental income assistance.

Figure 6.

Sex worker hopes and dreams on a rainy day/Louise

Figure 7.

‘If Casper had tits”/E

Main themes from analysis of art works and interview data included: ‘Community Connection and Isolation’ ‘Safety and Violence’, ‘Occupational Conditions’, ‘Navigating Online Spaces’, ‘Meeting Basic Needs’, ‘Sex Work Mutual Aid’, ‘Criminalization’, and ‘Occupational Stigma’. These themes have helped shape project outputs including in-progress research articles, as well as arts-based knowledge mobilization activities, further described below.

Critical Reflections

Impact

Impact on Participants and CAT Members

When discussing how the project has benefited artists and team members, there has consistently been a sense of success and joy in seeing artistic visions come to life, and to see our work displayed and for other people to see it. “There is one side where we’re trying to advocate for sex workers and increase awareness,” as ASD said in a CAT meeting. “But also, there is a level of feeling proud or really excited to see some of your work being displayed in a gallery and people can enjoy it. Because a lot of the time, when I do something, usually it ends in my own sketchbook…so it’s just for myself. But it is really good when you have the opportunity to share, and you can see the reaction of people.”

We hoped that our project would showcase diverse artistic talent of sex workers that are under-represented, while also creating community space for the kinds of events we want. Four years later, we are proud to have accomplished this and more. “I think this was a goal of the project initially”, explained EV, “but then it grew to become much more, and it arose organically as the project progressed and interest was generated in making a film and showing the artwork”. From our experience, we see participatory research projects as unique in their ability to grow based on the context, people’s capacity, and the desires of the artists who are leading it, as opposed to the researcher charting the course.

Knowledge Mobilization

Knowledge mobilization is a central component to PAR, as it ensures that communities continue to be the owners of their stories and can inform community change. Meaningful community knowledge mobilization ensures that findings are highly accessible to community, with the purpose to positively transform the lives of participants, communities, and to promote broader change (Melro & Ballantyne, 2022), rather than serve academic interests or individual careers (Ferris et al., 2021).

Following analysis, we moved into our knowledge mobilization phase. Combining two of our project goals — to challenge sex work stigma through public facing art, and to build capacity for creative practice among our community — we also conceptualized a documentary film that captures artists’ experiences and reflections of the project, and their visions of future impact. During the spring and summer of 2024, the research team, CAT members and participants worked with a local filmmaking non-profit to produce a short documentary, “Adventures in Sex Work”. Sex workers developed the story line, shot and starred in the film, and gave direction for final editing. We have so far screened the documentary at two community events, and posted it online, open access, for broadest reach (Figures 8 and 9).

Figure 8.

Screening of our documentary, March 2025

Figure 9.

Community art exhibit, September 2024

In June 2025, we hosted our culminating knowledge mobilization event, an art exhibition and community workshop space. The arts-based submissions were displayed in a local gallery space, and open to the public for an entire week. The opening reception was attended by over 100 community members, including media representatives and local policymakers for the biggest possible impact. We also published and distributed a free catalogue which includes all of the artworks displayed in the gallery. We hope these creative knowledge mobilization projects provide an accessible and engaging format, showcasing the diverse and nuanced experiences of sex workers, with the goal to increase sex worker visibility, challenge stigma, inform better policy and reclaim sex work representation. By having a photographer at the event, and building a project website, we also aim to create an archive of the project. We want our work to live forever. As ASD said in a team meeting, “projects can disappear, and not reach as many people. It’s really important that this is something that will last”.

Inspiring Future Arts-Based Projects

Our goal is that our project archive will provide a model of possibility. By outlining the steps and impact of our arts based participatory research project, we hope other researchers will consider incorporating art and creative expression when working with communities such as sex workers. As well, we hope other sex workers and artists can learn from our project, including under-represented communities of sex workers, and will be inspired to use art as a tool for advocacy and activism.

Challenges

Despite the project’s many successes, we have experienced challenges as a group and as individual artists and members of the project team, including related to participant mental health and overall project timelines and ongoing engagement.

Supporting Artists’ Mental Health

Researchers, as part of PAR studies and beyond, have an obligation to support the emotional safety and mental health needs of everyone involved (Lenette, 2022; Whitney & Evered, 2022). As folks who have experienced criminalization, stigma, and systemic marginalization, arts-based research can be an especially emotional, and sometimes triggering process. When discussing what was most difficult, CAT members reflected on needing mental health support while completing their artwork, “I feel that’s really important to have as a foundation for any of these types of projects because it can bring a lot of trauma or bad experiences or feelings.” Prefacing that participation in the project may cause distress is simply not enough for folks to feel well supported. While our project team includes a PACE counsellor, there were still gaps for folks who needed immediate support.

Timelines and Consistency

In addition to the need for immediate emotional support for artists, we, as members of the project team reflected on the project’s timeline, consistency, and our ability to meet our goals. As EV said, “the length of time it takes to do projects on this scale, even when we are being very consistent, we need a lot of time. It’s very, very intensive. It’s taken a lot of meaningful engagement.” As discussed in existing literate, PAR project are often “problematically restricted by time” (Millar et al., 2024), in which researchers must rush through relationship building and collaborative development in order to meet funding timelines. Conversely, our project has spanned over four years, which is a considerable amount of time for participants and CAT members to stay engaged. One of our concerns has been making sure participants stay updated on the project, to know that progress is being made, and that their efforts have not been forgotten. One approach that has helped relieve this worry, is our knowledge mobilization projects. These smaller term goals and collaborative outputs have offered artists an opportunity to stay in touch with the project, even if it has been years since they completed their individual art submission. We are also lucky that as a team, we are all committed to seeing the project through, and to come together, even if we haven’t met in several months, as we planned for the culminating art gallery event.

Recommendations for Future Arts-Based PAR

Reflecting on our experience, we discussed what is most relevant to share with fellow researchers and community organisers who wish to take up arts-based methods.

Gathering Community Feedback

Most importantly, as described by EV: “I think [gathering community feedback] has been integral to our project and is one of the things that sets it apart from other research I have been a part of — It is super important in any research to have accessible communication of results and meaningful opportunities for community to provide feedback, especially in the context of the Downtown Eastside where research has historically, and in some cases continues to be incredibly extractive”.

Writing this paper together was another way that we were able to dedicate time to reflect on our progress so far, gather feedback, and plan our goals for the future.

Adaptive Funding

Additionally, researchers ought to seek out funding opportunities that allow for an adaptive approach and alternative modes of project reporting. We are keenly aware that much of our project’s success comes from our ability to adapt and grow based on community desire, without fear of repercussions from funders. While not always possible, academics should be aware of funder requirements and seek out funding that honor and encourage adaptive, community-led approaches, and say no to funding opportunities that do not align with community priorities. Alternatively, when confronted with more restrictive funds, academics may leverage their privileged position, and creativity, to strategize ways to share more funds with the community. At minimum, academics must be transparent about funder requirements when proposing community collaborations.

Prioritizing Reciprocity and Generosity

Lastly, funding, and the way funds are allocated, plays a significant role in building reciprocity. Regardless of the funding amount, it can be helpful to budget for and scale the project in a way that a majority of resources can be used to directly support and pay participants and provide community members the arts-based supplies and training they want. Being realistic about funds, while prioritizing an abundance of food, decent stipends, and access to art supplies and training has helped us reduce instances of saying ‘no’ to community desires and goals.

Conclusion

As a group of sex working academics, artists, and community organizers, we hope that our approach and our reflections will help chip away at the researcher/community dichotomy and possibly inspire future arts-based projects led by sex workers and other communities. But, we do not suggest that arts-based methods will speak to everyone. We built a collective of folks who were enthusiastic about learning or practising artistic skills, which supported folks’ commitment to the project. Through collaboration, we worked towards collective goals in which folks saw themselves represented, while trying to meet individual needs along the way. By prioritizing creative, community-centred knowledge mobilization projects, we were able to celebrate our efforts while maintaining momentum to keep moving forward. Still, there remain considerable challenges in enacting PAR, even in our case of existing infrastructure, flexible funding and trust-based relationships between researchers and community members, and arts-based methods introduce additional considerations around anonymity, time commitments, and access to resources. Arts based projects can be done with limited resources, as we can learn from sex worker activism history, so long as the resources serve the needs of community and collective goals.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental Material - Our Hustle, Our Struggle, Our Art: Reflections From an Arts-Based Participatory Research Project With Sex Workers in Vancouver, BC

Supplemental Material for Our Hustle, Our Struggle, Our Art: Reflections From an Arts-Based Participatory Research Project With Sex Workers in Vancouver, BC by Jennie Pearson, Echo Vieira, Alessa Silent Doll, Lady Louise, Iris Seltzer, and Ali AlSharhanee in International Journal of Qualitative Methods

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

We thank all those who contributed their time and expertise to this project, particularly participants, Community Advisory Team members, staff members at PACE Society, and the AESHA team, including Melody Wise, Ran Hu and Dr. Andrea Krüsi. We also thank Peter Vann, Portia Kuivi and Yas Botelho for their research and administrative support.

ORCID iD

Jennie Pearson

Consent to Participate

Informed consent was obtained from all participants involved in the study.

Author Contributions

JP, EV, ASD, LL and IS contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation and data collection were performed by JP and EV. Analysis was done by JP, EV, ASD, LL and IS. The first draft of the manuscript was written by JP and all authors helped revise previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by grants from the Vancouver Foundation and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (PJT-165875). The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Approval provided by the Providence Health Care/University of British Columbia Research Ethics Board (H09-02803).

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

References

Agustín

L. M.

(2006). The conundrum of women’s agency: Migrations and the sex industry. In Sex work now. Willan.

Aldridge

(2015). Participatory research: Working with vulnerable groups in research and practice. Policy Press.

Benoit

Shaver

F. M.

(2006). Critical issues and new directions in sex work research. Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue Canadienne de Sociologie, 43(3), 243–252. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1755-618X.2006.tb02222.x

Berg

(2014). Working for love, loving for work: Discourses of labor in feminist sex-work activism. Feminist Studies, 40(3), 693–721. https://doi.org/10.1353/fem.2014.0045

Blunt

Coombes

Mullin

Wolf

(2020). Posting into the void. Hacking/Hustling. https://hackinghustling.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Posting-Into-the-Void.pdf

Bowen

O’Doherty

(2014). Participant- driven action research (PDAR) with sex workers in Vancouver. In Negotiating sex work: Unintended consequences of policy and activism (pp. 53–74). University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.5749/minnesota/9780816689583.003.0003

Braun

Clarke

(2019). Reflecting on reflexive thematic analysis. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 11(4), 589–597. https://doi.org/10.1080/2159676X.2019.1628806

Brydon-Miller

Kral

Ortiz Aragón

(2020). Participatory action research: International perspectives and practices. International Review of Qualitative Research, 13(2), 103–111. https://doi.org/10.1177/1940844720933225

Coemans

Hannes

(2017). Researchers under the spell of the arts: Two decades of using arts-based methods in community-based inquiry with vulnerable populations. Educational Research Review, 22(1), 34–49. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2017.08.003

10.

Collins

P. H.

(1986). Learning from the outsider within: The sociological significance of Black feminist thought. Social Problems, 33(6), S14–S32. https://doi.org/10.2307/800672

11.

Connelly

Sanders

(2020). Disrupting the boundaries of the academe: Co-creating knowledge and sex work ‘Academic-activism. In Walklate

Fitz-Gibbon

Maher

McCulloch

(Eds.), The emerald handbook of feminism, criminology and social change (pp. 203–218). Emerald Publishing Limited. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-78769-955-720201018

12.

Desyllas

M. C.

(2013). Representations of sex workers’ needs and aspirations: A case for arts-based research. Sexualities, 16(7), 772–787. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460713497214

13.

Durisin

E. M.

(2022). Global White supremacy and anti-trafficking: Race, racism, and the politics of human trafficking. In White supremacy, racism and the coloniality of anti-trafficking. Routledge.

14.

Ferris

Lebovitch

Allard

(2021). Sex work research, ethics review processes, and institutional challenges for “Sensitive” collaborative research. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 20(1), Article 16094069211033437. https://doi.org/10.1177/16094069211033437

15.

Ferris

Lebovtich

(Eds.), (2019). Sex work activism in Canada: Speaking out, standing up. ARP Books. https://arpbooks.org/product/sex-work-activism-in-canada/

16.

Fox

(2018). A sex worker perspective. Porn Studies, 5(2), 197–199. https://doi.org/10.1080/23268743.2018.1434111

17.

Friedman-Rudovsky

(2016). Meet the Thai sex workers fighting for their right to earn a living. VICE. https://www.vice.com/en/article/blow-jobs-are-real-jobs-v23n1/

18.

Frith

(2000). Focusing on sex: Using focus groups in sex research. Sexualities, 3(3), 275–297. https://doi.org/10.1177/136346000003003001

19.

Gilbert

Sewpaul

(2015). Challenging dominant discourses on abortion from a radical feminist standpoint. Affilia, 30(1), 83–95. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886109914549232

20.

Government of Canada, Department of Justice . (2014, December 1). Technical paper: Bill C-36, protection of communities and exploited persons act. https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/other-autre/protect/p1.html

21.

Grittner

A. L.

(2023). “Carefully curated/for heart and soul”: Sensing place identity in sex workplaces. Sexes, 4(4), 4–492. https://doi.org/10.3390/sexes4040031

22.

Jackson

(2008). A participatory group process to analyze qualitative data. Progress in Community Health Partnerships: Research, Education, and Action, 2(2), 161–170. https://doi.org/10.1353/cpr.0.0010

23.

Janes

J. E.

(2016). Democratic encounters? Epistemic privilege, power, and community-based participatory action research. Action Research, 14(1), 72–87. https://doi.org/10.1177/1476750315579129

24.

Kim

S. R.

Goldenberg

S. M.

Duff

Nguyen

Gibson

Shannon

(2015). Uptake of a women-only, sex-work-specific drop-in center and links with sexual and reproductive health care for sex workers. International Journal of Gynaecology & Obstetrics: The Official Organ of the International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics, 128(3), 201–205. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijgo.2014.09.026

25.

Koenig

Murphy

McDermid

Johnston

Knight

Gilbert

Shannon

Krüsi

(2023). Intersecting structural barriers to reporting violence among men and non-binary sex workers under end-demand criminalization in Canada. SSM - Qualitative Research in Health, 4(1), Article 100311. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmqr.2023.100311

26.

Koontz

Duvall

Johnson

Reissman

Smith

(2022). “Nothing about us without us:” engaging at users in at research. Assistive Technology: The Official Journal of RESNA, 34(5), 499–500. https://doi.org/10.1080/10400435.2022.2117524

27.

Krüsi

Chettiar

Ridgway

Abbott

Strathdee

S. A.

Shannon

(2012). Negotiating safety and sexual risk reduction with clients in unsanctioned safer indoor sex work environments: A qualitative study. American Journal of Public Health, 102(6), 1154–1159. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2011.300638

28.

Leigh

(1998). Inventing sex work. In Nagle

(Ed.), Whores and other feminists (p. 312). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203700655

29.

Lenette

(2022). Cultural safety in participatory arts-based research: How can we Do better? Journal of Participatory Research Methods, 3(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.35844/001c.32606

30.

MacDonald

(2020). Sex worker Jamie Lee Hamilton sounded the alarm about Vancouver’s missing women. The Globe and Mail. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/british-columbia/article-sex-worker-jamie-lee-hamilton-sounded-the-alarm-about-vancouvers/

31.

Machat

Shannon

Braschel

Moreheart

Goldenberg

S. M.

(2019). Sex workers’ experiences and occupational conditions post-implementation of end-demand criminalization in Metro Vancouver, Canada. Canadian Journal of Public Health = Revue Canadienne de Sante Publique, 110(5), 575–583. https://doi.org/10.17269/s41997-019-00226-z

32.

Mann

(2013, September 24). Just say no: Why you shouldn’t study sex work in school. Autocannibal. https://autocannibalism.wordpress.com/2013/09/24/just-say-no-why-you-shouldnt-study-sex-work-in-school/

33.

McBride

Goldenberg

S. M.

Murphy

Shannon

Krusi

(2022). Protection or police harassment? Impacts of punitive policing, discrimination, and racial profiling under end-demand laws among im/migrant sex workers in Metro Vancouver. SSM. Qualitative Research in Health, 2(9918300877606676), 100048. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmqr.2022.100048

34.

Medina

(2013). The epistemology of resistance: Gender and racial oppression, epistemic injustice, and the social imagination. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199929023.001.0001

35.

Melro

C. M.

Ballantyne

C. T.

(2022). Decolonising community-based participatory research: Applying arts-based methods to transformative learning spaces. In Liamputtong

(Ed.), Handbook of qualitative cross-cultural research methods. Edward Elgar Publishing. https://www.elgaronline.com/edcollchap/book/9781800376625/book-part-9781800376625-27.xml.

36.

Millar

Volonterio

Cabral

Peša

Levick-Parkin

(2024). Participatory action research in neoliberal academia: An uphill struggle. Qualitative Research, 25(2), 14687941241259979. https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941241259979

37.

Mkandawire-Valhmu

Stevens

P. E.

(2010). The critical value of focus group discussions in research with women living with HIV in Malawi. Qualitative Health Research, 20(5), 684–696. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732309354283

38.

Munday

(2014). The practice of feminist focus groups. In Hesse-Biber

S. N.

Hesse-Biber

S. N.

(Eds.), Feminist research practice: A primer (2nd ed.). Sage Publications, Inc.

39.

NSWP . (2014). Sex work and the law: Understanding legal frameworks and the struggle for sex work. https://www.nswp.org/resource/nswp-publications/sex-work-and-the-law-understanding-legal-frameworks-and-the-struggle-sex

40.

Pearson

Shannon

McBride

Krusi

Machat

Braschel

Goldenberg

(2022). Sex work community participation in criminalized environments: A community-based cohort study of occupational health impacts in Vancouver, Canada: 2010-2019. International Journal for Equity in Health, 21(1), 18. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12939-022-01621-8

41.

Phillips

Christensen-Strynø

M. B.

Frølunde

(2022). Arts-based co-production in participatory research: Harnessing creativity in the tension between process and product. Evidence & Policy, 18(2), 391–411. https://doi.org/10.1332/174426421X16445103995426

42.

Platt

Grenfell

Meiksin

Elmes

Sherman

S. G.

Sanders

Mwangi

Crago

A.-L.

(2018). Associations between sex work laws and sex workers’ health: A systematic review and meta-analysis of quantitative and qualitative studies. PLoS Medicine, 15(12), Article e1002680. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1002680

43.

Povee

Bishop

B. J.

Roberts

L. D.

(2014). The use of photovoice with people with intellectual disabilities: Reflections, challenges and opportunities. Disability & Society, 29(6), 893–907. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2013.874331

44.

Raguparan

(2017). “If I′m gonna hack capitalism”: Racialized and Indigenous Canadian sex workers’experiences within the Neo-liberal market economy. Women’s Studies International Forum, 60(1), 69–76. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2016.12.003

45.

Savloff

(2022). Putas y discas: Sex work activism and disability justice in Argentina. Disability Studies Quarterly, 42(2), 2. https://doi.org/10.18061/dsq.v42i2.9111

46.

Scheim

A. I.

Santos

Ciavarella

Vermilion

Arps

F. S. E.

Adams

Nation

Bauer

G. R.

(2023). Intersecting inequalities in access to justice for trans and non-binary sex workers in Canada. Sexuality Research and Social Policy, 20(3), 1245–1257. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13178-023-00795-2

47.

Shimei

(2022). “Though we are often invisible, we are always taking care of each other”: Mutual aid among sex workers. In Sanders

McGarry

Ryan

(Eds.), Sex work, labour and relations: New directions and reflections (pp. 291–314). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04605-6_12

48.

Sitter

K. C.

Grittner

A. L.

Fritz

Burke

A. C.

Ophus

(2022). Exploring the role of place in sex work through participant photography. Sexualities, 27(1–2), 13634607221088150. https://doi.org/10.1177/13634607221088150

49.

Smith

Mac

(2018). Revolting prostitutes: The fight for sex workers’ rights. Verso Books.

50.

Strand

K. M.

(2003). Principles of best practice for community-based research. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 9(3), 5–15. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.3239521.0009.301.

51.

Switzer

Flicker

(2021). Visualizing DEPICT: A multistep model for participatory analysis in photovoice research for social change. Health Promotion Practice, 22(2_suppl), 50S–65S. https://doi.org/10.1177/15248399211045017

52.

SWUAV Board Members . (2019). Pick the time and get some women together: Organizing as the downtown Eastside sex workers United Against Violence Society. In Ferris

Lebovtich

(Eds.), Sex work activism in Canada: Speaking out, standing up (pp. 171–238). ARP Books.

53.

Teti

Schatz

(2025). Thinking outside the researcher: The imaginative rewards of participatory analysis. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 24(1), Article 16094069251353351. https://doi.org/10.1177/16094069251353351

54.

Urban Justice Center . (2023). Research guide: Conducting ethical research on the sex trades. https://swp.urbanjustice.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/14/2023/03/SWP-Research-Guide-2023.3.17.pdf

55.

Varcoe

Brown

Calam

Buchanan

Newman

(2011). Capacity building is a two-way street: Learning from doing research within Aboriginal communities. In Creese

Frisby

(Eds.), Feminist community research—case studies and methodologies (pp. 210–231). UBC Press. https://www.ubcpress.ca/feminist-community-research

56.

Wang

Burris

M. A.

(1994). Empowerment through photo novella: Portraits of participation. Health Education Quarterly, 21(2), 171–186. https://doi.org/10.1177/109019819402100204

57.

Webber

(2022). Epistemic injustice and public health policy: The case of occupational health in porn production. Memorial University of Newfoundland. https://www.academia.edu/71555648/Epistemic_Injustice_and_Public_Health_Policy_The_Case_of_Occupational_Health_In_Porn_Production

58.

Whitney

Evered

J. A.

(2022). The qualitative research distress protocol: A participant-centered tool for navigating distress during data collection. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 21(1), Article 16094069221110317. https://doi.org/10.1177/16094069221110317

59.

Yanar

Z. M.

Fazli

Rahman

Farthing

(2016). Research ethics committees and participatory action research with young people: The politics of voice. Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics: JERHRE, 11(2), 122–128. https://doi.org/10.1177/1556264616650114

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.26 MB