From This Is My City:

“This is My City does not pretend to be a solution to the homeless crisis. Rather, the project intends to enable homeless citizens the chance to speak on their own behalf.”

It’s easy when we’re talking about harm reduction to stick to the straight and narrow: medical services, shelter, education, counselling. But there’s another venue that can help build confidence and provide an outlet for people who have felt marginalised, powerless or disconnected. Wesley puts it well in his latest film:

Music provided me a way to express the emotions that I felt and kept bottled inside; the emotions that basically were the destruction of myself. I got it out on paper and then I got it out on track and turned it into music

Art can provide a powerful outlet for self-expression in a way that sometimes even one-on-one counselling can’t provide. Art therapy as a practice isn’t new, but there’s a growing movement of providing art courses, workshops and training to homeless and at-risk youth. This isn’t simply restricted to the classical fine arts either – it includes new media, film, photography and music too. And just it case it isn’t obvious – Playing It Safe falls squarely in that group too! Here’s a list of some of the diverse programs being offered across the country. Have any that aren’t on the list? Post them in the comment section below!

Homeless Nation: http://www.homelessnation.org/
Sketch: http://www.sketch.ca/
Troisième oeil/Third Eye: http://www.itineraire.ca/magdvd/
Art from the streets: http://www.artfromthestreets.com/
Streetwise Opera http://www.streetwiseopera.org/
Cardboard Citizens: http://www.cardboardcitizens.org.uk/

Briony has been living through some major life changes, not the least being her switch to a methadone treatment to try and get off heroine. While just that switch is major, she wasn’t expecting the emotions that come with it. In her latest film, follow as she moves away from heroine, into a new home, and comes face to face with emotions she has been trying to numb.

Geography and location has a significant impact on our actions & habits, sometimes much more than we think. When Dan arrived in Vancouver, he started creating his own map of where he wanted to be, both geographically and personally. In his latest video, Dan walks us through his map and how he sees Vancouver today.

What maps do you create for yourself? How do you interact with your city?

The debate between the effectiveness of punishment versus rehabilitation is a difficult one. Many, though, believe simple punishment, including jail time, needs to be reconsidered, particularly among young people. Programs emphasizing community, reflection, education and treatment have proliferated.

One such program is the Edmonton Drug Treatment & Community Restoration Court, commonly known as Drug Court. According to the EDTCRC website, the ‘principles behind this program include recognized drug treatment court concepts, the concept of problem-solving courts, and restorative justice.’ It provides a venue for communication, treatment, reflection and forgoes simple incarceration.

A central tenet of Drug Court is community justice. Again from the EDTCRC:

[Community justice] can take many forms, but at its core, community justice is about partnership and problem-solving. It’s about creating new relationships, both within the justice system and with outside stakeholders like social service agencies, NGOs, hospitals and clinics, residents, merchants, churches and schools. And it’s about testing new approaches to public safety.

Growing up, Wesley found himself in and out of foster homes, constantly searching for himself, and also ending up in and out of jail. But ending up at Drug Court helped him turn things around. Wesley tells his story above, in his latest Playing It Safe film, The Graduate.

What do you think about Drug Court and alternative judicial systems?

There is no room for melodrama. Instead, these young people are proud, courageous and generous in sharing their daily struggle to stay safe and alive. The testimonies are touching, profoundly human and highly inspiring.

Alain Assailly on Playing It Safe on The Source website. Read this great interview with peer filmmakers Hywel Tuscano and Renaud Boulet here.

Three new films are up on the site:

• Methadone, by Dan
• Someone Beautiful, by Lulu
• Aging Out, by Briony

‘Aging out’ is the video above; the quote in the title comes from it too. At 29 years old, Briony can hardly believe she’s been on the streets for 15 years. Lately she’s found support at Vancouver’s YouthCo, but she is worried about what will happen when she ‘ages out,’ and hits 30 when she is no longer considered a youth in many programs.

As she and partner Chase try to find a way off the street, though, they come face to face with preconceptions and stereotypes. Even after signing a lease and movning in, they find themselves evicted by a landlady who believes they would ‘be more at home on Hastings Street’ in the DTES. It raises the troubling question that while their lease should clearly stand, when you have been on the streets, are dealing with addiction, and the cards are stacked against you, who do you turn too for recourse in these types of situations?

There are plenty of groups trying to provide that kind of support. On the front page of the blog, under ‘Resources’, we’ve been posting some of them. It isn’t comprehensive, and we’d like your help. Post a comment below with the name and website of any organisations you think should be listed too.

Lulu’s second film, As the Moment Passes, is now up. In it, Lulu is up front and clear about where is she coming from and where she wants to be headed: she has struggled with addiction and was homeless for a period; at the time of filming this latest video, she was clean 11 months, had an apartment and was back in school.

Her path hasn’t been an easy one, as her latest piece shows her struggle to find community and support as she moved off drugs and dealt with her HIV-positive status. Lulu is from the Nisga’a First Nation now living in Vancouver, and is also transgender; as she related in her previous film, Lulu had just begun hormone therapy as Playing It Safe began.

Her route, like each of us, is a personal one. But she also faces a shared reality with many trans people, who can face stigmatisation that often leads to isolation, substance abuse, depression, and transphobic harassment and/or violence. This is particularly clear among youth. A recent study by Egale Canada found that, at school:

• Nine out of ten transgender students were verbally harassed, and almost two in five reported being physically harassed, because of their expression of gender.
• Three-quarters of LGBTQ students and 95% of transgender students felt unsafe at school, compared to one-fifth of straight students.
• Transgender students (over a third) were twice as likely as LGB students to strongly agree that they sometimes feel very depressed about their school that they do not belong there, and four times as likely as straight students.

Outside of school, trans-phobia and related violence are as great a concern. Nov. 20th is the annual Transgender Day of Rememberance for victims of transphobic violence, which is still rarely discussed. Numbers are hard to come by in Canada because hate crime studies ask for sexual orientation or gender, but do not specifically explore transphobic related violence. And to date only the Northwest Territories explicitly lists gender identity in their charter of rights. A recent report, though, warns violence against transpeople around the world may be on the rise.

This violence and stigmatisation has clear impacts, putting transpeople at greater risks in other areas. One study (PDF) found 18 per cent of trans youth in Chicago were homeless. An article in the Spring 2008 issue of The Positive Side found there’s growing recoginition and resources of transgendered people dealing with HIV positive status and AIDS. The piece presents an extensive list of resources across the country, including many for trans youth like Vancouver’s The Centre, AlbertaTrans.org, Toronto’s 519 Church Stree Community Centre, Montreal’s Project 10 and Halifax’s The Youth Project.

Lulu has found her own support through YouthCo in Vancouver, and is now studying to upgrade her coursework so she can become a Pharmaceutical Technician. You can watch all of Lulu’s films here.

Like me, you probably haven’t – most people would never have a reason too.

At the same time, you’ve probably heard a lot about it, and maybe formed your own opinion about the safe injection site in Vancouver. InSite has sparked the debate across the country about harm reduction methods, like providing clean needles and a safe place for drug injection alongside social, educational and health resources.

In a new episode this week, Dan brings us inside InSite with his short film, Safe Side. Dan credits the organisation with helping him kick heroine and to restart methadone treatments, and he wants to show people what it is like inside. It’s empty when the camera rolls in, for obvious reasons, but the film is still powerful in it’s simplicity: just by allowing people to see what it looks like inside can help dispel myths about what takes place in a safe injection area and brings home the message that it is a clinic, a social service and a community centre rolled into one.

Take a look:

Five other new films online this week, including another piece from Dan, and videos from John & Lacey, Lulu, Briony, and Erica. We’ll be posting more about some of these stories in the coming days.

Folks in Edmonton can catch all the films this Wednesday, October 21st, at 7pm at the Metro Cinema, at the Zeidler Hall in the Citadel Theatre complex, 9828 – 101A Ave. It’s the official Edmonton launch, and you’ll be able to meet and speak with some of the filmmakers and enjoy live music. Entrance is free and there will be refreshments on hand.

Here’s Wes’ first video, My Music, My Life, My Passion: