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Where do we find ourselves. ~Emerson 

 
 
 
 
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Café Photovoice Participatory Action Research

 

My deepest intention for entering the social work field was to take my passion for art and creativity to a connected, healing, and regenerative place.

Café Photovoice Participant Three

©Graphic Design by Kayla McGowan

©Graphic Design by Kayla McGowan

 

Photograph by Shelita Birchett Benash, MSW. Photovoice Permanent Participant Exhibition at the Bowen Center, Participant Three.

 

Cafe Photovoice, social work researchers, interviewing Participants One and Two via Zoom in 2021. Typically, Photovoice study participants meet together in person with the researchers to talk about their photographs and stories of lived experiences. However, The Bowen Center’s IT team created pods compliant with COVID-19 health and safety regulations during the pandemic, which allowed the researcher and participants to meet via Zoom. Julissa Adames-Torres, LCSW, Ph.D. Candidate, and Shelita Birchett Benash, MSW/interdisciplinary artist, Adelphi.

“Creativity in social work cultivates the need for embodied revolutionizing, action-focused possibilities to contribute new ways of understanding and knowing” (Huss, 2019)

©Shelita Birchett Benash, MSW/interdisciplinary artist, Cafe Photovoice Permanent Participant Exhibition, Emma L. Bowen Community Service Center, Harlem, NY 2022.

I think it would be a good place (the Café Photovoice Virtual Exhibition website) for social workers actually—Like before they talk to their clients. If they went and took a look at the perspective of the patient before…Or if they had it (Café Photovoice Virtual Exhibition) as part of their training. Something like that, to look at patient concepts of care and the different fields—So, even though it’s not their particular person, they have a concept of how patients feel, but are not necessarily able to express.” ~Participant Five

Cafe Photovoice Permanent Participant Exhibition Virtual Opening, October 28, 2023, Emma L. Community Service Center and Adelphi University School of Social Work.

Cafe Photovoice Permanent Exhibition Participants featured in a specially produced interview for the Emma L. Bowen Community Service Center Gala, 2023. Interviewed by Shelita Birchett Benash, starts at 50.39-1:06

Shelita Birchett Benash, Oral Presentation at the Annual Creativity and Research Conference, Adelphi University School of Social Work, 2022.

©Café Photovoice Participatory Research project participant orientation presentation with Julissa Adames-Torres, LCSW, Ph.D. Candidate. Shelita Birchett Benash, MSW/interdisciplinary artist, created the presentation's photography tips, creativity, and safety slides. Julissa translated the entire slide show into corresponding Spanish language slides for the participants.