Portraits of Resilience:
Enriching resilience and vulnerability metrics with mapped qualitative data in historically marginalized communities

Friday, November 14, 2025 @ 2 PM ET/1 PM CT/12 noon MT/ 11 AM PT

Photovoice has emerged as a powerful participatory method for understanding sources of resilience in marginalized communities, offering a platform for those traditionally excluded from research to share their lived experiences. This study employs mapping, photovoice (Wang & Burris, 1997), and grounded theory (Glaser, Strauss, & Strutzel, 1968) methodologies to identify sources of risk and resilience in historically marginalized and disadvantaged communities in Indianapolis’ Far Eastside, Martindale–Brightwood, Arlington Woods, and Near Eastside communities. Over a four-week period in March of 2025, participants in this study captured photographs (n = 200) and accompanying reflections guided by the photovoice SHOWeD Method to add meaning to their photos. Following data collection, participants participated in one-on-one interviews with researchers and engaged in a group photovoice listening session to analyze and reflect on sources of risk and resilience captured in their photographs. Participants identified access to food, accessible spaces, green spaces, faith-based communities, intentional design, local businesses, neighborhood engagement, and social infrastructure as sources of community resilience; and abandoned buildings, distrust of movement, Infrastructure mobility challenges, physical renewal not being matched by social investment, risk of abandonment and vacancy, and unfinished intentions as sources of community risk. This study imparts important implications for policy and practice in disadvantaged urban communities by identifying sources of community resilience, providing insights into risks that policymakers have overlooked, and enriching vulnerability and resilience challenges spatial data designed to assist policymakers to build resilient communities.

Portraits of Resilience A media piece that features the Portraits of Resilience exhibition in May of this year: "Hope and resilience: Indy artists photograph the east side: Four Indy artists participated in Portraits of Resilience, an IU Indianapolis research project." 

Moderator:
Kevin Mickey, GISP, Director Professional Development and Geospatial Technologies Education, The Polis Center, Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering

Speaker: 
Dr. Courtney Page-Tan, Assistant Professor of Public Affairs and Community Resilience, O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at IU Indianapolis

This webinar will be recorded. 

Register for the webinar HERE.