What if you didn’t feel welcome in the city you live in? What if you didn’t feel comfortable, or even safe, going into stores or taking transit? What if, wherever you went, you felt like people were staring at you?
For many of us, that kind of alienation is hard to imagine, but for many people with intellectual disabilities, it’s a part of everyday life.
Now, a short documentary film – part of a research project led by McMaster’s Ann Fudge Schormans – is providing a unique glimpse into the lives of adults with intellectual disabilities living in Toronto and is exploring ways to make the city a more welcoming place.
My Life in the City, screening at the ReelAbilities Film Festival on May 13, follows adults labelled with intellectual disabilities as they share stories, ideas, and a vision for a more inclusive Toronto.
The film grew out of a research project led by Fudge Schormans and co-investigator Rob Wilton, associate professor and director of McMaster’s School of Geography and Earth Sciences, who for the past three years have been working with adults with intellectual disabilities to map their use of spaces in Toronto.
“We wanted to find out how these adults actually live in their communities,” says Fudge Schormans, who along with her research team, worked with 12 adults with intellectual disabilities.
They accompanied the adults on journeys through the city using GPS/GIS technologies, iPads, and cameras to map and capture the spaces they use in their day-to-day lives. Researchers then conducted a series of interviews and workshops using drama-based exercises to find out what they thought about being a person with an intellectual disability living in Toronto.
“We wanted to understand, where do they go? What do they do? Who do they see? Who do they talk to and engage with? Do they feel safe? Who gets to make the decisions about where they go? And are there other places they would rather go? The point of this research was to find that out,” says Fudge Schormans.