“Safety Lenses”: An Exhibition from the Community Voices on News Coverage of Police Violence Project

This proposal supports two phases of an art exhibit that brings attention to police violence as a source of public health inequity. Policing practices in Canada have long caused disproportionate harm and can extend to secondary health impacts caused by media exposure to violence. For over two decades, public health scholars in the U.S. have used a public health framing to improve understandings of health outcomes of, and the data that is collected on, police violence. This data is vital to track policing impacts, so if Canadians hope to understand the health outcomes related to police violence, Canadian health scholars will need to advocate for better information tracing and a public health approach to police violence. This proposal will support a community co-created art exhibit that examines health impacts of media exposure to police violence. The show will feature co-created works, an interactive mural, an infographic public report on the health impacts of police violence, a workshop, and a panel discussion with public health scholars. The in-person art exhibit will take place at Gallery Gachet in Fall 2024, the eight (8) subsequent presentations will share the findings to health and media scholars throughout B.C. and Ontario.