Beyond the Map

Conceptual Framing and Rationale

Service navigation is often understood as finding and accessing services. Yet people’s experiences of navigation may also involve relationships, transitions, gaps in support, and the work of making sense of complex systems over time. A focus on lived experience can reveal dimensions of navigation that may not be apparent in service maps or conventional descriptions of system needs.

This study brings together digital storytelling and philosophical hermeneutics. The extended process of creating a story gives participants time to reflect on what matters to them and express experience through words, images, music, and metaphor. When the stories are shared, they can prompt further reflection and conversation. Understanding may emerge as participants encounter experiences that resonate with, differ from, or challenge their own.

Research Question and Objectives

The study asks: How might we deepen our understanding of the lived experience of navigating neurodevelopmental disability services across the life course through the conversations that emerge when participants encounter and respond to one another’s digital stories?

It aims to illuminate how individuals and caregivers understand meaningful moments, relationships, challenges, and transitions in their navigation journeys; explore how new understandings emerge through shared story encounters; and identify implications for person-centred navigation services across diverse communities.

Methodology

Twelve participants will take part in two digital storytelling workshops, with six participants in each workshop. Participants will be recruited across four communities involved in the broader Partnership Grant: Indigenous communities across Alberta, newcomer communities in northeast Calgary, northern and remote communities in and around Wood Buffalo, and urban Edmonton.

Each workshop will involve approximately 20–24 hours of facilitated and independent reflection, story development, and production. Participants will create short first-person digital stories, then take part in a facilitated screening and discussion. The stories and recorded screening conversations will be interpreted together through philosophical hermeneutics, with attention to how meaning develops through particular stories, group dialogue, and the wider context of service navigation.

Significance and Contribution

The study treats navigation as a relational and temporal experience, shaped by people’s lives, communities, and encounters with services. It extends digital storytelling research by examining both the creation of stories and the conversations that arise when people encounter one another’s stories.

As a study nested within a larger partnership, it will complement other Year 2 activities by bringing carefully developed first-person accounts into conversations about the components, processes, and supports that make navigation meaningful and effective.

Anticipated Outcomes

The project is expected to produce approximately 12 participant-created digital stories, two facilitated screening discussions, and a hermeneutic interpretation of the stories and conversations. It will generate narrative-informed insights to support the Partnership Grant’s subsequent World Cafés, Community of Practice, and service co-design activities. Peer-reviewed scholarship and community-facing knowledge-mobilization materials will be developed, with any story sharing guided by participants’ consent and approval.