parkdale CHC

I will be examining the Parkdale Community Health Centre, particularly with regard to its art programs. I will be looking at the potential strengths and weaknesses as well as examining the histories and meanings of both the Parkdale Neighbourhood and the Community Healthcare system. I will be positing the notion that art plays a vital role in healthcare and is particularly appropriate in the Parkdale community.

The Parkdale Community Healthcare Centre is one satellite of the Community Health Centre system. CHCs are located throughout Ontario to provide health-related services in ways that meet the needs of the communities in which they are located. The Parkdale CHC provides Parkdale with "responsive, accessible, and innovative services to address primary healthcare needs." (see Parkdale CHC website) "Primary healthcare needs" in this instance refers not just to physical health, or more specifically, treatment of physical diseases, but also"biological, socio-cultural, psychological, and environmental aspects..." within people's "respective socio-economic realities." As such Parkdale CHC's programming includes not only anonymous HIV testing, needle exchanges, and infant hearing screening clinics (although it does include those as well) but also an English Conversation Circle (for those new to the language) a Queer Parents' group, and, of course, lots of art programs.

Is art a component of primary healthcare? Jan Cohen-Cruz says, "Art can put people in touch with their desire...Art has the capacity for reflection and exploration of what one individual or group wants." (Cohen-Cruz, 2002)" Most people recognize that there is a psychological component to health. Some see a division between physicial health and psychological health while others are of the belief that mind and body are not entirely separate. In that context, art would certainly be an important component of primary healthcare needs because of its vital role in the health of the individuals who produce it and those around who are affected by it. Art can express emotions that are difficult to express explicitly. Trinh T. Minh-Ha says, "To write is to communicate, express, witness, impose, instruct, redeem, or save- at any rate to send out an unambiguous message...Obscurity is an imposition on the reader. True, but beware when you cross railroad tracks for one train may hide another train...To write "clearly," one must incessantly prune, eliminate, forbid, purge, purify..."(Trinh T. Minh-Ha, Woman Native Other, pp16-17)

Why did I decide to focus on the Parkdale CHC? I am interested in the concept of CHCs. They are a province-wide phenomenon with different regional sites offering programs to meet the needs of their respective communities. CHCs can serve as comfortable and non-judgemental places where people from all walks of life can go to get various needs met. In some communities they also serve a community hub where people can meet and lots of different community programming takes place. As an aspiring Community Arts Practitioner I am supportive of any organization that recoginzes the complex and multifaceted aspects of health promotion. Mind and body cannot be completely separate and nor can individuals from their communities.

Why did I choose the Parkdale CHC instead of any other CHC in the province of Ontario? Parkdale is a neighbourhood in Toronto that I am familiar with and also one with a history that interests me. Initially a desirable Western suburb of Toronto, Parkdale has seen many changes over the years. After World War Two, an expressway was constructed that separated the residential part of the neighbourhood from the lake and its beachside component. Also, the Queen St. Mental Health Centre (now a site of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health) is located just east of Parkdale. In the nineteen-seventies the Mental Health system began to move from an isolated and institutionally-based model of care to a more community-based approach. This drastically affected the neighbourhoods surrounding the Mental Health Centre, of which Parkdale was one. The stigma surrounding the Mental Health industry meant that Parkdale was no longer a desirable neighbourhood. The property values dropped and the area was accessible to people whose incomes were low for many reasons. New Canadians, substance users, and Mental Health system consumers resided together, sharing nothing except their marginalization. In recent years Parkdale has become gentrified. The large Victorian houses that once made it desirable are now desirable again. However this will not erase layers and layers of history that tells a story of marginalization. This makes art all the more appropriate in Parkdale because as Minh-Ha and Cohen Cruz posit, art has an important place in the telling of alternate histories and marginalized realities.

One potential pitfall of a Community Art Program at the Parkdale CHC? Since the word "health" is present in the organization's title, there is always the issue of different interpretations of "health." Some practitioners in various elements of the healthcare system possess a limited notion of what "health" is and believe that any work done in the healthcare system must have the aim of eventually getting people to reform to this notion. At one time, homosexuality was viewed as a Mental Illness, for example. Perhaps there are many other aspects of human experience that are now cast with the same shadow but will not be forever. It is my belief that community art programs should aim to allow all members of a community to express themselves as they are. I recall a lecture from last semester where a community artist by the name of Sau-Wai Tai distinguished herself from an "art therapist" in fact by saying that the latter works from a framework of making people "well" whereas community artists work more towards personal expression and actualization. I think it is important, whenever undertaking a project aimed to "help" people, that one is constantly making sure they are not just furthering the stigma that contributes to the marginalization and isolation. I have been heartened to see the diversity of programs offered through the Parkdale CHC which indicates a diversity of acceptance rather than a being "well" model.

Essentially, I chose to focus on the Parkdale CHC because, as a Community Health Centre located in Parkdale, it helps to tell this story of marginalization, of the possible coherence of a seemingly incoherent community, of alternative histories, and of a more holistic model of health.

References

Cohen-Cruz, Jan. An Introduction to Community Art and Activism. Community Arts Network Reading Room, 2002.

http://www.aohc.org

http://dev.metastrategies.com/PCHC/news/show.cfm?news_id=12

http://www.torontoneighbourhoods.net

Tai, Sau-Wai. Lecture. 2007.

Trinh T. Minh-Ha. Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989.