Community Driven

We sought to get to the heart of our day-to-day experience.

Finding Our Strength survey was a community-led initiative by and for the trans/gender diverse community.

Our community has had to find our own way. In doing so, we have found strength. We shared these messages of resilience, communicated through data visuals, graphical art, responses from the community, and monochromatic portraits.

The Survey

Finding Our Strength was Transcend’s first venture into research, which followed a community-driven approach to its design, methods, objectives, recruitment, analysis, interpretation, and dissemination. What resulted was robust, dynamic dissemination of key findings with the trans/gender diverse community, healthcare professionals, families, LGBTQIA+ peoples, and beyond.

Translating the findings into action, FOS has informed community care programs, educated healthcare professionals, fostered ally training, inspired continued research initiatives, published in peer-reviewed journals, and presented nationally, regionally, and locally.

Research specs:

  • Cross-sectional, mixed methods survey
  • Field of study from June 2016 to early November 2016
  • Implemented a minority stress framework
  • Examined daily experiences of stress and worry about discrimination
  • Explored gender journey across multiple “milestones” along with facilitators and barriers to self-actualizing gender identity
  • Investigated coping responses and self-reported effectiveness

Lead Collaborators

Brayden A. Misiolek (he/they) as the primary author of the text-based copy
Daniel A. Herrle (he/him) as the primary creative for visual design.

Mx. Brayden Misiolek (he/they) led the identification of key messages and was responsible for the development of text-based copy. Throughout the design process, he facilitated review sessions among community members, creatives, researchers, and Transcend care team members. He translated feedback from these discussions into functional design requirements, partnering closely with Mr. Daniel Herrle (he/him), Director of the Transcend creative team). Mx. Misiolek offered illustrations and outlines of how to present the research data in an engaging and accessible way for Mr. Herrle to improve through visual communication. They collaborated closely to execute this vision and create the exhibit panels.

More acknowledgements of efforts of all involved parties in the development of our research and exhibits are referenced in the concluding panel, listed alphabetically

In the News

 

Trans-Led Organization Debuts Research-Meets-Art Gallery at Affirmations: Local Leaders, T/GNC Community Praise Findings, Cultivation of a Safe Space
Pride Source, 2018

Finding Our Strength: Transcending the Binary
University of Michigan Institute for Social Research, 2019

Finding Our Strength: Community-Based Research with a Trans Population
Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science

On Tour

  •  Pittmann-Puckett Gallery,  Affirmations LGBTQ Community Center, November 2017 – January 2018
  • Special Pride Exhibition, Pittmann-Pucket Gallery, Affirmations LGBTQ+ Community Center, May 2018 – August 2018.
  • Oakland University requested a pop-up exhibit to commemorate the Trans Day of Remembrance in 2018.
  • Invited pop-up exhibit and dissemination lecture at the University of Michigan Institute of Social Research in 2019.

If you have accessibility needs such as screen-reader compatible image descriptions (graphical elements and text of messages and data), or color adjustments for enhancements for clarity, please email our team at accessibility@transcendthebinary.org and we will do our absolute best to accommodate your needs.

About The Survey
An audio-visual experience

Headspace is an audio-visual motion graphic sharing qualitative responses from the Finding Our Strength survey.

The voices you hear are community members who volunteered as voice actors. Each person chose the survey responses they wished to record considering what responated with them.

Community members were involved throughout the entire process from recording to post-production and final editing. Editing was limited to sound quality clean up, and determing the sequence of the qualitative responses based on a narrative progression. All responses were left intact to preservee the themes from the survey. In other words, these are direct quotes from survey respondents.

We created immersive experiences:

We installed Headspace as a large flatscreen tv with headphones to engage wth the audio, while the visual elements played on loop. In another exhibit, we dedicated a listening room to Headspace. Guests coud sit on lounge chairs in the darkened room as Headspace was projected onto a large format screen, along with speakers.

HEADSPACE

Who We Are
Community Portraits

Monochromatic portraits were interspersed throughout the art-meets-research exhibition. 

Members of the trans and gender diverse community signed up for portraits provided to them, pro bono. Portraits of our authentic selves are valuable and affirming. 

An option was provided to consent for their photographs to be used in the Sharing Our Strength exhibition.  

Support System
Discrimination
Watch. Avoid.
Cope
How do you cope?

A demonstrative accompanies the following panel to prompt guests to reflect on how they cope.

A board visually mapped out each of the coping activities from our survey as a grid. Each coping activity was represented by a peg and labeled. String was available for guests to wrap around the pegs – connecting their coping responses with string. Differently colored strings were available, each one corresponding to emotion (e.g., the purple string represents feeling sad, the yellow string represents feeling worried, the red string represents feeling angry, etc.). Over the course of the exhibit, an aggregated visualization represented all of the guests who participated in reflecting on how they cope.

Coping in Healthcare
Gender Journey
Build a Gender Journey

 

A demonstrative accompanies the following panel for guests to interact with and reflect on the prompt What is gained? What is lost?

Each milestone is represented by a slider which could be moved horizontally to correspond with a given age. We included an age range that encompasses respondents’ age at the time of taking the survey (up to 70 years old).

 

What is gained? What is lost?
Dedicated to Action

promotion materials

Initial exhibit from November 2017 to January 2018 showcasing key findings from Finding Our Strength (2016). 

 

event posters

Transcend’s Creative, Communication & Outreach team developed incredible materials promoting Sharing Our Strength exhibition. 

mixed media

We produced a promotional video for social media and our website. We included qualitative responses (not found in Headspace) and included key stats from Finding Our Strength.

The video was for the special, extended Pride exhibit at Affirmations from May to August 2018.

monochromatic portraits

Thank you to our community

Thank you to all the talented artists who celebrated the launch of Sharing Our Strength exhibition through storytelling, music, and spoken word.

Thank you to all the talented artists who celebrated the launch of Sharing Our Strength exhibition through storytelling, music, and spoken word.

Thank you to all the talented artists who celebrated the launch of Sharing Our Strength exhibition through storytelling, music, and spoken word.

Thank you to all the talented artists who celebrated the launch of Sharing Our Strength exhibition through storytelling, music, and spoken word.

Thank you to all the talented artists who celebrated the launch of Sharing Our Strength exhibition through storytelling, music, and spoken word.

Thank you to all the talented artists who celebrated the launch of Sharing Our Strength exhibition through storytelling, music, and spoken word.

launch party

Promoting our initial launch of the exhibit from Finding Our Strength (2016), which we called Sharing Our Strength.

event posters

Transcend’s Creative, Communication & Outreach team developed incredible materials promoting Sharing Our Strength exhibition.