Centering QTBIPOC Cyclists: Arts-based Qualitative Research

The Journey Lines zine demonstrates an arts-based qualitative research process that invited QTBIPOC cyclists to self-represent through multimedia contributions, according to spacing.ca.

• The Journey Lines project launched in spring 2025 and paired a print zine with a participatory launch event, according to spacing.ca, with the published article appearing on July 23, 2026.
• The co-editors paid contributors $150 each to create work for the zine, according to spacing.ca, which the editors named as necessary for ethical participatory practice.
• The zine emphasized safety, mutual care, and cross-movement solidarity as recurring themes across contributors, according to spacing.ca.

What happened: According to spacing.ca, three co-editors (Rachel Wang, Sylver Sterling, and Jess Nachman) produced the Journey Lines zine to center QTBIPOC cycling narratives.

How it worked: According to spacing.ca, the team secured a LUSH Charity Pot grant over a year before the launch and used those funds to pay contributors $150 each, which the editors said was essential to meaningful participation.

Participation and formats: According to spacing.ca, contributions included written essays, visual art, linocut prints, and a soundscape accessed via QR code, and the in-person launch in spring 2025 used a "fireside" co-creation format to make contributors collaborators rather than subjects.

Constraints and ethics: According to spacing.ca, the editors designed the project to avoid extractive research practices by inviting contributors to co-create the event and by paying them, and the editors emphasized mutual care when sensitive topics such as violence and policing were shared.

Arts-based projects should treat contributors as co-creators: According to spacing.ca, the Journey Lines editors framed contributors as collaborators in planning the launch and design.

Compensate contributors to reduce extraction: According to spacing.ca, paying $150 per contributor enabled the editors to attract and ethically engage artists who might otherwise be excluded.

Design multimodal data collection deliberately: According to spacing.ca, Journey Lines included text, image, printmaking, and sound, which creates richer, more varied datasets for thematic and cross-modal analysis.

Safety and context matter: According to spacing.ca, contributors repeatedly raised safety and policing as themes, signaling that analysis must code for structural and intersectional risk rather than only road-safety metrics.

The Journey Lines zine models arts-based qualitative research that centers participant voice through multimodal contributions and paid, co-created participation, according to spacing.ca.

Researchers should budget for compensation, design participatory launch and feedback processes, and plan cross-modal analysis to capture themes like safety and solidarity that the zine surfaced.

If you run arts-based projects and want AI-enabled synthesis, consider tools that handle transcription, thematic coding, and provenance tracking; see Evidano's features for relevant capabilities.

To try these workflows on your next zine or participatory arts project, Try Evidano for free.