RARE Spaces As Third Spaces: Arts-Based CPAR for Healing and Transformative Social Work Practice

Background and Purspose: Historically, resilience has been valorized in social work discourse — upheld as a protective factor, marker of strength, and sign of positive adaptability. However, such framings risk obscuring the structural conditions (e.g. anti-Black racism, structural violence, and systemic oppression) that necessitate such resilience in the first place. Among Black women, narratives of resilience often function as imposed societal expectations rather than liberatory practices.

This study introduces RARE Spaces (Radical, Authentic, Rigorous, and Environmentally Brave Spaces) as an arts-based, third space framework developed through Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR). RARE Spaces function as intentional containers for cultural expression, collective analysis, and healing-centered inquiry. Grounded in Black feminist thought and the Healing Justice framework, the purpose of this study was to explore how arts-informed third spaces can serve as catalysts for personal, communal, and structural transformation in social work research and practice.

Methods: This study employed RARE Spaces as an arts-based CPAR design involving six Black women repositioned as co-researchers (ages 18 and up). Co-researchers were recruited through purposive sampling and partnerships with local community organizations across two Midwestern states. Over 12 weeks, they engaged in co-designed RARE Space sessions incorporating arts-informed story circles and testimonio rooted in Black cultural traditions. Data were collected through session transcripts, co-created artifacts, field notes, and reflective dialogue. Co-researchers were involved at the conceptual level and analysis integrated critical social theories and arts-informed meaning-making processes.

Results: Critical narrative analysis revealed a constellation of transformative insights that reframe the meaning and function of resilience. Co-researchers actively resisted dominant constructions of resilience as endurance/adaptability, instead articulating rest, refusal, and joy as radical acts of reclamation. They framed resilience not as a demand placed upon them, but as a politicized and intentional choice shaped by community and culture. Arts-based practices played a central role in this reframing; creative forms such as poetry and embodied storytelling surfaced emotional clarity, ancestral wisdom, and a deeper connection to self and collective memory. These artistic expressions were not merely tools of communication — they became epistemological methods that empowered co-researchers to access, hold, and transform complex truths. The collaborative nature of RARE Spaces disrupted extractive research dynamics, fostering a relational praxis centered on healing, cultural affirmation, and mutual witnessing. Co-researchers reported profound shifts in self-perception, emotional healing, and political consciousness, transforming how they viewed themselves, their communities, and the systemic conditions shaping their experiences.

Conclusions and Implications: RARE Spaces demonstrate that transformation in social work science requires more than inclusive methodologies — it demands frameworks rooted in cultural specificity, creativity, and collective healing. This arts-based third space model positions research as a transformative act: a site of intervention and co-creation. For social work scholars, educators, and practitioners, RARE Spaces offer a blueprint for liberation-centered inquiry that affirms cultural, challenges the valorization of resilience, and imagines new possibilities for structural change. This work embodies how social work science can lead for transformative change by daring to reimagine where and how we create knowledge — and to whom that knowledge is accountable.