By Michelle Woodard
Filmed simultaneously in English and Inuktitut, a new video produced by the Teaching & Learning Centre is part of a workshop that trains caregivers in Nunavut to help prevent the immediate risk of suicide. Filmed simultaneously in English and Inuktitut, a new video produced by the Teaching & Learning Centre is part of a workshop that trains caregivers in Nunavut to help prevent the immediate risk of suicide. A new Inuit version of a suicide prevention workshop that’s designed to help caregivers in northern and remote communities, where suicide rates are far above the national average, will debut in Rankin Inlet this month.
Richard Ramsay, professor emeritus of Social Work and president of LivingWorks Education, is hoping the Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST) workshop will help make Canada’s north suicide-safer.
In partnership with the Government of Nunavut and Nunavut Tunngavik, the two-day Uqaqatigiiluk! (Talk About It!) training program will be delivered throughout Nunavut, encouraging participants to openly discuss suicide and providing them with skills and knowledge to feel more confident in helping prevent the immediate risk of suicide.
Two training videos, produced by the Teaching & Learning Centre (TLC) and filmed in Iqaluit, are powerful teaching tools in the freshly adapted program.
“The Nunavut people felt that it was important to have the standard workshop more closely reflect their culture, language, setting and circumstances,” says Ramsay. “So we conducted a series of cultural adaptation discussions and worked in consultation with local Nunavut advisors to adapt the workshop and its teaching tools.”
One of the keys to the ASIST workshop’s success around the world is its standardization and adaptive flexibility, he says.
This is the first LivingWorks’ video production filmed simultaneously in two languages, English and Inuktitut, with bilingual actors. TLC’s video crew, cameraman Lawrie Edison and director Fred Fountain, flew to Iqaluit for nine days of shooting with a local crew. Ramsay speaks highly of the collaborative partnership that has developed between LivingWorks, a University of Calgary start-up company, and the TLC’s video production team over the past 30 years.
To learn more about our video production, please visit: http://tlc.ucalgary.ca/video