Brave space-making as engaged communication scholarship: witnessing, disrupting, and co-creating anew through storytelling

In this essay, we bring to the forefront the aesthetic, socio-material, and embodied narrative acts central to brave space-making: witnessing, disrupting, and co-creating anew. We also illustrate the viability of brave space-making as engaged communication fieldwork and scholarship understood broadly as university and community collaborations that develop actionable knowledge in response to salient social concerns. In our finest moments and alongside community partners, we witness what is, disrupt what has been assumed and/or dismissed, and co-create anew. Importantly, brave space-making has transformed not only our fieldwork but the very texture of our humanity, teaching us how to listen humbly as we dwell with one another. In this way, engaged communication scholarship emerges as a shared becoming as we learn and unlearn together.