On Learning: Design Brigade Week 10
Reflections on the past ten weeks and next steps.
A project co-sponsored by the Yale Center for Collaborative Arts and Media and Atelier Cho Thompson. For more information, visit Design Brigade.
Robbie
The Design Brigade has been one of the most consequential and enlightening projects I have ever worked on. As an architecture student, so much classroom time is devoted to studying architectural conventions– plans, sections, and elevations– which unfortunately leaves little time to ponder a designer’s role in, for lack of a better phrase, “the real world.” As this project has developed over the past ten weeks, I have been astounded by the radical unimportance of what many would consider traditional “design” when faced with the multifaceted problems of real people, organizations, and communities.
We began the Design Brigade with a pretty straightforward goal: to solve the spatial dilemmas caused by COVID-19 for our clients. In the beginning the problem was simply that our clients could not open their doors due to lockdown orders and therefore could not share their resources with the public. So much our clients’ legitimacy as an organization derives from literally getting people in their building. COVID-19 as well as the national movement for racial equity has challenged their conventional operational methods. For the first couple weeks of this project, we felt we had an explicit problem to solve and could provide specific solutions to said problem.
However, our group’s and my personal understanding of the scope of this project changed drastically after the mid-point check in meetings in week three. As we prepared our slides and crafted appealing visualizations of our design ideas, we hadn’t been considering the real life implications our ideas contained. I don’t want to speak for the entire group, but I think that I had been approaching the project as I would a school project. That is, I thought the problems we were exploring could be solved with a slick presentation, a few concrete ideas and compelling visuals. But during the check-in meetings, the concerns our clients voiced about our ideas caused us to consider the real life implications of what we were suggesting. The clients asked us to consider our project’s cost, timeline, labor resources, and most importantly how a project coming from Yale students might be perceived in the New Haven community. Without hearing our clients’ concerns at week three, I think our project would have gone a much different direction.
When I think of my experience with the Design Brigade, I will think of a mantra that Liz Ogbu, one of our professional advisors, shared with us: “[I’m interested] in place-keeping not place-making.” I sincerely hope that our final product, our guidebook, lives up to Liz’s mantra. We have done our best to provide a structure that emphasizes listening, surveying, and collaboration with the community. We want whatever events or programs that come out of this guidebook to be derived from the needs of the community who the events and programs will serve, not the cultural institutions who plan said events. We sincerely hope that whoever uses our guidebook will follow this bottom-up (rather than top-down) approach to creating events and building relationships with the New Haven community.
Soomin
This summer took an unexpected turn; I didn’t know that I would be staying in New Haven the whole time, and I especially didn’t know I would be a part of a design internship program for the majority of it. I am primarily a musician, and most of my design experience comes from designing concert posters and fliers for friends. Coming into Design Brigade, I was definitely concerned that my design skills might not be proficient enough; at the same time, I was thrilled to work alongside brilliant artists and find ways in which I can contribute with my experience in music, intermedia, and teaching.
First couple weeks were spent mainly communicating with our four clients: YUAG, YCBA, Beinecke, and NXTHVN. I was inspired that these four New Haven cultural organizations were trying to find ways to respond to the community’s needs that have shifted due to the pandemic, and re-imagine their roles in the context of the current social dynamic. Through working closely with these four organizations, I was able to get a glimpse of the ecosystem of cultural institutions in New Haven.
Talking to our clients also made me realize the gap between New Haven and Yale-affiliated or adjacent organizations. Most of our clients’ buildings were highly surveilled and inaccessible, and their programs were reliant on visitors coming into their physical buildings. A lot of the community leaders we talked to voiced their unhappiness with the relationship between these four organizations and the community, or lack thereof. This gap was made even more apparent by COVID-19; Black and Brown communities have been disproportionately hit by the virus, schools have been shut, students were losing important education, and parents and caregivers had to juggle working and taking care of their children at the same time.
Second half of our project was dedicated to developing the guidebook. I learned important design skills, such as using colors and graphics to make the book more visually engaging. We did more research around the community as well; we learned about local organizations or individuals who were already doing tremendous work in the community and have formed robust networks of trust. We focused on connecting people to resources that are already available in the city, and asking our advisors and mentors how we can make this book more relevant to various cultural institutions in New Haven.
This August marks one year since I moved to New Haven, and I am grateful to have gotten to know New Haven better this summer. I went to neighborhoods in New Haven that I’ve never been to before; I’ve met community leaders who have been building relationships in New Haven for a long time. I am grateful for Ming, Dana, Brittany, Emilia, and our advisors for supporting us and sharing their insights with us. I am grateful for my teammates, Kayley, Robbie, Jessica, Anjiang, Cat, and Matthew, for creating an open and safe space and for being the wonderful people they are!
Kayley
I am feeling super grateful for the opportunity to participate in the Design Brigade this summer. I have always been drawn to design for the ways it can be applied to building community and creating more equitable cities, but this was the first time I’ve had the opportunity to try it myself in a real life context. While it was refreshing to get out of the hypothetical exercises of the studio and seminar room, it was also terrifying to think that we, as such young designers, had any power to affect real people in New Haven. The weight of the responsibility to use that power for good and try to put it back in the hands of the community hung over me throughout the project, as it certainly should have. Some days it felt like we were doing the right thing with that responsibility, other times it felt like the whole situation we were in was irredeemable. This all goes to say that designing in the real world is difficult. There are many things I think we did well, but also many things I wish we had done better. Many things I wish I had done better. In the end though, I am proud of the guidebook we made and I hope it can have some kind of positive impact on people. The issues we grappled with this summer though, that of poor learning opportunities and of unequal systems of power, still very much remain. Building from my experiences and everything I have learned this summer in Design Brigade, I hope to continue to tackle these issues better and better each time, chipping away no matter how fraught or irredeemable things may seem. Essentially, while the Design Brigade is over, there is still much work to be done and I am eager to get to it.
I also want to thank my wonderful teammates for their work, their reflections, their insights, and literally just the countless hours we spent together on Zoom. I’ve learned so much from each of you and have so enjoyed working with you. I can’t wait until we can safely convene in real life and finally meet each other in person! We WILL make this potluck happen, mark my words.
Next Steps (Jess & Anjiang)
Although we are sad that some of our team members — Kayley, Soomin and Robbie will be leaving this week, the rest of the team — Jessica and Anjiang are excited to continue working with our community partners and clients on wrapping up the project next week. By the start of next week, we will send out the final draft of the guidebook to our clients as well as advisors and individuals who may be interested. Then we can collect feedback for modification and discuss together to formulate future steps for the implementation after our summer internship ends.
On this Wednesday, we had a productive meeting with the apprentices team at NXTHVN, where they provided valuable feedback on the current models as well as their thoughts on upcoming projects that could be benefited from our programs. One of the most exciting ideas that came up was that they have been having conversations with New York based photographer Jamel Shabazz on potential collaboration, and the apprentices envisioned it to be a social history project that could be further developed. Our team definitely saw the potential of incorporating the guidebook into the planning of this project, and we suggested providing a “mini guidebook” to facilitate the process. We had a super constructive brainstorming session during the meeting, and we agreed that for making this project into a long-term program, we could have multiple photoshoot sessions that examines the history of different districts in New Haven. It’s also essential for the project to be community-oriented; in other words, the apprentices should actively engage with a broader community rather than approaching community members that are already involved. On our side, we will compile a list of resources specifically for this project, including contacts to experts, template for community survey, and modifications to our existing models. We would love to see this project realized in the near future.
We will also focus on completing the distribution package early next week. After discussing the plan for future distribution, we have decided that the guidebook will be shared digitally, and we will complete a distribution package of supplementary materials for future promotion. The package will include email templates for outreach purposes, a set of posters designed for various mediums, and an introductory video to the guidebook. Though this program is one week close to end for the rest of the team, we are trying hard to make this program live long by leaving everything we can in the distribution package and following up with any progress that is provoked by this guidebook.
