On Learning: Design Brigade Week 3
Centering sustainability, equity, collaboration, and trust as we continue researching and begin designing
A project co-sponsored by the Yale Center for Collaborative Arts and Media and Atelier Cho Thompson. For more information, visit Design Brigade
Process:
We began this week on a strong footing– we already had some preliminary design ideas for the project. Last week, our mentors walked us through a word cloud activity that was extremely successful. In the activity, we generated a list of relevant words from our research and then grouped random words together to try and create totally new ideas. Later last week, we used the word cloud activity to create drawings, renderings, and other images of several different ideas. It was pretty incredible to see what we could come up with just based on a few random words strung together.
Since it was successful last week, we decided on Monday to essentially go our separate ways to generate ideas and then report back to the larger group (figure 1). By Tuesday, we had an even more expansive list of ideas ranging from baek il jang, a Korean art-making competition, to a pavilion located in New Haven neighborhoods. We once again found the word cloud activity from last week to be helpful in generating new ideas. From this list, we realized that our project was diverging in two directions: what is being distributed and what is doing the distributing. For now, we decided to focus on designing methods for distributing content to the community. The content itself, we decided, would ultimately be up to each of our clients because they all have different types of content they prioritize.
Of our list of ideas, we realized that we essentially had three “vehicles”: something completely mobile, semi-temporary interventions, and multiple permanent outposts (figure 2). On Wednesday, we solidified each category into one specific idea: an art picnic, an art truck or bus, and an art pavilion (figure 3). After our discussion Wednesday, we split into smaller teams to completely nail down and hash out what each idea would look like in practice. Cat and Soomin took the art picnic, Matthew took the art truck, and Robbie and Kayley took the pavilion. Again, splitting into smaller groups was successful and each group was able to clearly define their idea by identifying pros and cons.
These ideas, we think, are not mutually exclusive. Rather, these three ideas could work together in a sequential fashion (figure 4). Beginning with the art picnic which provides the most “soft” art-distribution infrastructure, then the art truck which provides a medium amount of infrastructure, and finally the pavilion provides the most concrete and permanent infrastructure.
Each design has different strengths and different abilities to showcase the clients’ content (figure 5). They work together so well precisely because they play off of each others strengths and weaknesses.
By employing each of the three models in phases of varying strength (figure 6), the clients will be able to establish a network of art-based community outreach. Over time, we hope the wide variety of programming made possible by the varied infrastructure will allow the clients to grow trust between their institutions and the community.
This week we also had some conversations about what a thoughtful, community-based design actually looks like. Most importantly, we have been hired to help solve a problem and design something. But that does not mean that we enforce a single creative vision on a community. Rather, we are thinking of ourselves as designers of a framework and we want to leave as much room for other people to be the creators. Throughout this process, authenticity is super important. We want to avoid at all costs turning this project into another “Yale experiment” that imposes our ideas on a community. This will be a difficult task, there’s no doubt about it.
Community Engagement:
Although our approach to this week of Design Brigade has certainly shifted more towards design, we recognize that our community engagement work is not over. This week, we have continued to reach out to various residents, arts practitioners, educators, and leaders of the New Haven community for their expertise on the city and their feedback on our evolving ideas (figure 7). Begun last week, we are still actively working every day to circulate and promote our CMT survey and our student/educator/parent survey. Huge thanks to everyone who has filled them out so far, and to our mentors and professional advisors who have plugged us in to their contacts.
In terms of interviews, we were incredibly fortunate this week to speak with IfeMichelle Gardin, the founder and director of the Elm City LIT Fest and a lifelong resident of New Haven (although the full list of critical arts and cultural roles she has played in the New Haven community is much longer). Gardin shared with us more of her thoughts on New Haven-Yale dynamics, and how our clients might try to fit in. She explained that our project could easily become another “experiment” that Yale runs in New Haven, as if the city is some kind of testing ground for innovative solutions that Yale can add to its portfolio of “social good.” Without infrastructure for sustainability, without active listening to the community’s needs, without a real commitment to equity and justice, and without real, actual trust between our clients and New Haven community members, our work here in Design Brigade might really just be a short-term, “band-aid,” experiment. Our team is continuing to reflect on these unequal systems that we are inevitably embedded in. We are sitting in the discomfort and figuring out what best we can do. Without claiming that we have fully risen above these generational, systemic issues, we are trying to embed the values we heard from Gardin into all of our designs: sustainability, collaboration, reparations, and trust. And after Design Brigade has concluded at the end of the summer, and we’ve presented our clients with all of our work from the past six weeks, we will all be asking ourselves: “now, what are we going to do with all this?”
Roadblocks:
Our team confronted fewer roadblocks this week than in previous weeks, as we made steady progress on developing design concepts. Working as a team and in smaller groups, designing various infrastructures to deliver arts and educational content to students has been somewhat smooth sailing, but we are still grappling with the question of what that content may be. We hope that our mid-review check-in with our clients this week will serve, in part, as a conversation about the precise role they wish to play in the programming for the chosen concept.
The On Learning team is also still waiting to hear more from the New Haven community. In particular, we are seeking more responses to our newly finalized survey. In addition to sending the survey directly to many of our contacts, we attended the Citywide Youth Coalition’s Juneteenth march from New Haven Green to East Rock Park on Friday as a way to show our solidarity and to connect face-to-face with New Haveners (figure 8). We met many parents, some students, and even a handful of teachers, to whom we were able to distribute our survey link. We were also able to collect some immediate feedback by abbreviating our more comprehensive survey into just two questions each for students, parents, and teachers. The answers to those questions can be seen below. We hope to continue to engage with community members in person at future events.
Breakthroughs:
Our biggest breakthrough this week was the meeting with Ife. She shared with us how she rates her experience with the four institutions we are working with, and how the community perceives their relationships with these institutions. Through the conversation, we learned that the issues of accessibility and authenticity are not just issues that are temporarily caused by COVID-19; rather, it is a long-term task for the arts and cultural institutions in New Haven to understand what the community needs, implement sustainable practices, and to build authentic and reciprocal relationship with the community. Ife brought up the Elm City Freddy Fixer Parade, and mentioned that its success was largely due to the fact that it was run by the community and for the community. It celebrates the history and culture of the New Haven community and is respectful of the people that have been living in this city for a long time. In order for a community engagement program to be successful, Ife said, there needs to be trust.
“to understand what the community needs, implement sustainable practices, and to build authentic and reciprocal relationship with the community”
We reflected these lessons we learned in all of our three designs, by suggesting to our clients that they hire New Haven high school students, local college students, and community members as facilitators of these projects. We also suggested the idea of phasing, and started thinking about what “Authentic New Haven Museum” would really look like.
Next Steps:
As we enter the fourth week of Design Brigade, our immediate next steps will be to debrief our client feedback and to reflect on the initial brief. As we continue to talk to community members and local organizations, we will further understand who this project would directly impact. We have organized a focus group with elementary school age students and their parents to survey their art learning and general educational experiences in COVID-19 times.
At the end of the week, we will meet with another professional advisor, Nick Novelli, Director of Research Engineering at the Yale Center for Ecosystems in Architecture, to discuss the potential implications of bringing this project into reality. This is an important next step as we begin to flesh out practical details of the design. As we finalize key concepts within each scheme, we will begin feasibility studies. These studies will investigate cost estimation, material sourcing, land governance and staffing requirements.
Over the past three weeks we have steadily built connections with many New Haven community members, leaders and organizations, a next step would be to map out potential partnerships between these groups to progress specific client needs. By narrowing down on content and resource availability, our Design Brigade team will plan to be more specific in our visual representation and further client presentations.
Team:
Cat Wentworth — ’22 — Grad Student — MFA, Graphic Design — School of Art
Matthew Liu — ’20 — Grad Student — MArch — School of Architecture
Soomin Kim — ’21 — Grad Student — School of Music
Robert Skoronski — ’21 — Undergrad Student — Architecture Major
Kayley Estoesta — ’21 — Undergrad Student — Urban Studies Major
