On Learning: Design Brigade Week 4
Discussing our designs with our clients and advisors of all ages
A project co-sponsored by the Yale Center for Collaborative Arts and Media and Atelier Cho Thompson. For more information, visit Design Brigade
Mid-Review Presentation
Our mid-reviews with clients took place over two days this week, providing valuable feedback for us to move forward. In the first meeting with NXTHVN, Nico raised the potentials of partnership when evaluating the three ideas we brought forward, saying the project would be “owned by the community in a really important way…who would we get to know through and with this space?” Each of the three concepts relied on collaboration with external organizations for content, resources and programming — for NXTHVN, the potential partnerships would dictate the timeline and actionability of the proposals.
“How translatable, what appears to be a gallery experience, is this to the cultural experience of each different neighborhood?” — Nico Wheadon, NXTHVN
In the discussion, we talked about the issue of imposing a foreign gallery experience into communities. Content was again the largest concern for the clients and the On Learning team, not wanting to have art as the visible reckoning in this moment in time but rather bringing forward relevant histories.
The ensuing meeting with Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale Center for British Art and the Yale University Art Gallery was helpful in understanding the client’s programming resources and attitude towards budget spending. Each of our ideas included paid high school age students to lead the operation of the three models and the three Yale clients were receptive to the proposal whereas NXTHVN already has an ongoing paid student fellowship for us to tap into. Beinecke, the least phyically accessible site to the New Haven community of all the clients, voiced that they did not have ‘art’ to display to the younger population but rather their content was archival and historical pieces which would still hold relevance to communities.
All of our clients gravitated towards a mobile platform, each proposing a smaller scale model of the ‘Recreational Art Mobile’ which could be built around or for a bicycle to ease issues of road-safety, storage, safety, cost and user accessibility. The ‘Art Picnic’ for some clients, was seen as an opportunity to have something immediately actionable, potentially in the fall. The mid-review presentations with the clients gave us a clearer understanding of what they were capable of bringing to the table and narrowed down on the project’s timeline.
Roadmap
In the coming weeks, we will focus on two ideas that were favored by our clients and advisors: Art Picnic, and the Recreational Art Mobile:
The first crucial step in realizing Art Picnic is to figure out how the clients will collaborate with each other in developing educational programming. The four clients have distinct focuses and missions; for example, the Beinecke puts emphasis on documenting history, and NXTHVN is focused on providing opportunities for young local artists. In order to distinguish the Art Picnic from other public educational activities already happening in the city, such as summer camps, and to create an immersive artistic experience through the coming together of these four voices, our team will develop detailed programming examples for our upcoming meeting with the clients. Through our examples, we aim to demonstrate to the clients that the collaboration between the four institutions would not only expedite the realization of the Art Picnic, but also enrich the experience of the participants of the Art Picnic. We will also come up with branding and promotional ideas for the Art Picnic in the coming weeks.
We will then figure out the logistics of the Art Picnic, including the locations, labor, budget, and collaboration with the neighborhoods. Three potential locations are De Gale Field in Dixwell, Clinton Park in Cedar Hill, and East Rock Park. We will talk to community members and organizers of each neighborhood, and assess accessibility of these locations. In terms of finding resources to hire teenagers to facilitate the Art Picnic, we are looking at options such as New Haven Promise and Connecticut’s art grants. We will also look into how some Yale organizations such as the Peabody and the Eli Whitney Office have hired high school students in New Haven.
The majority of our clients reacted positively to the idea of Recreational Art Mobile, but suggested that using a bicycle, instead of a trailer truck, would be more sustainable, accessible, and feasible, especially considering the budget cuts due to COVID-19. Nico recommended that we look into Miguel Luciano, a multimedia artist born in Puerto Rico and currently based in New York, who creates artworks using various vehicles, including bikes [Pimp my Paragua]. We will be researching bike artists including Luciano and bike precedents such as compost bikes in the coming weeks, to determine the design of the bikes.
Other goals regarding realizing RAM are to figure out who is going to ride the bike, to figure out routes and stops, and to decide whether and how the clients would collaborate with each other on the content that will be delivered through the bike. We will determine the content based on our clients’ responses to the survey that was sent out this past week; so far, we have received responses favoring the idea of delivering copies of materials that are currently on exhibit.
Roadblocks
Going into the mid-review presentations with our clients at the beginning of this week, our team felt strong about the research we had collected, the framework behind our three models, and the designs we had come up with. The road seemed clear: we would present three designs, the clients would pick their favorite one, and over the final two weeks of Design Brigade, we would tweak our original designs and maybe even start realizing some plans. However, in many ways the mid-review presentations felt like they brought more questions than answers. How much, if any, will our clients be collaborating? How might an art picnic or an art mobile actually look with historical documents rather than craft supplies? What can each of our clients actually accomplish by the end of the summer? Most importantly, it became clear from our initial discussions with the clients that there will likely be a number of financial and bureaucratic barriers within their own institutions that make realizing any type of design perhaps much further in the future than we had originally thought. While our Yale clients are wealthy and resource-rich institutions, it also makes them much less nimble, unable to respond quickly to unforeseen events.
Instead of coming out of this week with a clear design to pursue with each client, more discussion with our clients individually and collectively is necessary to precisely ascertain where our team will go from here. So far, we have sent out a follow-up survey to each of our clients, to gather their general feedback on each of our design proposals and to ask more pointed questions about their desires and capabilities moving forward. After gathering all of their responses, we hope to actually have one more Zoom conversation with each of them to really work out how our team might proceed over the next two weeks and how we might be of most service. In the end then, the general roadmap has remained the same — but this part of the journey in which we figured the clients would forge the way full-speed, has become more winding and unpredictable. However, with clear communication between our team and our clients into the next two week, we are ready to adapt to the road’s twists and turns, no matter where it might end up taking us.
Breakthroughs
This week, our primary breakthrough was surprisingly one of our biggest challenges. As outlined earlier in this article, our mid-point check in illuminated to us the difficulties associated with implementing our design proposals. For the first couple weeks of this project, we focused primarily on synthesizing the identified problems into the three design proposals. Although we’re proud of what we presented during the mid-point check in, we’ve realized that the next couple weeks will focus more on what is achievable for our clients. In the future, we will be responsible for providing a concrete roadmap or recipe for community outreach that our clients can put into action. Without touching base with the clients this week, we never could have realized what direction this project will take in the future.
After the client check-in meeting, we’ve begun to synthesize some of the feedback the clients have given us. In particular, we’ve begun to question what a collaboration between our clients would look like in practice. Previously, we’ve thought of this project as designing an infrastructure through which all of our clients could distribute their different programming. This option may not be totally ruled out, but this week we’ve begun to consider providing different frameworks for each client that are better suited to their institution’s available resources. For one, the Beinecke is unique among all of our clients in that their mission centers around documentation, rather than art-making or art curation. Because of their unique mission, Melissa Barton at the Beinecke has some concerns about how some of our models would adapt to her organization. In response to the art picnic model, Melissa wrote in our follow up survey:
“As content provider I have a harder time imagining what we would do [at an art picnic] (other than hand out swag like notebooks, postcards, stickers, temp tattoos, etc) as compared to the other models.”
Because of these concerns, it is possible that we will produce a separate proposal for the Beinecke (and also, potentially, for NXTHVN) as they have a more unique set of resources and programs. We believe there is still some room for collaboration amongst our clients, but this week we considered adapting each model to suit the needs of each client.
On Wednesday of this week, we held an informal focus group with parents from Elm City Montessori. Jennifer Reynolds- Kaye, our client from the YCBA, is a parent at the school and kindly helped us organize a group of her friends for the interview. During the focus group, it was so heartwarming to hear from kids and parents. Thus far during this process, we’ve primarily spoken to adults who work at organizations that work with kids. For the most part, the focus group highlighted for us the urgent need for outdoor, in person activities for kids. Parents, including those we spoke to, are at their wits end trying to come up with COVID safe activities, so they are really looking for additional activities to keep their kids busy. For many parents, the content of the activity is not as important as the fact that there would be something to do! The focus group definitely helped us reorient ourselves towards helping kids in whatever way we can.
Additionally, our professional advisory board meetings this week with Nick Novelli and Monique Atherton gave us fresh perspectives on our project. We’ve been working on this project for four weeks at this point and times have felt a bit fatigued. Speaking with the professional advisors reinvigorated us and provided a ton of new contacts and directions to pursue.
Next Steps
This week, our team’s first priority is to finish collecting and synthesizing feedback from our clients via the mid-review follow-up survey we sent each of them. We have a portion of the responses but are still awaiting a few. These written responses will help us gain more clarity regarding which of the proposed models excites our clients the most and in what ways the clients can envision themselves utilizing the chosen (or modified!) design. We will also continue to monitor the surveys we have sent to community members, students, parents, and educators, and we will continue to find ways of visually representing this largely qualitative research. These responses will help shape the details and logistics of our final design!
Our team will also refine our visual language for the final presentation booklet. We have a variety of great visual jumping off points in our client presentation, our midpoint booklet pages we created last week, and the many diagrams each member of our team has put together over the course of the past four weeks. Bringing all these visuals to further cohesion will strengthen our final presentation and will hopefully carry into the actual physical design in a way that is engaging for K-12 students and community members of all ages.
Ultimately, with just two weeks left of these six weeks of Design Brigade, the On Learning team will begin fleshing out a final, detailed plan of action for all four clients. This may include the actual visual design of one of the three models we presented, as well as suggestions for programming, relevant partnerships, timelines, and other plans of action. We are excited to get rolling!
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
