BridgeBuilder: skill-sharing & intercultural exchange at Evergreen Brick Works
We hosted our most ambitious design effort to date! Here’s how we applied human-centered design to rethink spaces through the lens of diversity and inclusion.
Over a span of six months, our Chapter teamed up with Evergreen Brick Works (EBW) to tackle the BridgeBuilder challenge. EBW is a hub for sustainable practices with a mission to help cities thrive. Located in the Don Valley ravine, it is also a backyard to 250,000 residents from eight neighborhoods. Some of these neighborhoods consist of predominantly underserved communities that might benefit from the hub’s green space and its programs, yet they rarely visit. The EBW team was looking to co-design and pilot ideas to foster inclusion, increase visitor diversity and equal site access.
The Design Series
There’s no substitute for physical immersion. We kicked things off with a workshop to help Evergreen staff scope the challenge and craft the submission. Our Chapter then embarked on a five-week design series bringing together 20 participants made up of EBW staff, designers, researchers and site visitors in the context of an existing EBW program, Summer Wednesdays.
Summer Wednesdays is an evening public program that draws visitors for food, music and children’s activities. While the timing and location presented a constraint, Summer Wednesdays allowed our teams to interact with visitors, gain insights and prototype ideas to our heart’s desire! ‘Place’ was at the core of this challenge and we felt it was necessary to carry out as much of the design process onsite as possible… even if it was after work, in the middle of a ravine, in 30C/86F heat and humidity!
The Insights
We know we are getting closer to an actionable insight when we see key tensions show up in our research. Below are some examples of those uncovered in this challenge:
- EBW would satisfy an unmet programming need for nearby communities vs. Nearby communities host programs that already address their needs locally
- The EBW site is a green public space, bring-your-own-food-and-explore! vs. The presence of vendors and markets onsite signal that EBW is a more formal place of commerce
- Community programs are designed by EBW for visitors vs. The past successes of programming cocreated with and led by non-EBW groups
Our a-ha moment: instead of EBW serving as the community backyard the staff hoped Brick Works to be, many saw the site as a place to visit for commerce and events. We reframed the design question through an equitable participation lens: HMW we bring diverse residents together in skill-sharing and intercultural exchange?
The Process
Trusting the process. In our daily lives, we spend much of our time hanging out in the left side of the brain: the timelines, the meeting schedules, the analyses. Nudging our teams to switch from the left-brain mindset into empathy and creativity after work was a big ask. Yet, we couldn’t have asked for a more committed group, leaning into the process, and ultimately coming to their own realization that ‘in real life’, design thinking is not a straight path of five steps!
Completing the ‘road map’ of what we had done and what could be done next was eye-opening for me. In the moment, it wasn’t always easy to tell what the final outcome of each design thinking activity was going to be. The road map showed me that although the process can be ambiguous at times, design thinking can ultimately leave us with solutions that are tailored to the problems we’re trying to solve. — Chanté De Freitas, grad student/ethnographer
The (Un)intended Outcomes
In true iterative nature, EBW is taking on incorporating our ideas and testing them at scale. On October 28, the Latin and Mexican communities of Toronto hosted the annual Dia de Muertos at EBW. Although the festival is in its 8th year, this year it incorporated Cross-Cultural Exchanges, an idea by one of our design teams. During prototyping portion of the challenge, the team uncovered a surprising insight that visitors desired to learn more about cultural rituals. In the context of Dia de Muertos the idea was further iterated by creating a space for visitors of different backgrounds to discuss the meaning of death and associated rituals in the Mexican culture.
As mentioned earlier, the EBW team was looking to cocreate and pilot ideas that foster inclusion and increase visitor diversity. Cross-Cultural Exchanges is an early step towards these intended outcomes: the idea was cocreated with non-EBW participants (visitors, members of the Mexican community, our Chapter) and it succeeded in engaging diverse audiences. Sustained overtime, this impact will be amplified, potentially becoming a new default.
An unintended outcome of our work was the exposure of the general perceptions visitors have about EBW. As a result, EBW recruited a Chapter member to help with field research for another initiative: uncovering narratives about the site to further understand the visitors’ relationship with the hub, the organization and the Don Valley ravine.
Additional ideas prototyped during the BridgeBuilder challenge and to be further tested by EBW:
- A cook-off immersion: participants learn how to make an ethnic dish, in the process learning the ingredients in the language of origin
- A cultural-immersion matchmaker: a forum for those interested in learning about another culture to match with those willing to open up their homes or share their daily-life routines and experiences
- A cocreated photo exhibit: newcomers and travelers co-exhibit photography of the same region, share stories and enrich each other’s
(and the audience’s) understanding of the region - Learning through play: children bring toys and activities representative of play in their culture to exchange and try out
We look forward to Evergreen Brick Works continuing to iterate the ideas that came out of this challenge throughout the year. A big thank you to the Evergreen staff, the participants who contributed their incredible energy, and the OpenIDEO Toronto Chapter team!
This was an amazing opportunity to work with an innovative organization like Evergreen, at one of the city’s most phenomenal spaces. This experience over five weeks was a unique way to get involved. And, of course, the OI team hosted a great design series. Working with a passionate team makes the experience that much better.
— Amaan Giga, Account Executive, hjc
