Building a youth program for co-creation
Last semester, CCA’s Center for Art and Public Life shared the story of Rick and Dick. Both are not a part of the communities they are designing for and both Rick and Dick have very different approaches to the design process.
As we enter the prototyping phase of our Social Lab initiative, we’ve decided to build a structure to support a Rick-like approach to co-design. Inspired by the work of Citizen Film, we transitioned from more traditional prototyping methods to one of teaching, facilitation, and agency within the community. We’re building a Community Design Fellows Program, which focuses on teaching youth at the AAACC key design skills, helping facilitate sessions with the community, and compensating them for their time and effort. Sophie, from Citizen Film, talked about doing to the community versus doing with the community. This distinction is key. An ideal outcome of the program is exposure to the wonderful and fruitful career of design.
A few weeks ago, our team was fortunate to win a $10,000 grant from CCA to support our work. About half of that is reserved for compensating the youth for their contributions and participation in the program. Our approach to prototyping:
Teaching + Stipends = Youth Empowerment
This summer, we’ll be kicking off this fellowship program, focused on three phases of prototyping:
- Design Research
- Synthesis
- Physical Prototyping
Community Design Fellows Program
The main goals of our initiative are awareness of the amazing work of the AAACC and creating a place for people to connect and relationships for to develop. Our strategic partner for the program is Project Level, a youth accelerator operating at the AAACC. Project Level seeks to educate, enlighten, and create a positive force for at risk inner city youth, by creating a safe environment to interact with their peers and accomplish short term to long term goals. We’re planning to work with the founders of Project Level to identify 4–6 leaders who may be open to exploring design as a career after high school.
The overarching learning approach is one of constructivism, where we teach a concept, the students practice, and then reflect and iterate. Our model will include weekly sessions on Tuesdays, where fellows learn a concept, practice it the next two weeks, and then reflect during week four.
We’re planning to start the fellows program with an intro workshop on design and design thinking, and then jumping into the curriculum.
Our first month will be focused on Design Research.
This generative research phase will explore creative placemaking on the first floor and outside the AAACC. With each youth hosting 3 interviews over the course of 3 weeks, we’ll have completed 12–18 interviews in the three audiences for this initiative: people who work in the building, people who frequent the building, and people who live nearby.
Our second month will be working with the youth to develop the insights from research.
After the interviews are complete, we’ll transition to insight development. What patterns did the youth see and hear? What does the community want and need? We’ll teach different approaches and methods to synthesis development.
Our final month will involve integrating feedback and early prototypes for the platform .
Is the form internal, external or both? Is it a parklet? Or simple indoor seating? This is for the youth to discover and decide! We’ll work with the youth to host a prototyping session where participants have the opportunity to get creative with form and function.
We’ll wrap up the summer with final design recommendations from the fellows, transitioning to architectural renderings and a formal architectural design process.
We look forward to reporting back on our process and progress. You may follow our journey via our Facebook page.
