Baltimore + Creative Placemaking

For week 13 of class our focus was on prototyping ideas from our ideation session a few weeks prior and looking ahead to our final share out for the semester. 

The day started off with a check-in question about a favorite moment from Thanksgiving break. Many of us spent time with family and friends, virtually or otherwise. Lots of us ate way too much turkey and I think we all enjoyed not thinking about grad school for at least a day or two. 

Then we took a look at our community norms and individually shared which one we would like to set our intentions upon for the day’s class. 

We looked at the blog post from the prior class written by Asheeta that summarized week 12 of class. 

We spent some time considering our final shareback presentation and what format it will take. When it will take place, the kinds of things we will want to make sure we share. Who might be there and how we will collect feedback.

Then we shifted our focus to sharing the prototypes we created over the holiday break. As a preface we were asked to share a few words about our experience with the prototyping process. What worked for us and what didn’t work for us. Personally I said that when looking at the ideas from the first shareback it was clear what ideas I should try to prototype. My challenge however was that both ideas were intangibles so I was worried that what I created was “artifacts” and not prototypes. Many other classmates shared that they thought it would have been nice to prototype in pairs and much of the class found value in procrastination and setting time limits to create prototypes. The constraints helped the creativity process. 

When we were reminded that when assessing a prototype, the idea needs to be in the context of our original design challenge, it needs to directly answer one of the insights/opportunities identified from our research, it should reflect our design principles and it should be clear which persona would use the prototype. 

We took a short break to finalize prototypes in Mural and get everything ready to share

THEN WE SHARED OUR PROTOTYPES! For collecting feedback on the prototypes we created we used the traditional formula “I like… I wish… What if?” For the share out the prototyper shared their thought process and what they created to represent the idea. The class gave feedback in the form of sticky notes posted adjacent to the idea in the Mural board.

After the share/feedback for prototypes we grouped similar prototypes. Later on in class we would split up into groups to work on the next round of prototypes as teams. 

Next we turned our attention to how our final shareback could be presented. We looked at past PBS projects as examples and sources of inspiration for our own work. We talked about creative ways that we might collect feedback from shareback participants. Maybe we will do break rooms and share each individual group of prototypes on a rotating schedule. Maybe we will incorporate Google Jamboard in some way shape or form. 

Following this we split off into our prototype groups to begin working round two of our prototypes. During this time my group focused on how the three ideas we are developing relate to one another, what the specific details of the different prototypes are. We also spent some time considering what role MICA will play in the finalized action plan. What measures can be put in place to protect community members? What are ways that the institution can also be protected against liabilities. 

We reassembled as the larger class and shared some of the thoughts and actions that same up from our smaller conversations. In the coming week, prior to next class our task would be to continue developing prototypes into more refined versions for the final presentation.  

Then we took another break after which we were challenged to in our smaller prototyping teams boil the essence of all our ideas down to a 6 word statement. My group’s statement was “forging pathways for collaborative education.” We regathered again and shared our 6 word statements. 

We started our day with a gif style check-in to express how we were feeling. There were mixed feelings including: tired, excited, British, creative etc. 

We then proceeded with looking at our idea sorting that was based on our “How Might We...” questions and the brainstorming we did with participants during our share back. We starred the ideas that we were most excited about on the mural board. 

Then, after a short break we started our prototyping phase by individually sharing something we made that we were proud of in the past. A prototype is a tangible representation of an idea. It helps us test assumptions, lower risk, align partners & stakeholders, and reveal potential problems early. We can prototype with almost anything including (and not limited too): paper, cardboard, pens/pencils, string, tape, natural objects, sticky note system mappings etc. 

After lunch we did an internal prototype challenge. The objective was to create something for a partner to help them get through the rest of the semester. The process including rapid interviewing, building and sharing back. Prototypes included: journals, cards, comfort mugs, calendars etc. 

We spent the last hour of class going through a prototyping checklist and figuring out who would prototype what for our Creative Placemaking project. The checklist asked us to think about:  - Does it address our design challenge? - Does it respond to our insights & opportunities (“How might we…”)? - Does it address stakeholder needs and desires? - Does it incorporate our design principles?

This week was shareback week!

We started the day with a quick check-in, we were nervous as well as excited! After last minute run-throughs and a quick coffee break, we transitioned into the zoom room and waited for all the advisors and interviewees to assemble.

Once everyone had gathered, Becky gave a brief introduction to the shareback and what to expect. Alanah started off with a really interesting icebreaker. Everyone had to draw their favorite public art and talk about why that was so. It felt ideal for this project and people chimed in with a wide variety of pieces - ranging from the Stonehenge to the LOVE mural in Philly and multiple Baltimore-specific pieces of art.

We then jumped right into it. Isaac gave a good introduction to our design challenge and explained the Human-centered design process. Followed by Eesha and Damella who spoke about the research. We started with explaining the formulation of the guiding questions and then moved to the readings and videos that were part of the secondary research. We also discussed how we looked at different case studies from all over the world as analogous inspirations and then shared the interviewing process and our key takeaways from the conversations. Rishika and Kathleen then explained the personas followed by Asheeta elaborating on the design principles that are to guide our process.

After sharing back what we heard from our research, we moved on to the ideation phase. We presented our themes, insights that were drawn from the data points and the opportunity questions. These questions helped facilitate and direct the brainstorming process that followed. 

Everyone was given 2 minutes to put their ideas in the chat box. It was a dynamic environment where people built on each others ideas while highlighting the ones that resonated with them. Rishika and Kathleen facilitated the ideation for the rest of the themes.

Today we started class with the classic question of "How are you feeling?" Many responded that they were feeling hopeful about Biden taking the lead in Georgia and Pennsylvania as more votes were getting counted. Some felt that they could breathe again since election day. Others said that they were looking forward to Diwali kicking off next weekend. We next went over the blog post from the previous week and had a quick recap of what was done. As the semester is nearing to an end, we looked ahead to how the rest of the year will go. Next Friday we will have our first shareback session. Our goal for this first round of shareback is to share initial research with our stakeholders that we interviewed and to engage stakeholders in brainstorming ideas.

After going over our goals for the shareback session we continued to finalize our themes, insights, and hmws. We formed small groups to go through 13 themes from the original 15 to look for connections and narrow down or merge themes together. A voting session was then held in Mural to pick our favorite five to move forward with.

As a class we went through our slide deck for our first shareback to figure out the flow of our presentation, who's talking when, and what needs to be added or taken away. Our section on research was flushed out and refined. There was a discussion on how to better summarize personas and give a better representation of who our potential stakeholders may be.

Becky then presented a quick intro to ideation. She shared these insightful quotes to consider:

"Engage the end user in the design process. Don’t just ask him what he needs, but ask him how he thinks it can be achieved." - Amos Winter

"This is a time travel exercise from the heart. This is collaborative ideation. What will liberate all of us?" - Adrienne Maree Brown

“People are less likely to resist change when they’ve had a hand in shaping it.“ -Diane Gherson

To ensure that the themes, insights, and hmws will spark ideas, we held a quick ideation session with a theme from our shareback presentation. We notice that the theme we went over was too wordy and caused us to become stuck with ideas. It was proposed to add prompts using personas or setting to help people answer the questions. We then went back to simplify the wording of our themes.

We started the day with a check-in asking what we were doing for self-care, considering the times we were heading towards. There were some about taking care of our physical health, some to do with spending time with friends and family, I talked about my latest destressing activity – embroidery!

We started the day with discussing some highlights from the ArtPlace Virtual Summit that happened last week. It was great to listen to everyone talk about their experiences attending workshops, affinity groups and plenaries. I especially remember attending a workshop called Art and Culture: Essentials for Racial Equity by Robert Bedoya and Maria Rosario Jackson. I was humbled to have been sharing the virtual space with these experts that I was in awe of and their work has been key in doing this work. They discussed how art and cultural integration at community development is crucial for radical systemic change and a racially equitable one at that. They did this through storytelling, facts and grace. 

After that, we shared out personas and design principles and provided and received feedback on the same. We then looked at each other’s themes and insights and assessed them through the Design Kit Insights Checklist. We shared our key takeaways and this helped better understand the process of writing insights. Looking at the insights, it was important to understand if they were facts or information or seemed more than mere observations.

The next step was a rapid-fire ‘How Might We Session’. In our groups, we took about 10 minutes to look at the insights we had formulated, make the changes and come up with different questions that would serve as design opportunities. We then voted for each one to gauge which statements accurately commented on the themes, their data points and insights. The final exercise was to simplify the themes, insights, opportunities along with picking the key quotes and observations that represented these. This created a base for the next step which will be ideation.

We started class as a typical Friday morning, a little tired of the week and looking forward to the weekend. What we couldn’t believe, and gave us the pick me up we need, was that we had managed to successfully make it to the halfway point of the term!

The Check-in question for the day was a simpler ‘how are you doing’, but a very hard question to answer. We popcorn-ed around to see how everyone was feeling and the gloomy weather did not seem to help with the answers.

It was our last day of interviews before we moved to the synthesizing portion. We broke off into our smaller groups to choose who we wanted to talk to and have a discussion on how to go about these last interviews. We went on a break and joined in for our interviews.

My morning session was with Valeria Fuentes, a fellow MASD alum, who currently works as an art educator. Her views on creative placemaking were focused on understanding the needs and wants of the average person. The average person does not know what art is, they want to know what the function is. The average person plans for the day or the week, they do not understand the intentions of long-term initiatives. It was an interesting perspective to focus on.

My afternoon session was with Molly McCullagh who is the Director of Neighborhood Revitalization at the Southeast Community Development Corporation. Her idea of placemaking revolves around the idea that you don’t build a space without the people. She feels that the initiatives are all there but sometimes the people need a little push on how/if to use a space.

We all met back in the afternoon and put together our highlights of our interviews to share:

These were our last interviews and were all thrilled with the process. Some of us started a little shy and apprehensive, but ended up taking over towards the final rounds! Before we ended, we had to give a shout out to our partner and here’s another one for my partner, Kathleen - I’m glad we were paired together. You were great with the note taking and taking the reins on asking all the right questions to steer the conversation in the right direction. 

And heres to the rest of the groups!

We started the class with our check in question “what was your best Halloween costume ever?” Most of the answers were cute and funny, some of us shared pictures.

Following the check in question we started with our week 2 of interviews. We were divided into pairs of two and we were sent to our breakout rooms with our team members for a 15 mins prep before the interviews were conducted, each team was asked to come up with cool team names, we had to decide who was going to conduct the interview and who was going to take the notes, we had review our interview guide and then we had to rank the interviewees in order of preferences. My team name was The blue dogs!

After that all teams were assigned people they would interview for the morning and afternoon sessions.

1st interview:- Lady Brion

Founder and director of Black Arts District

She started off the interview by calling herself an Artivist = Art + Activist. During her interview she spoke to us about different places in Baltimore that have potential, whose voices she would want to represent, she told us briefly about Black / Color representation in CP. She came across as someone who is extremely passionate about her work and loves Baltimore city.

2nd interview:- Rebecca Cores Chan

The Rail Park, Executive Director

She spoke to us about defining CP, challenges faced in CP in Baltimore, what values should be reflected, she was very particular about what kind of voices she wanted to hear in CP.

We started our class on Friday the 25th with a check in question, “How are you doing?” I said that I was frustrated because I was several minutes late due to technical issues. Next we took a look at our community norms and each noted that we wanted to personally focus on for the day. Being late and frustrated, “Be prepared” stood out to me. 

We then turned our attention to the week 3 blog post written by Asheeta and looked ahead to future classes when we will be holding stakeholder interviews, synthesis and the Restorative Design Conference to be hosted by Greater Good Studio on 10/2/20. There will also be a Summit hosted by ArtPlace America. Kevin, who is facilitating a workshop for the summit, shared a few words about ArtPlace’s mission and made a point that all presenters had to attend training on how to make Zoom sessions (somewhat) more engaging. We will each be attending a session of the ArtPlace Summit and sharing the experience with the class.

Next we discussed the readings from the previous week which included Design as Protest Demands and the Just City Index and The Art of Design Research (and Why It Matters). We briefly shared on Mural our key takeaways from the reading. While talking about a note from the Just City Index Kevin made mention of TKF Foundation  a Maryland based organization that creates non-sectarian sacred natural spaces in Urban settings. While discussing points from the Design Research article our team had some alignment around the theme of culture and asking simple questions about simple things to lead to interesting and rich insights. 

After a brief break we then turned our attention to our guiding questions (on Mural). Over the week in small groups we met and created and finalized the guiding questions. After reviewing and agreeing upon the final set of questions we discussed the last reading from the prior week, the research methods from Design Toolkit. 

We each chose a topic to read about from the tool kit the prior week and we shared what we learned here. While discussing the photo-voice method the idea came up of using social media as a form of community documentation of Creative Place-Making examples. While discussing the collage method the very interesting thought came up that Instagram sort of a form of digital personal college and by looking at a person’s account you can see what they are thinking about or hold important. To that point about Instagram, when discussing secondary research the idea came up of using trending hashtags and keywords as a supplement to local news and publications to tap into Baltimore’s cultural Zeitgeist. Draw-it is a particularly useful method when there is a language barrier between the design team and stakeholders. 

We came back from lunch and did a stretch activity to re-engage our minds and focus on the next task of writing interview questions. We looked at tips to write useful interview questions that included things like ask open ended questions (no yes or no answers), avoid jargon and keeping it simple.

Then we put our ideas for interview questions onto a Mural board and voted on which questions we thought were the most interesting or relevant. our top voted questions were "How many arts and culture events do you typically attend in one year?" and "Describe an example of creative place-making that is uniquely reflective of Baltimore?"

Next we looked to the task of creating an interview guide including looking at a model for the ideal interview flow and the importance of asking wrap up questions (before we finish was there anything else you wanted to share or ask?). We looked at the MASD template for interviews as a boiler plate to use so we are not reinventing the wheel with creating our own interview guide. 

We arranged our top vote interview questions from the earlier mual board into a rough timeline for interview flow.

After another final break we did an interview practice including writing an elevator pitch for the creative place-making project that we shared these elevator pitches in break-out rooms. Alanah specifically had a great elevator pitch that I wasn’t able to write down but it was wonderful for covering all the basics including introducing MICA, Social Design and defining the terms in a precise but detailed just enough way. 

After this we did an exercise where we roleplayed an interview scenario. By practicing for an interview we are essentially proto-typing our experience and warming up to the important task. For our exercise we went back to the same breakout groups from the elevator pitch exercise and one person roleplayed the interviewer and the other the interviewee. The interviewees all had a different persona that would make the exercise more difficult for the interviewer, things like Chatty Cathy and Confused Carl. 

Finally for this class we discussed the assignment for the upcoming week including the week’s readings. We are to prepare for interviews by writing an interview guide and have it ready to share at the start of next class. We are supposed to  watch for ways to use research methods from the Design Toolkit in the interviews and interview guides. We are also to begin digitizing our research process for future posterity Remember to register for the Artplace America Summit.

We started off our session with a lovely check in question “What are you doing right now as a form of self-care?”. Most common responses included taking rest by sleeping early, in, and taking naps through the day as needed. As our weeks get more intense it is important for us to do what we need for our mental and physical well-being during our exhausting, pandemic world. 

Following check-in we started off with reflecting on our readings. We started off with the ECCD readings and sharing out our key takeaways from our mural board. We had 4 distinct sessions: Inviting diverse co-creators, Building humility & empathy, History & healing and finally Acknowledging & dismantling power constructs. During this exercise we all actively engaged and “liked” or “heart” reacted to our favorite takeaways from each section. We also looked back at our favorite quotes from the EquityxDesign article called "Racism and Inequity Are Products of Design. They Can Be Redesigned" (Links to an external site.)” and found that most of us resonated with the idea that although racism isn’t blatantly obvious noways it still exists at systemic and structural levels and that our problem-solving skills as designers allow us to recreate these systems. Our last reading reflection was case studies that we individually picked from the Creative Placemaking white paper. This was good inspiration from all over the US on how local problems require local solutions. 

We then had a presentation by the very inspiring Vilde and Q on their pedestrian safety project, “Made You Look”. We were all very impressed by how Vilde & Q let their research with the Baltimore community organically lead them to such tangible and simple solutions. Their project is a great example of how complex problems sometimes need simple design solutions. 

Following lunch, we spend the second half of our class creating and grouping guiding questions for our main project, “How might we collectively envision what creative placemaking means in Baltimore through a racial justice lens?”. Framing guiding questions are essential so that we can keep our research focused and it’ll let us know when we are “done”. After grouping questions, we each picked a theme that we are interested in in order to frame a final guiding question for that theme. These will be shared out next class. 

We began our second PBS gathering with a check-in in which everyone shared their highlights from the previous week. People’s highlights included taking a walk with roommates in Druid Hill Park, practicing self-care through exercise and hydration, enjoying some alone time in Atlantic City, drawing inspiration from presentations by social design associates, and finding pumpkin spice-flavored almond milk creamer at the store.

Following check-ins, we reviewed the Center for Social Design Community Norms to set the PBS’s intention for the day, The broad consensus of the class was that not knowing/being curious/questioning were good norms to focus on for week two. Becky led us in a team dynamics exercise in Homebase designed to help us become better acquainted with each other and with the Mural platform. We were presented a series of choices - e.g. cat vs. dog, coffee vs. tea, etc. - and plotted our preferences along a spectrum. Our responses reflected a remarkably even distribution of preferences.

Our next task was to share what we hope to both contribute and get out of our participation in the PBS. 

We then offered reflections on two of the foundational documents for this course: What is Human Centered Design and the Design Justice Network principles. Each person shared their top three takeaways from the IDEO article, “Design Thinking for Social Innovation;” and discussed their favorite design-for-justice principle.  

The class discussed the seminal 2010 paper, Creative Placemaking, by Ann Markusen and Anne Gadwa Nicodemus. Among the themes that arose were: the appropriate role of policymakers and funders in the creative placemaking process; and the ways that funders’ perspectives on creative placamaking can diverge significantly from those of people actually doing the work (often to the detriment of practitioners and communities). 

[Creative placemaking is] really about the creative placemakers...the places are nothing without the people  - Alanah Davis

From there, we segued into a conversation about examples of creative placemaking, based on the case studies we posted to Mural. In selecting these examples, we were asked to consider how each case was a manifestation of creative placemaking, as well who was involved in the process, who benefitted from it, and who was harmed by it.

The cases we shared reflected a wide diversity of geographies, disciplines, and intended outcomes of creative placemaking projects. They included:

Dovecote Cafe, a Black-owned, "community based hub and food oasis” in Reservoir Hill;

The Kala Ghoda Festival, an annual event “with the object of maintaining and preserving the heritage and art district of South Mumbai.”

The North Avenue Window Joint, “a community-based art series run by [PBS member] Alanah Nichole, Outreach, and Marketing Manager of Impact Hub Baltimore.”

Photo credit: Impact Hub Baltimore

After that, we spent some time talking about how to transition from the framing and planning stages of the PBS into design research. 

Becky remarked that while “so far we’ve been focused more on the academic research - what’s been written, what’s considered best practice - that needs to be coupled with learning what’s happening in the real world, on the ground.” The design research principles of observe, engage, and embed are a necessary complement to academic research, she said.

This process employs interviews as the principal means of information-gathering. In design research, designers must craft two to three overarching questions to ensure that they remain focused on addressing the design challenge. 

Becky provided the example of the Center for Social Design’s Real Food Farm Project, which addressed the challenge of linking neighborhoods to real food. The guiding research questions for that effort included: “how do residents feel about Real Food Farm?” And: “what is working that can be adapted/uplifted?”

We officially kicked off our Baltimore + Creative Placemaking adventure, with introductions and project overview. Our partners are Kate McGrain and Abby Neyenhouse with the help of Kevin Griffin Moreno.

Abby and Kate gave a presentation on creative placemaking and engaged us in a thought proking discussion on their aspirations for creative placmaking in Baltimore. Kevin chimed in to add another level of thought to consider when approaching the topic. The main topics we discussed was how would we engage with individuals (virtually?) who are already doing this work, how do we support creative placemaking, and knowing what/who we are teaching.

To bring everything full circle, we came together as a group to discuss the stories, quotes, observations, and questions we had during the partner’s presentation. We were able to expand on our thoughts through Mural and started a living glossary to access throughout the semester.