Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Case Studies involving youth and adults Co-designing Communities

Co-design was recently used to involve youth in the the following examples

1.  WEST VANCOUVER MEMORIAL LIBRARY TEEN SPACE
It was our pleasure to assist the Library in engaging local youth to design the activities, perceptual qualities and typical daily use of the library space.  The four hour co-design included a perceptual site walk, a discussion of ecology and co-design drawing.  This data was added to a questionnaire prepared by the library staff. For West Vancouver Memorial Library, our codesign was just a part of their comprehensive plan for youth engagement  Our Congratulations to Shannon Ozirny and Jenny Benedict for their excellent program of design participation.  


The codesign drawings were shared with the designer and the teen space has many qualities described during the codesign.  The participants wanted a space with abundant light for studying, socializing and hanging out. 



The space was to be a communal living room.  Lighting can be controlled.  Books were to be on the walls.  Compare the drawings with the actual space. The mayor, councillors, library board of directors and all the teens who were involved with the design were in attendance. Co-design artists for this youth engagement: Stanley King, Susan Chung, Drew Ferrari, Khorshid Azad-Naderi.  









co-design drawings were proudly displayed


Gladstone Learning Garden
This codesign project engaged staff and student leaders to collaborate with Freshroots to design a learning garden to be used to train students who live with challenges due to developmental disabilities.  It was our pleasure to include these students in the design process.
When we asked them "What belongs in a city?" They replied "People!!... sunshine....parks!! "
Some photos of our engagement below.  Many thanks to our collaborators, the Vancouver School Board, Gladstone Secondary and freshroots.ca







Co-design for 
Youth-led conferences - The VSB Sustainability Conference is an event entirely organized by youth.  Susan assisted on the organizing committee of VSB conferences from 2009 to 2014. Now she supports the conference by offering to train youth artists.  Youth learn about sustainability from one another and from experts.  Then, in the afternoon, they co-design their future school district.  Co-design trained youth artists to facilitate the ideas for their peers. Our Call For Artists asks Do you like to doodle in class? Are you a Grafitti artist? We want you!!


Susan coordinated the artist training for the VSB Sustainability conference involving a team of 18 youth drawing for up to 200 peers