PROJECT OVERVIEW 

An electronic and printed publication that uses visual storytelling to discuss how to practice community-engaged design more critically.

PROJECT INFORMATION

TIMELINE: 2016
LOCATION: GLOBAL
Client: N/A
Partners:
    Theresa Hwang
    Christine Gaspar
Role: Collaborator

Additional Project Collateral

Project Website

STORY

More and more people are practicing some form of community-engaged design or social impact design or human-centered design. But as these fields have grown, much of the emphasis is on design rather than on the communities impacted by the work.

As practitioners in the field, the Equity Collective felt it was time to shine a light on how good community-engaged design practices can not only create good projects but also advance social justice, and how poor practices are hurting not only our field, but the communities it claims to serve.

The Equity Collective is a group of practitioners advancing issues of social equity in the community-engaged design field. They collaborated with the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) and illustrator Ping Zhu to create this visual guide to community design practices.

The full booklet can be downloaded for the Center for Urban Pedagogy’s website.

IMAGE GALLERY

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REFLECTIONS

"How can I be less of a Dick and more of a Rick?"

THERESA HWANG

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THE TAKEAWAY

Having good intentions is not enough if we replicate harmful dynamics.

Designers often enter a community with the power to make impactful decisions. We need to be hyper-critical about how to deploy it.

Work towards the goal of advancing racial, economic and social justice in every decision made.