Community Codesign

  • 2015
  • 6 person team

Conducting early design research and relationship building for a project to build a community makerspace for STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) learning, making, and doing in Clarksdale, Mississippi.

Through the course of the project, our team spent time in Clarksdale, meeting with various members in the community, running co-design workshops to identify potential curriculum and locations that could host such a space. A significant part of the work was to start building local relationships such that everything created would be owned by the community.

This research was handed off to future teams, who have since continued the project


Relationship Building

The first phase of work was to build relationships within the community, getting a handle on the community politics the project would have to navigate.

Synthesis

Incorporating makerspace research from Boston with field research from Clarkdale to identify potential curriculum.

Running Codesign Workshops

Running a cardsorting activity with the Clarksdale community to serve as a launching point for further administrative discussions of who in the community might run the space, and what curriculum it might teach.