Wayfinding: Reconnect Riverdale: A Living Heritage Framework for Community and Economic Development, Chicago IL
In the Riverdale Community Area local leaders, neighbors, grassroots and affiliate organizations collaborated on a multifaceted community vision and action plan for Riverdale. The goal was to position current and legacy residents as primary beneficiaries of development opportunities in the region, and increase the quality of life.
In partnership with community leaders, Wayfinding co-facilitated intergenerational story circles and supported monthly community advisory meetings. The result was the formation of the Riverdale Community Land Trust and the creation of a Living Heritage Framework Plan for Community and Economic Development.
The Framework Plan documented the current status and ongoing planning of the community-led placekeeping and economic development strategies. It detailed the interconnected priority initiatives defined by neighborhood based entities and residents, who serve the needs of the extended community. These priorities include community health and environmental health, local food ecosystems, transportation, economic self-determination, affordable housing, community history, and community leisure.
Field Note: Multiple realities, sometimes conflicting truths exist together. Bumping up against each other—creating ripples—to understand each other—to understand place. Building trusted networks is difficult and SO worth it. In complex intersectional projects you must move at the speed of trust.
Wayfinding: Arts and Culture Inventory with Saint Paul Parks and Recreation, Saint Paul, MN
The purpose of this project was to conduct an arts and culture inventory of programs, events, commissions, policies, processes and impact for the City of Saint Paul’s parks department.
Our process involved pulling together qualitative and quantitative information to create a comprehensive overview of the department’s commitment to arts and culture, in order to begin planning ways to further stabilize and celebrate the great arts and cultural work.
An Arts and Culture Inventory contained information gathered internally from parks staff, city staff, and city arts practitioners and stakeholders outside of the department.
A majority of the information was garnered through a series of conversational interviews with staff engaged in arts and culture processes and stakeholders’ experiences of working with Saint Paul Parks and Recreation on arts and culture initiatives.
Field Note: Inventory is an accounting of what you have. See the resources that we do actually have in our cities. It's easy to focus on what we don't have, a city in deficit. Change the lens-- what is good, what is working, what is there but needs care or reworking for real public good? Let’s start there.
Wayfinding: Artist in Residence Program Review with Josephine Sculpture Park, Frankfort, KY
In the summer of 2023, the leadership of Josephine Sculpture Park (JSP) initiated a systematic review of their Artist in Residence (AiR) program. This external evaluation aimed to assess various aspects of the program, including its implementation, performance, processes, facilities, staff capacity, diversity, equity, inclusion, and access (DEIA), as well as its impact on both artists and the community.
The program review featured the experiences and ideas from former artists in residence, JSP staff, stakeholders, and community. The collective insights were paired with ideas and resources from the field to elevate and advance the AiR program into its future form.
This review of AiR was a strategic move to rebalance the mission, values, capacity, and care for staff and artists, marking a significant moment of organizational, professional, and intentional growth. The long term objective is a strengthened AiR program that is sustainable, effective, and mission aligned for years to come.
Field Note: Artists make place. When permitted they can do this at a massive scale. They amplify land and legacy.
Wayfinding: Envisioning the Wellness Center with Forest Preserves of Cook County, Caldwell Woods Chicago, IL
Forest Preserves of Cook County is preparing to launch a renovated property at Caldwell Woods from a Warming Center into a Wellness Center. The new Wellness Center is intended to be a community resource to host local needs, interests, and activities.
FPCC is particularly interested in the ways communities will be motivated to use the space for their networks--for this site to be an accessible place for public articulated wellness in nature. This approach is a shift in programming for FPCC, using a grassroots model for programming design.
Wayfinding is stewarding that process. Phase 1 involved network building, events, and informal interviews with community stakeholders and leaders to gain collective insights about future programming of the Wellness Center and surrounding preserve. Activities and conversations focused on what wellness means across cultures and where it can be found in nature.
Additionally, we led an internal inventory of processes, contracts, and agreements to work towards a streamlined process, removing barriers for community groups to program the space.
Wayfinding: The West Side Lagoons Story and Public Experience, Chicago—Garfield Park
Connecting Cultures via West Side Lagoons was a multigenerational creative exploration of well-being for neighbors and community water systems.
The project included community convenings and story circles to conceive arts happenings and wayfinding installations about personal connections to water in the urban ecosystem. The city park lagoons--paired with neighbors’ stories, vision, and cultures--served as a place-based experience of a community's histories and imagined futures for holistic community wellness.
Conceived with artist and cultural connector Levette Haynes, cultivator of gardens and community Gina Jamison, and cultural organizer Sonica Ruiz.
This project is supported by Chicago Mayor’s Office of Equity and Racial Justice and Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events—Year of Healing.
Wayfinding: Reconnect Riverdale, Neighborhood Voice and Little Calumet River, Chicago—Southeast Side
In the Riverdale community local leaders, neighbors, grassroots and institutional organizations are collaborating on programs, events and advocacy to draw connections between residents, the Little Calumet River and community land and community wellbeing. The project amplified powerful local histories and futurism with and for the adjacent neighborhoods.
The storywork revealed the collective insights on community health and environmental health, local food ecosystems, transportation, economic self-determination, affordable housing, community history, and community leisure.
In partnership with community leaders, Wayfinding facilitated intergenerational story circles, co-created a Storymap of oral histories connected to the land and water, produced neighborly river walking tours and co-conceived artistic activations on open lands held in trust for restoration and community use.
Field Note: Oral history is a powerful tool in strategic planning. We look backwards to go forward. Oral history asks a person or a community to reflect on their lived experiences - to take those learnings to build toward futurism.
This project is supported through the Calumet Collaborative, Our Great Rivers Grant.
Wayfinding: The Wild Mile Public Engagement and Learning, Chicago—Chicago River, North Branch Canal
The Wild Mile is biodiversity innovation in action, a mile-long ecological floating public space on an industrial canal of the north branch river. Created to restore and re-wild the waterway, this ‘floating park’ is in its initial stages of ecological findings and public engagement.
Wayfinding convened creatives, educators and river advocates to imagine and share ideas to introduce this new public space as a site of public conservation learning and artistic activation.
The targeted engagement resulted in a series of partnerships, pilot-tested public programs and events and a phase one public learning plan to chart the initial years of public learning and engagement programming.
Field Note: Being responsive is essential. In the creation of a new public place, also create the conditions and process to really watch how the public uses it. You might have instincts and organizational priorities for programming but the public also has its own unique instincts for use and its own set of priorities, likely very different from yours.
If you set up a process to observe, to listen, you will get to know the land better, the water better, the people better, your programming is likely going to change to respond to the culture of the place that is always co-authored with the public.
Supported by Neighborspace and Urban Rivers
Wayfinding: Neighborhood Water Walking Studios, Chicago—Albany Park, Garfield Park, Golden Gate and Altgeld Gardens
Inspired by Chicago Architecture Biennale’s theme “Available City” which focused on underutilized and dis-invested city spaces, Wayfinding connected with river and lagoon adjacent neighborhoods to explore connections between people and their urban waterways.
Wayfinding curated a series of water walking tours where neighbor’s shared stories of urban farming, cultural history, urban infrastructure, wellness and environmental activism connected to neighborhood culture and water.
Field Note: People who are in place are the experts of it. Value their wisdom. Their understanding and articulation of place may be positive or negative, either way their perspectives will provide texture to the collective understanding of place.
A 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial Community Studio Program.
Map and graphic design by: Xan Lillehei + KJ Sparman
