Cultivating Spaces for Relational Design Collaborations across Multiple Communities and Systems—Challenges and Opportunities 

Danielle Lake, Sandy Marshall, James Shields, and Tyberious Brooks

This workshop builds on the RSD 13 theme of streams, rivers, and tributaries by sharing strategies for cultivating place-based, intergenerational Relational Design collaborations that span multiple social systems. Facilitators will begin by sharing the story of the Power+Place Collaborative. The Collaborative is an evolving and expanding partnership located in the southern United States and centered around the combined efforts of local Community Centers, the public school system, the County’s Parks & Recreation, and a wide variety of courses and programs at the local university. Since 2018, collaborative members have been scaling social systems changes through a variety of relational design strategies. Thus far, strategies have included community-led oral history interviews and student-created digital stories, public screenings, digital and physical community profile campaigns, and county-wide dialogues intended to build bridges across systemic divides. The purpose of this project is to foster a more inclusive sense of place and cultivate participatory practices of community co-creation with a growing ecosystem of partners. Strategies for cultivating Relational Design projects across multiple systems and communities will be assessed via equity-centered collective impact and scaling frameworks. Session attendees will be invited to assess and share their experiences, questions, and strategies. We will together create a place from which we can learn about and adapt more effective and responsive strategies to current social systems challenges.

KEYWORDS: Relational Design, collective impact, participatory action, place-based, scaling

RSD TOPIC(S): Cases & Practice, Methods & Methodology, Society & Culture