Idea Incubator
Charette for Community:
How to design a living space for a refugee family
Idea Incubator space, Hege Library
Wed, Oct 7, 2015, 1:30-2:30 pm
Slide Show Introduction, 1:00-1:10
Greensboro Housing Coalition has been a long-time community partner with Bonner Center.
With community members and GHC, we’ve sought to close this apartment for decades.
In Fall 2015 two refugee students discussed their different experiences in refugee camps.
UN provisions on display at the first Mosaic festival; contrasting refugee camps.
Varying degrees of wealth in an El Salvador village; drawings by a Bahnar refugee about his home.
Reunion photos provided by African Services Coalition.
Sights from Piedmont Triad International Airport.
From a video on food insecurity with narration by refugee community health workers (CHWs).
The infamous News-Record article that contributed to the closing of Lutheran Family Services.
Court evidence prepared by defendants to counter landlord claims they were breaking their lease.
Charette Exercise, 1:10-1:45
Team Facilitator-visualizer and community experts: (1) Guilford refugee
students, (2) Guilfordians who’ve worked closely with refugee communities,
(3) housing advocates
Goals Visualize an ideal living space for a refugee family
Give voice to community experts
Practice using community-friendly, community-centered formats like
pechakucha and charette
Process I’ll ask community experts questions like those listed below.
As they respond, I will use white boards to sketch, diagram or design responses.
These illustrations will suggest design specs for a refugee-friendly housing unit.
With 15 minutes to spare we’ll open the process to audience critique, Q+A
Questions to community experts
text
Charette for Community:
How to design a living space for a refugee family
Idea Incubator space, Hege Library
Wed, Oct 7, 2015, 1:30-2:30 pm
• We refer to campus meaning the small population here at Guilford College.For worksheet, click here
• We refer to community meaning the large world that we are part of.
• A pechakucha slide show (20 slides, 20 seconds each slide) is a fast-paced way to introduce new ideas. It is often used by creative types to pitch and share works in progress. And good news! If it’s boring, it ends in exactly 6 minutes and 40 seconds.
• A charette is a type of community-based design intended to give community members a voice equal to experts and professionals. A charette typically takes a half or full day and can require several sessions, so for our session we will only demonstrate the outlines of the process.
Slide Show Introduction, 1:00-1:10
This slide show is intended to provide background information to the question, If we could design the ideal living space (apartment or house) for a refugee family, what would it look like?
Although Guilford has been the state's leading refugee resettlement county for over 30 years, it can hardly claim to be a model of community building or community empowerment.
Greensboro Housing Coalition has been a long-time community partner with Bonner Center.
With community members and GHC, we’ve sought to close this apartment for decades.
In Fall 2015 two refugee students discussed their different experiences in refugee camps.
UN provisions on display at the first Mosaic festival; contrasting refugee camps.
Varying degrees of wealth in an El Salvador village; drawings by a Bahnar refugee about his home.
Reunion photos provided by African Services Coalition.
Sights from Piedmont Triad International Airport.
From a video on food insecurity with narration by refugee community health workers (CHWs).
The infamous News-Record article that contributed to the closing of Lutheran Family Services.
Court evidence prepared by defendants to counter landlord claims they were breaking their lease.
The Bonner Center has been involved with refugees, immigrants and marginalized communities for 25 years. It is impossible to consider the question of refugee-immigrant housing without considering Greensboro’s historic black-white divide.
Stress constitutes the number one problem for refugees and immigrants, according to community leaders Omer Omer (then director for African Services Coalition) and Y Siu Hlong (director of Montagnard Dega Association).
Sprawl is a symptom of a city designed to make people sick (America Bracho, Santa Ana Health Crusade). Guilford map showing locations of health clinics versus concentrations of Vietnamese refugees and immigrants (courtesy Dr Mark Smith, Guilford Co. Public Health).
A graph adopted from Dr Mark Smith’s presentation to Moses Cone, showing how refugee women can improve their health outcomes at little cost to Moses Cone regional health system.
Since refugee resettlement agencies provide only limited services for a brief time, what happens when the money runs out? An elderly couple sorts through bills on the floor of their rundown apartment.
Many other factors barely considered, such as literacy disparities or treatment of LGBTQ refugees.
With members of local refugee-immigrant communities now students on the Guilford College campus, we can no longer treat them as “outsiders”. Bonner Scholars have been instrumental to attracting new students to campus and presenting Guilford as a welcoming place to refugees and immigrants.
Team Facilitator-visualizer and community experts: (1) Guilford refugee
students, (2) Guilfordians who’ve worked closely with refugee communities,
(3) housing advocates
Goals Visualize an ideal living space for a refugee family
Give voice to community experts
Practice using community-friendly, community-centered formats like
pechakucha and charette
Process I’ll ask community experts questions like those listed below.
As they respond, I will use white boards to sketch, diagram or design responses.
These illustrations will suggest design specs for a refugee-friendly housing unit.
With 15 minutes to spare we’ll open the process to audience critique, Q+A
Questions to community experts
What do you need for a good home?
What would make you happy?
What would make your mother happy?
What would make your father happy?
What would make grandparents and elders
happy?
What were you used to?
What kind of floor is good?
How many people in the home?
How many rooms?
Where to cook?
Type of fuel?
Where to sleep?
Where to gather?
Where to study?
Where to play? Inside? Outside?
Where to work or make things?
Windows and light — location and sources?
Doors or curtains?
An upstairs or one floor?
Disability access
|
Outside, a yard? Backyard? Frontyard?
Vegetable garden? How big?
Flower garden? Fruit trees?
Chickens? Other animals?
Fencing? What kind?
Garden or farm tools?
Outside water source? Rain barrels?
Outside place to sleep?
Clothesline?
Distance to...
Cousins, extended family
Friends
Other community members
Place of worship
School
Park, playground, greenery
American food stores
Ethnic food sources, food stores
Employment
Library, Court, DHHS, City Government
Transportation
Access, proximity
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