Draw your park map making

To learn what the community wants, and where they want it.

Above are what you'll need for this activity- your base maps, and colored pencils!

DESIGN PHASE:

Vision and goals
Site exploration
Program development
Co-design
Design evaluation
Implementation

MATERIALS NEEDED:

Basemap
Colored pencils

PREFERRED FORMAT:

In-person

SUGGESTIONS:

Don't be afraid to encourage participants throughout the activity
Make sure your base map is easily read by a non-designer
Take the time to make sure each participant is properly oriented on the site.

The purpose of the Draw Your Own Park activity is to learn what elements the community wants in the design, and exactly where they’d like them to be placed in the context of the existing conditions. You can also gain more intangible information from this exercise by looking at things like the colors they use to draw, what they spend the most time drawing, and any words or phrases scribbled in the margins of the drawing. As such, it is necessary to create an easy-to-read basemap for your participants to work off of.

How-to

Follow these steps to lead a map drawing activity:

1. After completing a site inventory, design a basemap for your participants to draw on. It is important that this basemap is easily readable to any non-designer. This means including lots of clarifying information that helps to orient participants on the map and maintaining clear, easy-to-understand symbols to represent the existing conditions. Be sure to include clear labels for existing structures or spaces. You could draw your basemap in a “coloring book” style with the entire page in grayscale to encourage drawing and coloring in the map with participants’ dreams for the site.

2. After giving your basemap to the participants, be sure to spend some time making sure everyone is properly oriented on the map and understands where everything is.

3. Provide an example of what their map might look like. This example should be simple and unintimidating.

4. Then, encourage participants to draw their map. If some folks are hesitant, ask that they at least write the words of their ideas in the places they imagine them.

5. Be sure to remind participants to label their drawings.

EVANS COUNTY Case Example

This activity was used in the first two Evans County Community Center engagement sessions. Facilitators Liz, Nick, and Brooke chose the activity for a few reasons. The site was expansive, and already home to a host of different amenities. The community was the only people that could lead us in the direction of what and where these kinds of activities were currently being held.

There’s also a certain kind of child-like dreaming that can be coaxed out when drawing your ideas. Breaking out colored pencils and physically drawing what you imagine can get the creativity flowing in a more direct way.

So, we sat in the Evans County Community Center and passed out our coloring book style basemaps and colored pencils. We provided a short set of directions alongside the map for reference, as well as a question. “In one word, what is your dream for the Evans County Community Center?”

Some of the participants dove right into the activity, drawing their ideas in bold color and labeling them clearly. Other folks simply sat quietly, visibly uninterested or uncomfortable in the idea. The facilitator took to walking around to each of these less interested participants, and asking them verbally for their ideas. After listening to what they had to say, the facilitator encouraged them to put those ideas on paper.

One man, for example, spoke with the facilitator passionately about the need for extensive safety lighting. To keep the ball rolling, he was encouraged to put a dot exactly where he thought the safety lighting needed to go.

Another child struggled with coming up with ideas. He did, however, draw on a welcome sign at the front of the entrance. To keep the creativity flowing, the facilitator asked the child to turn his map over and draw what he thought the sign should look like. How would he design it if he could? He excitedly took on the task.

I feel that this activity went fairly well. One thing I wish, however, was that we encouraged folks to fill out that question about their one word dream for the space. A handful of people did participate in that section, and their answers were wonderful. It would have been great to have gotten even more responses there.

Lessons Learned

Leading this activity proved to bring up a lot of important lessons. Here are a few of them:

· Encourage participants to participate in any way they see comfortable, be it in drawing or in just writing words

· When making the basemap, label the more intangible existing features. For example, instead of just labeling a building by its name, find out the use of the building and label it as such. This will help participants orient themselves easier.

· Don’t be afraid to hop in and speak to seemingly uninterested participants, sometimes they just need a little nudge of confidence.

[Written by Brooke Freeman]

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