To create spaces that are cared for, we need to design places that are desired. As a group we decided to pick activities that are open-ended to allow people to suggest their own ideas without being prompted one way or another. Activities were also chosen for people of all education levels and abilities: a drawing activity, a post-it note brainstorming activity, and a colored dot ranking system. Throughout these activities, individual interviews were held in an informal manner to create a safe place for people to be candid with their thoughts.

Two meetings open to the public were held: one in the evening and one during the day with the intent of making the meeting available to people with all types of schedules and age groups. A brainstorming post-it note and dot ranking activity was conducted in tandem with a “Design Your Park!” drawing activity. Both activities allowed us to gather convincing data about the programmatic elements that are the most important to the community via point ranking systems and creating aggregate drawings from the “Design Your Park!” activity. With this information, we are able to begin to create programmatic elements to include in the master plan for the community center.

During this phase, the greatest learning opportunities were from the participants themselves and the African American Museum within the community center (which documents the history of the school in relation to the community). Invaluable information was gathered via interviews with living alumni of the decommissioned equalization school. It was apparent that poverty, access to green space, and food security are a problem for the community. However, we also learned that the community is dedicated, activated, and engaged in the idea of making the community center a place for all ages and abilities.

[Written by Elizabeth M. Swift]

[Written by  Brooke Freeman]

Working with the council of Evans County Community Center, the UGA Extension agent, community members of Claxton and our studio team, we were able to produce a master plan for the Community Center to use moving forward towards their goal of creating a public recreation space for all ages of the community. The final product is a culmination of all of the roles that took shape during the community engagement and design process. We as the designers are not the sole authors of the work that has been produced: the master plan and supporting concepts were informed by community input, design decisions made by the studio team, facilitated with help from the UGA extension agent, and given feedback by the council of Evans County Community Center. 

The community of Claxton came in strong numbers to two community meetings in September. The people that came to the meeting to participate in the activity ranged from teachers, law enforcement officers, alumni from the equalization school, children and parents that live in Claxton. Their role was essential to the crux of the purpose of the project: to create a space that reflected the desires of the people in Claxton. This role was essential to create the base framework for programmatic elements that would be included in the master plan.

Our UGA Extension Agent was vital to the success of the project as well. He helped facilitate communication and scheduling between the council of Evans County Community Center and the studio team. For every review conducted over zoom, the UGA Extension Agent made sure there was proper equipment to conduct a fruitful meeting. In addition to this, he communicated feedback from the council after they had time to debate different design alternatives. This role served as a critical bridge between the studio team and the council to make quality design and engagement work possible from a distance. 

The council of Evans County Community Center has been committed to the development of this project from the very first engagement. They helped set up meetings, spread the word to community members, encouraged conversations about visions for the future, and gave extremely detailed feedback on various design iterations and alternatives until a final product was produced that reflected the needs and desires for the future of the community center. 

The studio team served as the people who brought all of the collected information together to produce a vision for the community. With our design expertise, we were able to produce a master plan for the community members of Claxton that we can honestly say reflects the desires of the community, the priorities of the council, and the feasibility of different programmatic elements.

Even if just one role were to be removed from the equation, the outcome of the project would have changed completely. Each role produced invaluable contributions to the master plan and further highlights the power of design through community engagement and feedback. 

[written by Elizabeth Swift]

Working with the folks from Evans County was an incredible experience; we felt welcomed throughout the process and they did a great job engaging with us to create a design that suited their needs. This process was pretty unique in terms of a school project in that we had an extended period of time to work with the clients, getting to know them and their goals for the project. The semester-long format gave us ample time to learn about the history of the site, what the community wanted and had been lacking, and create a design that responded to the community’s needs. It was especially interesting to have the chance to go down to the site and do engagement meetings in person—I felt like it gave the project a personal touch that I haven’t often gotten out of more traditional studio projects. I think having multiple instances of engagement and feedback was really important as it allowed our designs to change and adapt to best fulfill what our stakeholders were hoping for. 

One of the challenges with getting to spend time learning about the community is that I’m not sure where the process goes from here. I feel like we created a really great design concept, with some awesome features that fill some holes in the community, but I am worried that it won’t be enough for the Evans County Community Center to get funding or get anything built. I hope that it will, and that our team will get to see something come out of this beyond our drawings. It would be a shame for everyone involved (our design team, the stakeholders, and the general community) if the momentum stopped here, so hopefully it won’t! I think that these concerns come from a place of caring deeply about the community, which could only happen with the extensive engagement we’ve done. 

Finally, I want to show some appreciation for my teammates, Liz and Brooke, who were great to work with all semester. Having them to bounce ideas off and to help focus my designs was great, and really felt like what I imagine a landscape design office is like. We each had our own roles that we were fulfilling, but all got to work together to create a product that was better than anything we could have made on our own. 

[Written by Nick Riker]

  This semester, I got to work with some fantastic graduate students on a project with equally as fantastic clients. Liz, Nick, and I traveled a few hours away to Claxton, GA to hone our community engagement skills as we designed the grounds of the Evans County Community Center. We visited the town for two days, completing a site analysis, taking photographs, and leading two engagement sessions to collect feedback from the greater community. We worked closely with our UGA Extension Agent Ross and the Evans County High School alumni association. The ECCC was once home to a 1950’s equalization school with a rich history that has been anything but forgotten. Precious memories of the site’s past are found in a delicately coordinated African American Archive Museum on the northern wing of the building. There’s no photography allowed in the museum, but it would be hard to forget how intricately organized and displayed each artifact is. The museum was a deeply important piece of the design puzzle- but we learned early on that it was the voices of the community itself that would prove the most invaluable in our design process. In our initial engagement sessions, we led a sticky-note brainstorming activity, a dot ranking activity, and a “Design Your Park” map drawing activity. Though all of those pieces of our visit provided us with a wealth of physical data, I learned that the most important things we gathered were from informal conversations with members of the community.

The first thing I noticed was the way one community leader and Evans County High alumnus spoke to the crowd. She was very insistent that this design was meant for everybody. And that anyone, of any age or ability, could find a home at the ECCC. We took that and ran with it- making one of our themes Community Recreation- a theme that would guide us in creating spaces that encouraged intergenerational and interability play. Another integral piece to the puzzle was also learned through informal conversation- The old planter that once sat in the middle of the northern courtyard. Alumni spoke fondly of a large planter that they once took school photos on. This led us to recreate the planter, along with a memorial fountain in memory of its historic use.

Of course, there were a few challenges along the way. The first being nudging community members to feel comfortable drawing their ideas on a map. In the moment, I addressed this by encouraging folks to simply write out in words what they imagined in the area they saw fit. Some people wound up simply writing a list of their ideas on the back or margins of the page. In the future, I might provide cut-out elements that can be placed on a map to get the “spatial thinking” ball rolling.