 and welcome to Discovery, conversations about the power of the arts to connect us to each other into place. I'm Victoria Rogers, vice president of arts at the Knight Foundation. Joining me today is Cézanne Charles, designer, curator, researcher, co-founder and director of the Design Studio, Roof of Two, and Olga Stella, vice president of strategy and communication at the College for Creative Studies, and executive director of Design Corps, Detroit, a part of the college that works to position Detroit as a global source of creative talent. We want you to be an active participant today in the conversation, so if you have questions, please submit them through the show via Twitter using the hashtag Night Live, and in the comments section of the Facebook livestream. We'll get to as many of them as we can throughout the conversation. Cézanne and Olga are two design advocates who've been working on a number of projects separate and collaboratively that convey why inclusive design matters and what it looks like in practice. Cézanne and Olga, welcome to Discovery. For having us. So ladies, let's start Olga. Could you begin with what it means to be the fact that Detroit is the only city in the U.S. recognized as a UNESCO city of design? Absolutely. It is both an honor and an opportunity for us. Five years ago, Detroit was competitively selected and Cézanne was part of the application process for the UNESCO designation along with our prior executive director and our team. And what it really was, it was a recognition from our UNESCO colleagues that the way the design happens in Detroit and what it means is a special and unique and something that the rest of the world could learn more about. And we'll talk, we'll be talking a little bit more about that today, you know, around what it means to try to practice design in an inclusive way. But that's what our colleagues from around the world wanted to learn about and to see the way that the grassroots in Detroit really helped drive the design discussion, not so much the grass tops. Gotcha. So Olga, I mean Cézanne, title of our talk is design is a verb. You know, so many people, they think about design, you might think of one of those gorgeous old buildings or a new building. For me, it could be a really great pair of shoes that I really hope are going to be comfortable. Is there a little form and function in that shoe besides just being stunning? So what are some of the misconceptions that people have about design and what does design mean as a process? Yeah. So I would say that, you know, whether we're talking about those traditional aspects of fashion or garment or building or even product design and development, they all sort of begin with this kind of listening process and the way that designers might go about that looks differently, depending on the kind of industry or sector they're in, they could be listening to the kind of consumer base by paying attention to sort of what they know in terms of market data, in terms of demand, in terms of, you know, past history. But there is this kind of foundational start to a project, which is around how are we listening to the people that we're trying to serve through our products or services or our buildings and environments or our technology. But I think where inclusive design and sort of design really thinking about itself more as a verb rather than a noun goes, is how do we sort of continue that listening all the way throughout? And then how do you actually encourage and empower users to sort of be the architects of that own sense making through the process? So I think it's more about then how do you carry that listening throughout and how does listening turn into engagement and accountability? And I think that's the kind of shift that we're seeing as we talk more about inclusive design and certainly design as a set of processes that are really supposed to be in a virtuous kind of feedback loop with the very people that you're designing with and for. And I think that the biggest pivot is that designing with as opposed to just designing for. And that sort of goes beside beyond that term I'm so used to is the design charrette, where it's sometimes it's a one time, you know, it's here's the design you get feedback sort of, but it's not necessarily an ongoing conversation about the process. Yeah, that's so true. I think that, you know, one of the things that's really hard is, is you have to think about and kind of explored your own design process to really think about, you know, where can you sort of be looking at opportunities for ongoing engagement? And those have real like timeline and budgetary constraints. And so not every design process will always be fit for kind of running a fully inclusive process. But unless we sort of check our assumptions that we have to run processes that don't have kind of the right kind of timing or budgeting or scheduling that sort of earmarks inclusion as a principle, you know, so how are we resourcing inclusion as a principle in our projects? Then you do get kind of the sort of, you know, here's my design, here's this active persuasion that I'm doing as a designer, where we're in conversation, but I've already baked in a lot of assumptions already into the project at work. So Olga, why do designers need other people to be involved in the design process? They're trained, you know, we're getting to that now, they're trained professionals with a specialized knowledge and this experience. Why aren't they in the best position to design places and products and services for the rest of us? Well, I mean, we certainly at the College for Creative Studies, you know, believe in the value of a design education and just the specialized skills that artists and designers have to be these kinds of creative problem solvers, but I think we all recognize that as humans, we have limited points of view. And that when, you know, to Cézanne's point, you know, as we were talking about what it means to design as a verb, this idea of designing with people, of being engaged in relationships with people, that's a practice that also requires learning. And it's not necessarily the way that designers have worked. Of course, there are, you know, leaders in the field who have been doing this, as I mentioned before, you know, we have, you know, over 60 partners in the city of Detroit alone, who have been practicing in different ways, many inclusive design practices, but our educational institutions have not necessarily this kind of practice of designing with people. You know, it still needs a lot of work, it still needs to be institutionalized. There's, I think, still very much a, you know, kind of, you know, my point of view, my kind of bespoke creation view that a lot of designers have. And sometimes that's, that is pushed by budget, it's pushed by the constraints that designers presented with, whether it's time or the client's expectation, or, you know, for many reasons. But I think what we have found, and we're real proponents of the work that Cat Holmes has done in her book, Mismatch, is this idea that when we work with others, when we start to break down this process, and really engage the people who are typically most excluded from places, from products, from services, we're going to get better products with better customer engagement, bigger audiences, we're going to reduce the issues around fixing things that go wrong later, and we're going to be more innovative. And so this is a skill that does have to be taught. And some institutions, like CCS, are really looking at how to teach that, but it's not necessarily widespread through the field. Yeah, I think one of the personal experience here in Miami, when I was working with the New World Symphony, and we had Frank Gehry designing the building, and we had West 8 as the landscaper for around it, but we were the developer for city property. And how that's different when you're working that in a city space, and public private property, but that they all impact us. But Andrea Guza at West 8 was a master at really listening and incorporating people's thoughts, and I think they ended up with a really good workable public space that was outside the front lawn of the building. But let's think about some of the projects that the two of you are working on in Detroit. So Olga, you recently released a design guide for real estate development. Yeah, this guide and why did you create it? Yeah, this is the second in a series of design guides that design course produced the first one design design guide for neighborhood business. And what we want to do with with these is really it's not a guide that teaches design. It talks to this guide in particular is talking to real estate developers, especially emerging ones, you know, folks who are starting to work in community about the design process and how to engage with designers. And I think one of the things that is special about this guide is what we try to do is pull throughout in each part of each phase of the real estate development process to really try to make the case not just for why a designer is going to bring value to the project, but why more community engaged practices will bring value to a private real estate project and try to give some practical tips for developers who are trying to work in Detroit neighborhoods. So I think we're all, you know, as advocates for inclusion equity are really committed to, you know, how can design help drive more equitable outcomes as we see, you know, real estate development happening in Detroit. Another one I was reading in one I think it was from a speech that you had getting had given but Knight so interested in the development of public space. And I know that one of those the Wilson Jr. Centennial Park design and the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy, I mean, having enjoyed that I just wonder if you just talk a little bit about that, the process that was used or how what's really important about designing a public space that works. Well, you want everyone to be able to participate in it and it's hard to develop a public space that does you know that truly welcomes everyone if you don't involve people in the process and what I love about what the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy did with the Wilson Centennial Park is they really they didn't just assume that the people that they were engaging had the full range that they had access to all the experiences and information that would ultimately color their opinions and so they they really invested in showing people examples of great public spaces and and engaging in a in a real dialogue around what the elements of a of a great public space that would work in Detroit would be not by assuming that they had already had experienced those those spaces in their own neighborhoods and I think that's that's a really important part of both tapping into the lived experience of residents and and your customers and people you're trying to engage with you and your audience but also recognizing that there's an opportunity to broaden what those experiences are to and to have a deeper engagement around the content that way. The other one that really interested me in in this same article was under the title of reforming the criminal justice system but it it was the Justice City Innovation Lab and the Detroit Justice Center convening national partners across fields law design technology architecture and public health which I think also reinforces your point that it's not just about the design of a building that's that's not you know design isn't limited to the designs of buildings or those type of products but when they looked at design alternatives for actually creating a youth detention center and I just if if you either one of you could say something about that about you know what what came out of that or what will come out of that that you think is really different that would not have happened had there not been this flow focus on the approach of using inclusivity in the design. I think you know so Amanda Alexander and the Justice Center's work has been so I think reshaping what are possible visions of the future are and in evolving young people and community members and thinking about you know what is what does the world look like if we have a completely different view of what justice looks like and you know I think this is on probably has a lot more to add on this but I think just especially in the last year with the pandemic and everything the Amanda's voice and the voices of others have been involved in that project I think have been really hopeful in helping us challenge some of our assumptions about just the systems that we're all living and working in and I think that is an important opportunity for designers to be engaged really by asking different questions. They set the set of problems but the question that they're trying to solve for is not the question of how do we build a criminal justice center it is really what is justice and what does justice look like. Olga you got a I mean Suzanne do you have a comment you'd like to make in response to that one? Yeah so the thing that I find as Olga mentioned really interesting about that project is the way that it sort of asks us to sort of reimagine a kind of reality a kind of lived reality that we've inherited that often we feel disempowered to do anything about and so really that work feels very centered in the way that design can be a powerful force for both collective reimagining and sort of shaping more just and equitable futures and then the idea that buildings and products and services and policies flow from that right like flow from that point and also the way that they have thought internally about then what that means as an organization bringing in kind of artists and designers as residents into the heart of like their work and sort of the case they continually make as advocates for the for the idea that the construction of our environments does play a really vital large role in our construction of sort of civil discourse and civil society and so I think that that's really a powerful framing for what design can do in service of kind of other realms other expertise other other interests. And I think just yeah go ahead sorry just have been billed off of that you know then then you can look at specific products or digital interfaces or you know I think I think the way that that project has kind of questioned this reality in the set of assumptions that allows a lot of more detailed kind of work to happen for the specific things and I think sometimes you know you ask is on like you know what is design and how are we thinking about we often focus on those very specific things like the building or the park or the you know the uniform you know whatever it is but when you design as a verb you're taking a step back from that and I think you're really questioning what that whole context is and that's where the engagement with the people who are often excluded the people who don't get their voices heard the people who don't get to be at the table or in the room it's at that point where I think it's most important because then the kind of design expertise of that trained professional in developing the product has flows from those those experiences and viewpoints in developing better a better website or product or you know you know place for for people. We're going to we're going to talk a little bit later about a project the two of you are working on but you know so much of this is you have people that come out as architects and engineers and all of these other things that aren't necessarily trained in that or not necessarily as aware that you might want them to be so what has to change even with the training of people that are in design for for what you're talking about to be really successful. I think Cezanne should should take this one because at the college we hired Cezanne and John Marshall her partner at Word of Two to help develop a new approach for us both as we think about our interface with the community but also as we think about our faculty and students and staff and the kind of impact that we want the college to make in the future both through design core but but as an educational institution so I'll turn it over to Cezanne. Thanks Olga so yeah we've been really excited to kind of dig in and think about how you sort of build the idea of a of a basis of like training or curriculum or professional development that in and of itself kind of practices what it preaches in terms of learning how to design with and through you know communities and residents that may not be coming with design expertise to the table but come with a whole host and range of kind of lived expertise that you know that is vital for sort of getting the sort of problem framing problem definition or issue definition and frame right at the start of a project and so you know for us that work has really been about how do you sort of understand some of this kind of tried and true ranges like as designers we may not sort of think of ourselves as being like the most empowered or powerful person in a room but quite frankly when we sort of sort of find ourselves in community we sort of fail to sort of understand our sort of expertise our sort of privilege our own sort of power and we don't appropriately negotiate or seed that in ways that we should and so you know what are the set of practices that have to sort of be strengthened in our discipline in order to sort of meet people where they're at and really understand what's vital about the kind of ways that we should be thinking about co-designing with others or sort of more just and equitable whether it's products or services or or communities we have to really think about that and so we've gone through almost a year-long process now where we've been interviewing we've been working with people we've been running kind of workshops we've been benchmarking and looking at kind of best and next practices from folks who are already kind of doing this both kind of in community situated contexts as well as in sort of educational contexts higher educational contexts and really trying to you know learn from the field what are those practices that have found some success and then trying to think about how they can sort of help us operationalize the very things that we're starting to see from the UNESCO city of design partners in Detroit and many others that are not partners in Detroit who have you know always been working in this way and so how do we sort of turn sort of that listening and learning back on ourselves to think about like you know what are the things that in our discipline are quite frankly problematic where do we have to stand up and hold up our hands and say that the discipline has run alongside of capital in ways that have been both pernicious and harming in communities of color across the country and in cities across the country and for sustainability and climate change across the country right so there's a lot of sort of responsibility and accountability that we end up having to think about in terms of the way that the discipline in sort of assuming it's very neutrality has sort of perpetuated these harms and so if you know that that's the context that communities meet you with you have to sort of be you know first able to acknowledge that I think so we've got a question that relates to that so this is from Peter I don't know which city but I know here in Miami we think about this a lot how can design promote a healthier and more welcoming environment so your last comment sort of touched on that but what would you say in response to that so my first response is trust is everything you kind of can't move forward with any sort of design process unless you've established a basis of trust and sometimes that means really acknowledging deeply harm you have to sort of think about what may be trauma informed practices that need to sort of be embraced as kind of the start of that and I think that builds a lot of the kind of capital you need with the with the communities you want to work in service with and then from there I think you can sort of start to articulate a vision you know much like we touched on with kind of Amanda's work at DJC like you can start to really embrace a vision of what is health right what is safety what is justice how does that sort of give us the built environment that we deserve and need how does that give us the kind of access to technology that we might need how does that give us the kind of products and services and systems that we need but I think unless you kind of start with that real level setting of where you've been as a discipline what your own positionality is as a designer and then sort of look to sort of build trust off of off of that you can't really define what is a fully healthy system or city without those things okay you have anything to add before we move on to a yeah I mean I would just I think flowing from that kind of problem framing that says on our lines like what do you mean by a healthy welcoming environment it's been every single detail I mean ultimately what designers are doing is they're arranging parts and pieces to create you know these systems places products so on right and and they are there they have the creativity and the skills to be able to figure out how to make these parts and pieces go together but sometimes you know even like a font a typeface can signal something different to maybe a different cultural community and to another one and it is really about being extremely intentional about every single decision every single decision matters and if you do it within the frame if you properly set your problem you have a really inclusive view of what this context is with all these voices at the table you can make all those decisions in a much better way so a problem that you know not a problem but a project that is is close to my heart anyway is this the opportunity to create sort of a full a formal cultural district in Detroit and the work that both of you have been doing on that but especially um roof of two but you know as we look at that cultural district in midtown Detroit you know it's going to unify 13 cultural institutions across 86 acres but one of the first first phases of this was the digital inclusion so Cezanne I wonder if you could talk about why the digital transformation matters in that particular district how you're bringing community members into that conversation so it ends up being the results end up being inclusive and what those 13 participating arts and cultural organization will learn and sort of these different tools that they'll have available to them for how they can engage in attract people because at the end of this it's all about informed engaged communities and being incredibly inclusive in the solutions that we come up with to address the issues of today yeah thank you so much yeah the project um is is one that you know involves many stakeholders many partners many designers um in institutions that are looking at both physical and landscape transformations in the city and I think one of the things I always come back to is this idea or especially the way that Rude of two thinks about this is the way that technology itself is actually physical it is material right so when we think about kind of place-based space transformation how are we thinking about the way that the build environment is a perfect opportunity to think about how are we including more people and so one of the things that very early on we sort of understood about the project and I think even more so after sort of the various lockdowns that the cultural institutions were having to sort of pivot and deal with but I think even before that what we were hearing from them is the way that they were looking how they wanted to engage with audiences both before the visit kind of in after the visit and I think we sort of initially were thinking about that visitor journey right to the cultural center how do you begin to help people before they've even actually encountered place to sort of feel a part of a district and center and the way that technology can empower that and then as we began to really dive into the you know we're we have the benefit of having a city-wide initiative called connect 313 that has been looking at digital inclusion more broadly in the city and so as we dug into the sort of data of what does inclusion look like across the city when you know 40 percent of homes are connected to the internet or have a device right what does it mean to then understand that midtown when we tend to think about midtown as being gentrified and completely done and amenity rich and full of both cultural and educational institutions what does it tell us when we find out that the data says that only 51 percent of people in that district are connected and have a device and have a data plan and what do you mean by culture when you think about your public institutions whether it's the DIA or the public library or the history museum who you know or the Charles H Wright who are on the front line of telling us the vital stories we need to learn about ourselves at this moment in time and the way that they now have to reach us through the internet and the way that they have to think about programming in their own business models and digital transformation as being delivered through the internet right and so I think for us it became critically important to think what could we do in the next year over 2021 that would give us a vital way of connecting people so the first was to work with Wayne State to extend their wireless and wi-fi system so that we can offer free publicly accessible outdoor wi-fi as a partnership with Root of Two Wayne State University and Midtown Detroit Inc and then finally how do we then set up a series of capacity building workshops as well as tests and pilots of cultural interventions that the institutions themselves can design and run and get real-time feedback with kind of members of the public through and so we're excited about how that work is going to take place with community able to sort of engage in feedback and something that feels very real and very manifest that then can sort of look at what are the long-term possibilities of technology within the district. I think it's exciting for me having walked it and having been in almost every one of those institutions but how this access to digital can be used you know within that and what can be learned and how you protect data all of the things that are going to come you know out of eventually out of this project and it's it can be a great great test model for how to do something in the right way so all the any any where ladies we're almost out of time as I knew we would be in a second um anything else you would like to add? No I mean I'm just excited about just the opportunities that we have before us I mean and especially um it's it's a really I think hard you know it's a hard time in our country and in our city for for many many people and what makes me excited is that you know there's so many committed um advocates we're both designers and people working in a lot of um really important ways whether it's around you know voting rights or placemaking or um entrepreneurship and who are this this question around how do we do better how do we include more people you know that that there is that that the drum beat you know it's a conversation's been going on for years so it's definitely not new but I feel less and less like it's a conversation that's going on only in certain corners and while there's always a danger you know when things become kind of mainstream that they'll become um you know uh you know vanilla um I think what I'm excited about I know we're working out we're working out with Cezanne and others is that um there's a I think a greater commitment to solving some of these systematic challenges that we face and and really following the solutions through and I just hope that people will engage with us and and you know we're all in this learning journey together so really looking forward to learning from others and from other experiences as we try to you know implement the training program do you know the next phase of our design competition you know the month of design all of this that's happening um we want more engagement with more people who are really committed I think to this um to this work it is always fun to have conversations with the two of you I like being your partners in some of these endeavors but we are out of town so for all of the the folks online watching us um thank you for doing so special thanks to Olga and Cezanne and to our production crew for making this happen for us the beach you heard at the top of the show we're actually created by Chris Barr our director of art and technology here at night and the music that is going to play us out is composed and performed by the amazing jazz pianists there in brown but next up on january 21st on night live is a session an episode of post to coast and the title for that one is building prosperous communities through inclusive accessible entrepreneurship so we hope to see you there again january 21st 1 p.m eastern standard time have a great afternoon and thanks for joining us today