Collaboration links CIAS with local neighborhoods

Students in Roberley Bell’s Public Art, Public Space class in the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences are learning how to approach design from a community’s perspective. Later this month the students will help members of the Rochester community work together to improve their neighborhood.

Community members from sectors 7, 8 and 10 will think of ways to connect their neighborhoods during a public brainstorming session. Students from the Public Art class will help facilitate the event as part of RIT’s Learn and Serve America program.

The NorthEast Neighborhood Alliance has invited Bell’s class to participate in "From Here to There: Bridging Neighborhoods" design charrette, a public brainstorming session focused on the feasibility of installing a pedestrian crossing at the intersection of North Goodman and East Main Street in the city.

Residents and business owners who live and work in Sectors 7, 8 and 10 will meet from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 20, at Laborers Hall, 20 Fourth St., near the public market, to discuss ways to design the pedestrian crossing.

The three sectors, which are hosting the community collaboration, invited Bell and her students to help facilitate the session. Their participation in the event is part of RIT’s Learn and Serve America program, dedicated to community-based learning.

The students will spend the day facilitating small groups of neighbors as they imagine design solutions for connecting their respective sectors. The designs may lead to future funding proposals.

In preparation for the charrette, Bell’s students have been making site observations, taking notes and photographs of the area to use as reference material during the event.

The students will approach the design problem without a preconceived agenda. This is in keeping with how charrettes work, says Bell, a professor in the CIAS foundations program, who regularly runs public planning events in communities around the country.

"The students will gain the opportunity to work on a real problem in the community," she says. "Their role will be a as facilitators-scribes, if you will."

Charrette, French for cart, is a common activity in design schools. It is a way to bring multiple people together to brainstorm solutions to a problem, in this case how to connect neighborhoods to a public space.

The essence of a charrette encourage thinking big, brainstorming ideas, then seeing what’s feasible later on. Small groups work together for short periods of time at tables with rolls of paper, maps and markers.

"It’s very active and very lively," Bell says.

"These are about projects that reference place," she adds. "And it’s very important to understand that geography isn’t place; people are place."