For our third challenge of the 2021-2022 program year, we were excited to partner with Brilliant Detroit, a nonprofit dedicated to building kid success families and neighborhoods where families with children 0-8 have what they need to be school ready, healthy and stable. Eight teams of Fellows worked collaboratively with Brilliant Detroit staff and community stakeholders to deliver this project – learn more from the perspective of each team!
Our team embarked on a process of listening and talking to Morningside community members, and reviewing results of community surveys, interviews and robust insights from an established practice of community engagement in the neighborhood. We listened to resident’s concerns for their health, safety, and sense of connection in the neighborhood, as well as their hopes and dreams for their community. Our team was inspired by the visionary and imaginative plans that Morningside residents see for their futures. Sharon Luckerman, a committee member of the Morningside Board told us, “I want to be the first city of the future.” Other residents shared their dreams for community gardens and sunflowers, futuristic architecture, community bike rides and potlucks. What we heard loud and clear from Morningside is their passion for caring for each other and their determination to create a community that nourishes and empowers its residents.
Our team worked to synthesize the wealth of information provided from community members to determine what metrics could be used to determine kid success in the neighborhood. Through collaborative conversations with our project partners at Brilliant Detroit, we came up with three pillars of community wellness that aligned with the neighborhood’s priorities. The pillars we proposed were Love, Growth, and Safety.
Our team was especially excited about proposing a creative way for the community to interact with the Brilliant Detroit dashboard. We created stickers that matched the pillars of community wellness so they could be put up throughout the neighborhood and clearly identify to residents which spaces have been cultivated to support kid success. Responding to Morningside community members’ concerns about the businesses in the neighborhoods not having a real connection to or investment in the neighborhood kids, we proposed a sticker to identify the businesses which are partnered with Brilliant Detroit or support kid success in some way. We designed a sample of a Morningside Map to track locations of community gardens, safe routes to school, education and health resources, parental supports, childcare centers, and clean parks. We hope that our designs can assist both Brilliant Detroit and the Morningside community members as they build out a dashboard that will measure what’s most important to the neighborhood, and help residents visualize and track all the spaces in their community that cultivate kid and community wellness.
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