Do you already know that your existence - who and how you are - is in and of itself a contribution to the people and place around you? Not after or because you do some particular thing, but simply the miracle of your life.
- Adrienne Maree Brown, Emergent Strategy
Community
This quote from Adrienne Maree Brown simply and beautifully highlights how intrinsically communities and environments are related. Communities shape land, build urban spaces, and redirect rivers, while also molding their own identities, attachments, and needs to their surrounding environments. It's a constant give-and-take, a cycle of making and re-making each other, created by continuous interactions between people and the spaces they occupy. I strive to recognize these interactions in my work by highlighting community voices, needs, and experiences.
This page highlights many of the community-engaged projects with which I've assisted.
Community-Engaged Fellowship
The Center for Community Engagement to Advance Scholarship & Learning (CCESL) is an organization within the University of Denver that furthers mutually beneficial research between academics and the Denver community. From Fall of 2019 to Spring of 2022, I worked with CCESL as a Community-Engaged Fellow and worked on an array of various community-centered projects. This included: learning the art of community organizing; exploring the process of pairing photovoice projects with geospatial analysis using GIS; investigating the potential of Campus-City partnerships; and analyzing the water literacy of DU students.
West Area Plan Photovoice Project - 2019
In the Fall of 2019, the City and County of Denver (CCD) began developing a Neighborhood Planning Initiative (NPI) for the six neighborhoods of West Colfax, Villa Park, Sun Valley, Barnum West, Barnum, and Valverde - collectively known as West Denver. The goals were to guide planning and development in an intentional, equitable and sustainable way, and the process began by learning about the history and issues of the target neighborhoods. To this end, CCD partnered with CCESL to collect community input and experiences through a photovoice project. Ten West Denver residents engaged in conversations and took photos of things they believe the city should invest in for their neighborhoods, as well as things they think are unique about their neighborhoods.
A few example photographs are displayed above. To explore all of the photographs, as well as detailed information about participants and emerged themes from the project, visit this website.
I assisted with the creation and facilitation of this PhotoVoice project, which gave me first-hand experience of how to utilize this unique methodology. The experience was also a lesson to me about the benefits and challenges of collaborating with decision-makers. Specifically, this project gave me perspective on the structural and ideological differences between municipalities and community-centered academics.
My experience with this project is detailed in the blog to the left, along with a reflection about genuine community engagement and the concept of tokenism.
Campus-City Partnerships Hub-site
CCESL frequently works with city departments in their mission to collaborate with local communities and create true community engagement. Partnerships between colleges and cities present great opportunities to share resources and enact meaningful and inclusive change in decision-making processes. However, the structure and dynamics of a city department are often very different than what exists within academia.
During my fellowship with CCESL, I built a website to showcase many of these projects and house the many lessons learned about creating and maintaining campus-city partnerships and boosting the level of campus-city collaboration.
Click the image here to explore this website in a new tab.
