Youth Design Team drives change

The Youth Design Team is a result of a partnership with a research team at Vanderbilt Peabody College on a National Institute of Justice funded grant that has the goal of positively impacting the climate for youths in Nashville.

Youth designed logo that will identify the Nashville Youth Design Team moving forward

In our first blog post introducing the Nashville Youth Design Team, we told you about how the students got a crash course on built environment factors and evaluating how those factors could contribute or detract from youth wellness. 

Not familiar with the Nashville Youth Design Team? Read the first blog post here!

Adapting to Virtual Data Collection

In the last 6 months since they began their internships, the Nashville Youth Design Team (NYDT) has been learning more about design process through guest speakers. They have also been setting the stage for what comes after completing wellness data collection from their peers. 

First we would like to acknowledge some of the barriers that an entirely virtual internship has created. While the students are learning a lot about wellness data, it has proved more challenging to collect the data virtually. After data collection, they will focus on understanding how the data positively contributes to design, but design exercises have been challenging when the students can’t manipulate pen and paper or work together on models. These barriers have made the Vanderbilt and Design Your Neighborhood team extremely adaptable in the first year of this involved internship.

In-progress ESRI map that the NYDT students will help build out with their collected wellness data

Team Building to Gain Perspective

Since virtual engagement and data collection has proved to be challenging, there has been a focus on team building between the students. Each of the students is from a different high school so they get to interact with young people from other communities. By understanding other people’s experiences, they can be better advocates for all youth.

In December, the students self-selected into 1 of 4 youth-driven committees:

• Research Action

• Partnerships

• Mapping

• Youth Voice

Each committee is composed of 2-3 students who will lead developments in these areas. One of the goals of the project is to not only develop a rich dataset of youth wellness experiences, but to make sure these outcomes of the Nashville Youth Design Team are entirely youth-driven. That means that each committee becomes experts in their section in order to guide the rest of the Design Team in that area.

The Research Action and Partnerships committees are oriented around becoming experts in collecting data and making community connections, while the Mapping committee is about learning the mapping software, making sense of the data and deciding how to display it. Finally, the Youth Voice committee’s goal is to share the Team’s findings with the public, ultimately raising youth voices.

Changing How Communities are Developed

Mapped wellness response from a 9th grader who was interviewed by a NYDT student

While design is often informed by community engagement, the engagement is limited by budget constraints, access to public meetings, and those facilitating the process. This means that design can be informed, but it means that whoever shows up has the most say in the outcome. The Nashville Youth Design Team aims to address this major problem in the design process by doing direct outreach when it comes to data collection.

The Team is learning about how to look for counter-narratives, which are the perspectives that come from those who have been historically marginalized. By learning about a topic at such a young age as well as how to make sense of counter-narratives within the larger story, this sets the stage for young leaders that are committed to representation in their communities. 

Ultimately this could help increase the power of youth to make change by showing them that they can hold their own in a space that is typically reserved for adults. These young people will grow into adults that believe that the youth perspective is unique—that is how the Team is shaping the future of community development. 

The Future of NYDT

Process logo sketches by one NYDT student, Oliver Beaulieu

Beyond this major research project, some of the students have taken on side projects designing a logo for the Nashville Youth Design Team. By creating a logo, this identifies and unites a group of students who probably wouldn’t have encountered each other if it weren’t for the Team. 

While graduating seniors will roll off the Team this Spring, there will be so much left to do after data collection. We hope to open applications for rising 9th graders to join the NYDT and begin the process for youth-driven design installations and advocacy work specifically informed by the data.

The Team is especially aware of how long community planning projects can take, but they have the drive to accomplish something tangible before they complete high school.

Stay tuned for how the Youth Voice Committee gets the word out there about their projects later this Spring. You may see some Instagram takeovers on our account, so make sure you follow us to stay in the loop!

Want to learn more about NYDT? Check out the feature in Nashville Design Week!