The Guest House
- a design methodology
Project leader
01/2021 - 01/2022 read the project report
What’s The Guest House? An equity based social design platform that values communities, culture, environment and history. The Guest House created social labs with and for the people that deserve more representation in society.
My key responsibilites With my project partner Gina Felize Gommer, my role in this project was focused on concept development, project management, networking, fundraising and execution of events. I was been in charge of all partner contact and financial accounting of the organisation as well as creative outlet in terms of visual identity.
In numbers
8000 Stories
- A result of The Guest House methodologyAs a result of the first pilot project within The Guest House, we have created the platform 8000 Stories.
8000 Stories is an intersectional change-making platform in Aarhus, founded for the community and by the community. It is a space where different stories and perspectives are acknowledged and where people of all races, ethnicities, genders, sexualities, religions and professions are welcomed.
3 KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THE PROJECT
Learning and unlearning
One of our core strengths has been our prioritization of ongoing reflections, especially in relationship to our target group by ‘learning and unlearning’. We did not necessarily prepare certain strategies for this. Most of the time reflections happened during casual conversations while planning or executing. But they were very effective. We would say that we were quite good at learning and adapting because of our constant awareness of our own biases and prejudices.
The vision and product of The Guest House looked very different when we started with the project. However, because of our openness to understand what would be best for our target group, this change was essential in order to truly execute our goals of addressing the blindspots in participatory research design. It has gotten much better and valuable because of this mindset. In the end, design is for the end-user, not to stimulate the designer’s ego.
Slow down, baby!
Next to being pressured by some intense school deadlines, both of us are quite direct and action-oriented people, so we prefer to go with where opportunities take us. However, we realized somewhere in the middle that this fast pace does not work well in this field of work. It takes time to build trust and relationships with the target group and our partners. This is why we chose to extend our deadlines until after our graduation.
Relations are key
Building relationships, fostering connections, and nurturing trust is incredibly important when doing this kind of work. It is actually the beauty of it, and should not be underestimated. What we’ve learned is that initiating collaborations with local organisations is key! The most disadvantaged communities in Aarhus are pretty hard to find and connect with. It just shows how disconnected they are from organisational life. Focusing on all these design projects without getting to know them, understanding how to reach out to them, and not having built that connection does not make sense at all. Again, slow down. Take time. Nurture the soil.