Creative Hawthorne Lofts
During my Enterprise Rose Artist Fellowship with North Shore Community Development Coalition (North Shore CDC), I collaborated with the organization's real estate team and ICON Architecture to design focus groups, digital outreach, and space/programming design for Creative Hawthorne Lofts, a mixed-income development for the creative workforce.
With support from North Shore CDC's real estate team and Creative Collective, I designed a creative workforce survey with 100+ unique responses. The purpose of the survey was to understand the diverse demographic makeup of the local creative workforce and begin to learn about creative people’s work schedules, spaces, and needs. We wanted to begin recognizing possible shortcomings or struggles in the creative workforce and/or existing creative communal spaces/studios.
As a follow up from the Survey, I helped facilitate four focus groups and responded to patterns and ideas in these community discussions to help inform the physical space and programming of a 7,000 sq/ft community and studio space at Creative Hawthorne Lofts. From these conversations, we took away that local artists prioritize Flexibility, Productivity, Inclusivity, and Privacy in a shared space. Artists also wanted agency to influence programming where they can host performances, open studios, and workshops for residents and local communities.
To honor transparency and accountability in the design process, I designed online and social media platforms to communicate to the local community between 2020 through 2021.
Please reach out to the North Shore CDC team to learn more details about the project's process.
1) Website, archived
I developed a website to inform the public of official project updates and simplify complex real estate information. Icons from Wix.com.
2) Transparency + Education
I created graphics campaigns on Instagram (@creative.hawthorne) to inform the public about project details and share results from our Creative Workforce survey and discussions. Illustrations done by me or bought/downloaded from flaticon.com and Noun Project.
3) Celebrating Local
The graphics campaign included celebrating local creative professionals, some of whom worked at North Shore CDC.
