Good design connects with culture

I have been reading through some global community design books and trying to connect their lessons and ideas with ways to approach community development through local education. Delving into this material and brainstorming new ideas has me really excited and i'm ready to move forward. Amongst the lessons that I have learned/been further convinced of after reading thus far, I have seen that people who want to approach design well must approach the cultural context for their design. It seems that so much in our world starts with the culture. Unless we understand the culture, we cannot understand how to truly cater to the economic or social interests of people at large.

Below is a quote from one of the books that i'm reading called Studio at Large, which I find quite apropos:

"I once asked Geoff Piper, a GCS [ie. University of Washington Global Community Studio] student working to start a project in Africa, to critique a well-known health clinic design competition. His response was not about the design but about the culture-the very type of understanding that must come before a designer can solve a difficult social problem. I couldn't have been more impressed, or more convinced that his future work would be significant." -Brian Bell

As I look at these ideas through the lens of education, I realize that doing good educational policy means understanding the culture and context in which a school is placed. Without truly grasping and understanding the world from which kids come, I cannot expect to create programs or opportunities that are really going to touch their lives. This lesson applies more broadly to other fields as well.

In my work in the international politics realm for the last 9 months, I became convinced that culture is an essential element of community change. Changing the environment, infrastructure, and government without changing the culture will not make a positive lasting change. We have to change the way people think to change the future. Hearts and minds have to be involved; this is essentially what working in the culture looks like...doing work that speaks to the heart and engages the mind. We have to give people good ways of thinking about things. We have to teach people how to care, why to care. We have to model right and good behavior. We have to live the truth through our own words, lives, and interactions with the community. This is good community development...this is how we help uplift people.

In the meantime, I uplift by first getting involved and getting engaged. Plugging in, then, is an essential component of community development as well. I am ready to plug in, and the time seems ripe. We will see what the future holds.