Today, Kat Franchino sits down for a chat with Candice Digby about spotting and filling overlooked gaps in local communities. Candice starts off by explaining how she got into community building. “I just became enthralled with the importance of design. It’s not just, you know, the graphic on the page or the website that you’re using, the clothes you’re wearing or the architecture you’re looking at. It’s also, like, our civic structure and the way our communities are organized.”
You may not have thought about it before, but communities really are designed. How well thought-through that design in shines when certain functions are not available or accessible to the people who need them “(When) things…are not designed for the…ultimate user it can be really painstaking. It can actually change and shape…how our whole lives work and who has access to things and who doesn’t.”
It’s important that we shape our communities into places that are welcoming for everyone who enters them. “Who we’re designing for has to the whole picture…of every stakeholder.” When you make it hard for people to participate, you wind up with an inequitable community. “If everybody isn’t in (the) conversation, then we have a really limited view of what peopleneed and want.”
It may be tempting to sit back and let everyone else handle things, but you really end up doing yourself and everyone else a disfavor that way. “It really takes community to build community, which I think is really cool and the way that it should be.”
“We think it’s our responsibility to get the word out (about Austin Design Week) so that everyone in the community has the ability to be a part of it, has that voice, we’re hearing from the different areas of design and all the different pieces of our…greater city.”
Of course, sometimes things don’t go as planned! Okay, well, it’s pretty much guaranteed. As Candice puts it, “It doesn’t matter how much you thought about it—something will go wrong.”
Playing an active role in your community is not only beneficial to you from a logistical point, but can also be fulfilling for your personal life. “I think everybody out there wants to be a part of something bigger in some way or another.”
“We’re comfortable and we’re creatures of habit in a lot of ways and it’s not easy to go to an event where you’re not sure if you’re going to know anybody… I think that’s what it’s about—you just got to get in there and get your hands dirty.”
You never know when the community may rally around your cause. Don’t be afraid to make your voice heard! “If the thing for you doesn’t exist, the thing that you want to see isn’t there, then find other people that are passionate about it and make it. …You just have to at a certain point, or…you’re limiting yourself, you’re limiting your experience.”
