It is important to reach out to a cross section of the population including seniors, youths, diverse races and ethnicity and people with disability to create a progressive and respectful dialogue. Having a diverse group of participants address every demographic. “An underrepresented group is best understood as a minority group (racial, ethnic or cultural) whose presence in a subset of society is much lower than in society as a whole” (iafc.org, 2020). These populations are often difficult to engage and they are often communities that do not participate in local government. Targeting these specific groups is extremely important because it is very difficult to reach certain demographics if they are not specifically reached out to. Learning which methods reach certain populations is critical to understand how to engage residents in the future.
We used Photovoice as our method to engage underrepresented group. Photovoice works to build a world in which everybody has an opportunity to represent and tell their own stories. Individuals use images to capture aspects of their environment and experiences and share them with others. When combined with captions or brief descriptions, those images can then be used to bring the realities of the resident to the public and policymakers. This initiative is used to spur change in communities. This is accomplished by allowing residents to inspire the project and bring them to the attention of city authorities.
This studio project was selected to present in Computational Urban Planning and Urban Management (CUPUM) conference, Helsinki, Norway and Iowa State Conference On Race and Ethnicity(ISCORE),Iowa, US
More info on conference : here
Full project presentation can be found here
More info on the project: here
Link to the website of the project: here
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