The Community Partner
This semester, we collaborated with The Disabled Collective. The Disabled Collective is a non-profit organization based out of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, whose main focus is navigating disability in higher education and giving a voice to the crip community. Their main goal was to create an editorial that discusses disability and disability-related topics through student-told stories. The main goal of Disabled Collective is to dismantle stigmas and misconceptions about disability, amplify the voices of disabled students, and show the importance of disability experiences in conversations about equity, diversity and inclusion within higher education. Currently, Disabled Collective is collaborating with Creating Accessible Neighbourhoods, Higher Education Crip Collective, and us, Beautiful Social Research Collaborative. Michela Bussard served as our Fellow, Nora Kenney as our Facilitator, Anna Keppel as our Planner, Keely Nilan as our Notetaker, and Audrey Brown as our Organizer.
As we began our design process, we were given pretty flexible guidelines, however we were directed to implement a sort of “fall” aesthetic. We were also responsible for taking Disabled Collective’s editorial idea of “Making Crip Soup” and coming up with designs to express that theme as well. We were then able to create various mood boards, Pinterest boards, and color schemes in order to come up with a cozy and clean look for the website that we created with Disabled Collective.
Challenge
Our group spent time collaborating with one of the founders of the Disabled Collective, Rachel Cheang. With the current state of the world, creating this project face to face was something that we were unable to do in our collaboration with the Disabled Collective. However, over the course of this semester, we had the opportunity to meet with Rachel via zoom and discuss the steps we were going to take to complete her request as best we could in the time we had for the Disability Collective. The process involved a hefty amount of zoom meetings and google docs being shared amongst us and Rachel, which highlighted her ideas that she wanted us to bring to life for her. Rachel spent her time writing everything out for us and supplying us with all of the information we would need, and then we took over with the creative process. We helped her find the perfect aesthetic for her brand new website and Instagram, so that she could start building her platform from there. We then proceeded to stylize her website for her and add in all of the information that she had provided us with via a shared google document.
One big challenge that we faced as a group was finding times to connect with Rachel that worked with both of our schedules, as she is living in a different time zone than us. We were able to connect with her once, which is the time in which we were able to receive the majority of our information in one go. Our leading fellow, Michela Bussard was the main source of communication between us and Rachel. Michela diligently helped garner information that helped us mold the Collective’s aesthetic and online presentation. Due to time differences, we struggled communicating with our community partner, which made it challenging to convey their goals. Although Vancouver and Philadelphia are almost 3,000 miles apart, Zoom technology and dedication to the project helped fill that gap. The relationship between the Disabled Collective and the Beautiful Social Research Collaborative was divided by miles, but not by lack of passion. Inspired by the ultimate mission, we endeavored with strategic thinking.
STRATEGIC THINKING
Philadelphia is two hours ahead of Vancouver. Initially, it does not seem to be a major difference, but it took time to configure. Once we started to establish a clear dialogue about the project, we produced work that would suit our community partner. The relationship was honest and straightforward. We did what we could do and waited for further instruction. We learned to adapt to the partner’s needs and desires to effectively generate their wants.
In an attempt to outline their mission, we used the Golden Circle. Every organization or career functions on three levels: what they do, how they do it, and why they do it. Firstly, the ‘what’ is the provided service. For the Collective, it is online publications, also known as zines, that showcase expressive work. Secondly, the ‘how’ sets the organization apart from others. The ‘how’ for the Collective is building a united community and higher education disabled students and allies. Lastly, the ‘why’ is a core inspirational cause or belief about why the organization exists. For the Disabled Collective, the ‘why’ is celebrating diversity and dismantling disability stigmas and misconceptions. Once these three factors were accounted for, we knew the foundation of the Disabled Collective.
The Beautiful Social Research Collaborative has specific values that correspondingly aligned with this project. First, we began with a creative design mindset. We aimed to provide stunning graphics, imagery, and other visual communication tools that portrayed the mission of Our Crip Notes. This meant implementing key design principles such as contrast, repetition, proximity, and alignment. In addition, we factored in design elements like color and shape. In the image to the left, the organic green color contrasts the stark white background. The repeating squares on each page are a strong, geometrical indicator of the start of a new section.
The ‘social’ aspect was the underlying theme of this project. That, together with collaboration, was the foundation of this work: different communities working together for the betterment of society. We focused on digital storytelling as a way to cross the barrier of technology and portray the passionate, heartfelt story of the Disabled Collective. Research was the tool we used to effectively represent the Disabled Collective’s goal with the Our Crip Notes digital zine.
These values of collaboration, research and design evolved throughout the project. Collaboration underwent the greatest evolution. While working with project coordinator Rachel Cheang, we realized that collaboration is not just the foundation of a project. It is an ongoing feature that must adapt to circumstances. When time zones and busy schedules threatened efficient communication, we adjusted our approach and worked to focus on effective partnership. This meant using specific language in emails to Rachel and using our other values to create work that portrayed her descriptions.
Results
Our partnership with the Disabled Collective and the outcomes that came along with it proved to be both successful and collaborative. Our formation of both graphics and mood boards served as pieces of insight for the Collective. Through these creations, we were able to hone in on what sort of feel we wished the Collective to have. This feel was dependent on elements such as color, fonts, images, etc., that would all come together and form a cohesive online identity for both the Disabled Collective and its accompanying editorial, “Our Crip Notes.”
These outcomes helped contribute greatly to the capacity building of the Disabled Collective. The ability of the Collective to perform at a greater capacity was improved through the Beautiful Social group’s efforts in coming up with and creating themes and aesthetics that best embodied what the Collective was about. In this process, elements such as colors, illustrations, fonts, and more were determined in accordance with the overall feel of what the Collective’s message tries to convey.
Specifically, their incorporation of the symbol of “soup” in their messages of acceptance and “using what you’ve got” played out through the visual illustrations of soup that the Beautiful Social group created. Illustrations like these, as well as accompanying aesthetic elements, helped contribute greatly to the Disabled Collective and their editorial “Our Crip Notes” through their ability to advance the meaning behind the work they do. This hopefully leaves an impact on the community, particularly through the editorial and the messages within it. The goal of the Beautiful Social team has always been to support the needs and messages of our community partner through the creation of both written and visual pieces. These pieces help in our efforts of telling effective stories and conveying personal narratives.
Unfortunately, however, our own identities and experiences find themselves blocking the advancement of certain stories and narratives. We oftentimes fail to question how the resources we use and the work we do stand in the way of genuine advancement taking place. We use tools such as Illustrator, Canva, Photoshop, etc., and don’t recognize not just how privileged we are to possess these resources, but we also fail to recognize our ability to be able to use them in the first place.
All the work we’ve done has been in support of the disabled community, yet almost every single one of these pieces has inadvertently been targeted to able-bodied people. Our main use of visuals and text don’t account for the visually impaired, and our identities as able-bodied people have a great influence in that. This observation took form through our deeper realization of what the Disabled Collective was and the messages they spread. In reading the stories of disabled students, it became evident to us that there are many challenges and experiences that the disabled community is exposed to, and that we just didn’t have this realization prior to this collaboration.
No one specifically was harmed in our project with the Disabled Collective, but there was definitely more work to have been done in regards to our own personal understandings of this community. This project lives on through the stories and voices of disabled students across the world. With the incorporation of the editorial, “Our Crip Notes,” Disabled Collective has helped contribute to the growing need and attention to hearing disabled students’ stories.
Every visual we’ve created for the Collective, including our collaborative Pinterest mood board, is available for them to use as a source of inspiration moving forward in their work. The colors and fonts we’ve picked out and decided on are just a small portion of inspiration they have been able to use, but hopefully the visuals and graphics we’ve created serve as an even bigger source of guidance. The community is able to continue the work after our formal partnership with them has ended through means of these creations.