For this year’s DesignTO Festival, the Interdisciplinary Design Strategy (IDS) students at the Institute without Boundaries (IwB), an academic program and studio founded by GBC’s School of Design, have worked to create an exhibit that will showcase what they think “climate-ready communities” could look like.
DesignTO is a non-profit organization that curates exhibitions, presentations, and educational programming. Design TO is best known for the Design TO Festival, Canada’s leading and largest annual design festival that hosts 100 plus exhibitions and events forming Toronto’s design week every January. Their project was developed with the intention of inventing creative solutions to help local communities mitigate or adapt to the many consequences of climate change in mind. The exhibit was researched and designed by a team of GBC students.
The exhibit not only imagines different types of climate-ready communities, but is also in itself a conversation meant to bring awareness to climate change.
“We’re trying to demonstrate how everybody is implicated in the crossroads of climate change. Understanding climate change means understanding it affects us, our homes, our neighbours, and our communities,” said Jenna Storey, one of the students who was involved in constructing the presentation.
IDS student Rebecca Arshawsky, who also worked on the project, said that despite the logistical concerns of developing a design exhibition during the pandemic, the biggest priority was establishing a message that would resonate with their audience.
“Production was a secondary concern for us.” Arshawsky said. “We wanted to make sure that the information is digestible and understandable for any audience member that might want to engage with our exhibit and make it relatable to the everyday person.”
The exhibit was originally planned to be in a physical space but due to COVID-19, the exhibit had to be moved online.
Since George Brown had moved to virtual learning in December, the exhibition was moved online.
“Once we figured out that it would be a digital space, we figured it was going to be a website, so we outsourced with a developer to create the design of the site so it was fluid and interactive,” said Arshawsky.
Even though they were forced to change the way they present their work, the IDS students believe that people will still be able to enjoy their exhibit and take something away from it.
“Our site does have a place where you can give us feedback. You can give us your voice. You can contribute to the product,” said Storey.
Climate-ready Communities goes live on January 25 and will be accessible until January 30 at CTD.Design.
Check out a more in-depth video interview with Jenna Storey and Rebecca Arshawsky on the Dialog’s official YouTube channel.
