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The first step you’ll want to perform is an assessment of your school, to determine what strengths or weaknesses it has as a community. We cover a few options in our assessment page: questionnaires for students, questionnaires for faculty, and workshops that can be used for both students and faculty. Try to have as many participants as possible- a larger sample size will give you a better sense of the needs of your community.

Filling out a questionnaire can feel like being assigned homework. One way we found to increase user participation was to recreate our questionnaire in an online format, such as Google Forms. A link to this questionnaire could easily be sent out to students or faculty. We found even greater response in generating a QR code that students could scan with their phones.

For very young children, or children with special needs, completing a questionnaire may be challenging. Although student experiences and opinions are extremely valuable, faculty can and should also complete their own questionnaire, which focuses on relating what teachers or faculty have heard from their students as well as their own experiences. Faculty guidance can also help students to complete a workshop.

Our group ran several workshops during research and have used our experience to create a summary on community workshops. Included are recommended materials, and a schedule by which to run the workshop.

The questionnaires and workshops are both meant to assess your schools’ unique community needs but will work in different ways. Questionnaires allow for individual answers to identify deficiencies or weaknesses in your space and determine strategies to address them. Workshops can also identify weaknesses, but they are more helpful in starting a discussion on community within your school. Workshops can also identify interventions we may not have thought of – if your workshop does, please let us know at communitythrudesign@artika3.com. Once you have identified elements you wish to work, learn more about these elements with our Building Community Tool.

We’ve broken down the four strategies of community into six to seven key elements. As well, we’ve added a list of hazards to avoid. Users can hover over each element for a quick definition or click for more information. Each element page discusses a variety of possible interventions that can be used to address community needs.

Our intervention pages are broken down into three levels of intervention: re-utilization, minor interventions, and major interventions. All suggestions in the re-utilization category are meant to be simple, cost-effective solutions that can be achieved by at any budget. These interventions cover possibilities such as making better use of what your school already has, or policy or operational changes.

Some minor refreshes, involving furniture, fixtures, and equipment (abbreviated as FF&E), can be achieved by in-house, with the help of facility faculty. Other minor refreshes may require the help of an interior design firm. Major interventions, covering renovations and new building, should involve the help of a larger team- architects, interior designers, engineers, landscape architects, and more can all help your school in major interventions. Artik Art & Architecture is one such firm that can help. Our team specializes in creating educational environments. Visit our website at www.ArtikA3.com or call 408.224.9890 to connect with us.