Design Charrette Summary & Recommendations
Overview of the Design Charrette Experience
The October design charrette served as an opportunity to invite members of the public and local artists, organizers, and cultural thinkers to experience the museum and collectively brainstorm ideas for how it can be enhanced to usher in new programs, exhibits, partnerships, and participation across its various gallery and event spaces.
The day started with Lois Conley (Executive Director, The Griot Museum of Black History) and De Nichols (Loeb Fellow, Harvard University) welcoming attendees into the museum, and upon a round of introductions, providing an overview of the Growing Griot initiative and the day’s goals for the design charrette. Griot Museum staff then provided the full group a tour of both its active and unused spaces and shared histories about the space, building, and organization. Following the tour, each attendee was provided a prompt to write their individual responses and reflections from the spatial tour of the building. Guided by their written reflections, participants then discussed architectual, programmatic, curatorial, and community engagement ideas, opportunities, challenges, and uses that The Griot could consider for implementation. Using art supplies and materials provided, participants broke into small groups to visualize top ideas that emerged from the full group conversation, and then they presented them to the fuller group.
The charrette resulted in space-specific suggestions for all of the floors of The Griot Museum as well as ideas regarding its narrative development, content, and storytelling strategy. In addition, a group of three participants additionally discussed suggestions for how the museum can build its financial capacity to fund the ideas generated and brainstormed throughout the day.
Notes & Feedback
Participant feedback from the tour was collected from the Spatial Tour Reflection sheet as well as with notes scribed from the collective conversation following the tour. At large, participants regarded The Griot as a significant, large, and beautiful space with great potential. However, they additionally recognized that bold vision and drastic changes in staff capacity, leadership, narratives, funding, and partnerships would be imperative for the museum to fulfill its potential.
Participants additionally worked in small groups to brainstorm space-specific ideas, which have been documented in the Design Charrette Project Prototype document.
Recommendations
In order to progress with the energy, participation and ideas generated from the design charrette, the following recommendations are suggested:
Create an ad-hoc development committee who can oversee budgeting goals and fundraising strategy for
Developing a capital campaign for building improvements, including: a remodeling of the second floor, reimagining of the permanent exhibit and main floor, updates to the kitchen, and redesign of the bottom floor;
Increasing staff capacity with the identification and creation of new director-level roles for curation, development, programming and education, and a registrar.
Earned revenue income streams that can be gained from the 2nd floor renovation, cafe, gift shop, and private events.
Cultivating patrons who can sponsor museum activities and goals as well as serve as members to the museum to sustain the efforts it envisions.
Identify and secure architectural firms, contractors, and engineers who can consult, design, and renovate all floors of the museum.
Create and implement a content strategy that will help celebrate the museum, tell its story, and show the value of black history and narratives in the city. This may include:
Working with Darian Wigfall and FarFetched to create black history podcast on behalf of the museum
Recording Lois Conley’s stories of creating the wax figures as well as the origin story of the museum
Developing a public art project that installs black history markers across the region
Maintain the participation of design charrette attendees by:
Scheduling follow-up conversations regarding their interests and implementation of their suggested ideas.
Welcoming those with interest to be a part of the larger Team Griot and/or Growing Griot teams.
