Community Gallery: Engaging Communities in Inclusive Brand Building
To facilitate the creation of inclusive cultural brands, the project will develop a dedicated tool employing a participatory design sprint methodology, actively involving local communities in Zlin, Czech Republic. The primary objective is to integrate the community directly into the creation process via participative sessions, which embraces human-centred design principles. The project's outcomes will be replicable, allowing other institutions to learn and benefit from G18's transformation.
Your brand isn’t what you say it is. It’s what they say it is. (Neumeier, 2016) At G18 gallery, we are rethinking our purpose and seeking ways to better serve our local community, particularly by creating programs that address social justice and inclusion. To kick things off, we're trying a fresh experiment: developing inclusive brands through a participatory design sprint with local communities.
This is our way of reshaping who we are to truly reflect the diverse needs of our community. We see this as a potential model for other galleries and cultural spaces to follow, making branding more inclusive overall. Before creating any final products like a website, branding manual, or program changes, we need to understand who we're serving and their specific needs. This means identifying and dismantling any barriers that might prevent accessibility and inclusive communication. We would like to strengthen our relationship with the local audience, set more interactive activities based on design solutions and collaborations. What we learn and develop won't stay just with us; we'll share it with others, promoting inclusivity in cultural spaces.
Our approach combines different methods like brand building, design thinking, and community engagement, making sure our brand speaks to everyone we want to reach. Specifically, we're paying attention to seniors, queer individuals, and students, who often get left out in typical branding efforts.