FUNDED BY: The Kresge Foundation

PARTNERS: Calumet Collaborative, IIT Institute of Design

COLLABORATORS: Boxville, Wildlife Habitat Council, Student Conservation Association, Chicago Field Museum

GUIDED BY: Professor Carlos Teixeira, Andre Nogueira

MY ROLE: Service Strategy Consultant/Researcher

The FLAG Calumet represents the third stage of “The Future of Brownfields” research project, an ongoing partnership between IIT Institute of Design and the Calumet Collaborative and funded by the Arts and Culture team of the Kresge Foundation for micro piloting and scaling up efforts during the year of 2019. It sits at the intersection of theory, methods, and practice aiming at the development of more effective solutions for complex adaptive systems.

This project took place over the course of 12 weeks during summer 2019, where I conducted multiple site visits to the Calumet region to understand the Brownfields and invasive species, as well as regional resources I could leverage for Habitat Restoration. I conducted usability testing in multiple stakeholder engagements. After several rounds of object and service iterations, I presented the final elements to the grant personnel from The Kresge Foundation.

The project is currently ongoing with a new proposal submitted for a further grant which will be used to scale the existing minimum valuable infrastructure (MVI) to pilot in the Calumet Region.