Movie and Date Night: If You Build It

IFC Center : If You Build It Documentary www.ifccenter.com

Every few months or so, we gather a group of our fellow practitioners to catch up, mingle and most importantly cross-connect to see what might emerge. Usually we invite a few people through our network for a themed dinner, we have done public health + design a few times. This time we thought we do Movie and Date night to see “If You Build It” before reconnecting over dinner.

The documentary follows a year of Emily Pilloton and Matthew Miller of Project H, the ups and downs of working with the students and the school board of Bertie County, losing their key champion and eventually their teaching salaries. Undeniably a journey of the uphill battle of bring an innovative solution to a undebatable wicked problem of engaging youth in their education experience.

Studio H - Design. Build. Transform. www.azuremagazine.com
Studio H – Design. Build. Transform. www.azuremagazine.com

By far my favourite moment is the one that most reminds me of why we do this kind of work at all, the giant smile on the faces of the students as they were able to put their chicken coop together and feel overwhelmingly proud of their efforts. You could see that these would be moments they would remember forever. The movie gave me inspiration and strength that the struggles are well worth the efforts and the smiles on those kids faces as they figured out how to put their ideas into execution, to see their designs come to life and the satisfaction of building a contribution to the community to be proud of are priceless rewards.

Like most people in our Community of Practice, learning from other design practitioners keeps us going and I am honoured to say that we are facing quite a few big ones in Toronto. After seeing Emily Pilloton’s TED Talk in 2010 where she talks about the “Teaching Design for Change”, it is needless to say that we instantly became fans of Emily’s work through Studio H. At Exhibit Change, we aspire to learn from those who are stepping up and out there into the world to share the message of what can happen when we take a risk at using design as a language for experimenting with boundaries and tensions. It is the ultimate play space if you can get just 1 person to believe it is possible.

I left the movie with a few hundred new ideas and questions burning, how might we innovate within the boundaries of the institution? how might we preserver to demonstrate our visions? how might we collaborate with unusual suspects for greater impact? how might systems learn to adapt to the ever changing times?

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