1. Placemaking for Youth
In the Cowichan Region

2. Project Overview
Youth use public spaces more than any other subset group in our society.
Youth are often not included in the process of designing these spaces and most are never planned with youth in mind.
Public spaces designed to be family and youth friendly are vital to creating safe and healthy communities.
Creating positive and socially engaging public spaces that welcome all members of community, helps contribute to a sense of belonging for all its members.

3. Project Overview
Placemaking capitalizes on a local community's assets, inspiration, and potential, with the intention of creating public spaces that promote people's health, happiness, and well being.
Who? Students from around the region are invited to participate.
Students will create a design from a site within their local area that considers: youth needs, accessibility, climate change, community safety, social cohesion, transportation, recreation, housing, etc.

4. Project Overview Design Charrettes will be completed in 8 weeks.
Students receive support from social planners, land planners, elected officials and artists
Each school will self select 2 designs to present to a judging committee
Designs will receive recognitions through awards and consideration of implementation.

5. Project Timeline Introduction to Placemaking September 13th
November 30th Design Charette Presentations
November 21st Rehearsal Presentations
Week of October 16th Mid Point Check In
September 18th – October 13th Project Work Start Up
Introduction to Placemaking September 13th
-Project Work Start Up; Teachers will work with students, planners and artists on their projects; support teams will visit school teams to provide developmental support.
The schedule of project work will be determined by teachers and how much support needed can also be determined.
-Mid Point Check In; to assess progress and develop support plans where needed.
-Rehearsal Presentations; gives students an opportunity to reveal their design concepts and rehearse their presentation in front of an audience and receive any feedback before final presentations. We come back together as a larger group to do this back at Mellor Hall from 10 – 12.
-Design Charrette Presentations; Each school will have the opportunity to place finished designs at the showcase gallery in the theatre’s lobby as well as in an online gallery. Each school will pick a maximum of 2 designs to present to the team of judges. The judging committee will consist of select CVRD staff and elected officials. Awards will be presented at the end of the school presentations.

6. Design Charrette Presentations
Why has this particular space been chosen? What is the issue being addressed? Clarity of issue identification, and link to proposed solution – how the design proposes to address the issue.
Description of existing conditions (natural environment, built environment, public transit or other ways of connecting to the site/issue, the types of people nearby, and anything else that is relevant).
Description of the design idea. What is the design idea? How does this design meet your goals or address the issues?
How feasible is the design idea? How expensive (or cheap) would it be? Would it be possible to build it (or make it) in the next 5 years?
How does the design idea address issues of inclusion (age, ability, gender, sexual orientation, race)? Safety? Climate change?
What the design charrette presentations should include.

7. Award Selection Criteria
How well the presentation tells the story about the project: why it’s important, why it should be built or created, etc.
How the design idea addresses inclusion, safety, and climate change
Technical quality of presentation to the judges (digitally assisted)
Technical quality of gallery presentation materials
Overall quality of presentation.

8. Design Charrette
What is it?

9. A charrette is an intensive planning session where citizens, designers and others collaborate on a vision for development. It provides a forum for ideas and offers the unique advantage of giving immediate feedback to the designers. More importantly, it allows everyone who participates to be a mutual author of the plan.
For this purpose you will have almost 8 weeks to complete a charrette. Charrettes are normally done over a two day period.

10. Historical Context of the Space
Discuss local process of the Waterfront Design Charette
-begin with historical information of the space you are looking to design. If it’s a brand new space it still has to go in a particular location of the community so research and review where you would put it and why (you will want to include this in your presentation).
What’s the intended use of the space? Is the space being used as originally intended? Issues?

11. Site Visit
Site Visits are important. A site visit allows charrette participants to understand site opportunities and challenges, which will be taken into account when alternatives are developed during the charrette. A site visit allows to feel the energy of an area. Ideally if possible it is useful to visit a space at different times of the day. For instance, the space may present itself differently at night or when it is less busy.

12. Site Visit

13. Getting to Work
Ideally a classroom group would break out into smaller groups of 10. It allows for meaningful participation and the opportunity for everyone’s voices to be heard. Each group would design the spaces within their groups and traditionally the best elements of each design would be combined into one. However in this project each school is allowed to present a maximum of 2 designs so as a class you could self select 2 designs from your smaller working groups or you could combine smaller working group designs into one or two designs.

14. How to Showcase Your Designs
Here is a traditional design presentation. Your designs could be drawn out something like this however it could be done using other mediums such as a collection of photos or in model form. If you have access to design software you can also use that medium.

15. How to Present Your Designs

16. How to Showcase Your Designs

17. How to Present Your Designs
Presentations of 5 minutes are encouraged however presentations cannot exceed 7 minutes. Presentations will be timed and will be wrapped up at the 7-minute mark.

18. How to Present Your Designs

19. Week of October 16th Mid Point Check In
Next Steps
Week of October 16th Mid Point Check In

20. Questions?