Hello from the colorful streets of New Delhi, India! – Aanya Arora, BArch 24
Sunday 23rd July 2023
Hello from the colorful streets of New Delhi, India!
It is 95°F with a humidity of 75% so I am already feeling the heat of Delhi summers!
Over the past couple of days, my experiences in India have been quite eventful and exciting. One of the highlights was spending time with my loving grandmother, who has gone above and beyond to make me feel welcome. She has constantly offering and insisting I try all sorts of delicious foods. Her warmth and hospitality have made me feel truly special. She took me to a bustling street market called ‘Janpath’ and saw a treasure trove of the most amazing jewelry and clothing collections. The craftsmanship and intricate designs of the jewelry left me in awe, from the delicate silver anklets to the dazzling array of earrings. The clothing stalls were equally enchanting, showcasing a kaleidoscope of fabrics and patterns, ranging from elegant sarees adorned with exquisite embroidery to contemporary and stylish Kurtis.
Another remarkable experience was taking my first ride on the Delhi metro. Unlike the bustling and complicated NYC subway system, the Delhi metro was refreshingly simple to navigate, impeccably clean, and felt extremely safe. It left me with a sense of wonder at how efficiently it serves the city’s population.
In the heart of Old Delhi, I explored the Paper Market in Chandni Chowk, a vibrant shopping area. It’s a wholesale paradise where I managed to purchase workshop supplies at incredibly low prices. The variety of materials available there was astonishing, from resin beads to an impressive range of pens. I even met an entrepreneurial gentleman who made a living by selling every type of tape you could think of!
As I prepare for the workshops, I’ve been meticulously crafting lesson plans and demonstrations to engage the participants effectively. However, I must admit that I’m feeling a bit nervous about speaking in Hindi. Technical words, such as those related to bridge building, pose a challenge for me as I’m unsure about their accurate translation and pronunciation. Fortunately, the helpful folks at Chintan assured me that using English for such terms would be well understood or even serve as a learning opportunity for the children.
Being in New Delhi has exposed me to several intriguing developments. The city is rapidly embracing technology, with even local fruit and vegetable vendors accepting mobile banking services like Paytm (a service similar to Venmo). I’ve also noticed a growing effort to raise awareness about environmental issues. Signs promoting energy conservation and the use of LED light bulbs can be found at various locations, demonstrating the city’s commitment to sustainability. Moreover, the implementation of waste separation bins throughout the city showcases a dedication to promoting recycling and composting practices.
The pace of infrastructure development in India is astounding. The construction of over 5000 kilometers of National Highways in 2022 alone has significantly improved public access and transportation. This progress bodes well for the future of the country and the convenience of its citizens.
So far my time in New Delhi has been filled with enriching experiences and eye-opening observations.
I look forward to more adventures and discoveries as I continue my journey here.
Camp’s Out!, Graciela Batista, 2024, BFA Illustration
I know I promised a post after the first week but here I am, a week late, hat in hand, and asking you to hear me out. A week of ice-breakers, introductions, guided practices, main writing lessons and high energy socializing really knocks it out of you. The weekend between the two weeks of camp consisted of a lot of sleeping and re-energizing in nature, meaning my update now will be a full camp overview! Phew it’s over!
We started strong Monday, June 10th. I was proud to Co-Lead the class with my manager, Pedro Estrada, swapping over sections of the lesson plan as we planned every morning an hour before the kids started knocking at our door. The first day, I felt happy to take a page from my past experience with CityArts, by asking the students to help build the community agreements as an introduction to the space. Loudly and enthusiastically I asked them if they knew what the number #1 rule at 826LA was. “Respect!” beamed through the room. I was actually quite surprised until I realized it was because there was a poster behind me revealing the answering. I asked them what makes them feel respected; listening to each other and keeping hands you themselves were popular suggestions. With help from the volunteers I told them to wrote their answers down on a sticky note and come up to the board to stick it on. Quietly they began, taking their pencils, peeling sticky notes from the stack and telling the volunteers at their tables they didn’t know what to write. Conversations unfolded between students admitting what respect looks like for them and volunteers adamantly listening while further prompting them to consider how other’s actions make them feel. Moments like these, hushed conversations led by a prompt projected onto the screen asking students to dig within and find a feeling were incredible. I would find myself asking if I did that sort of self reflecting and self questioning at their age, and what a sense of individuality it could grow to start doing so, so early.
It occurred also on day 4, I think, all the days are a big jumble in my head. The lesson plan was album cover creation, a day that truly homogenously mixed the musical, visual and literary arts. The students were tasked taking inspiration from a previous lesson plan that questioned moments in their life they felt a strong emotion, choosing a song that could represent it, and explaining it in a paragraph. For the current day’s lesson we asked them to gather their songs and compile them into an album. They tackled questions like what was the overarching feeling their songs or experiences exuded? Was there a narrative present throughout the songs? And how could these sentiments best be represented in the cover art or the back matter describing the “album” as a whole? If the presence of glitter markers wasn’t exciting enough, they also had the opportunity of having their picture taken with a Polaroid to paste onto the cover in order to further personalize the final product. Students were so proud of their creation, we hit our record in most participants during share outs (a daily part of the lesson plan where students can share anything they made during that day). They shared albums inspired by their experiences with friendship, pets, memorable vacations and special days at school. Also to my surprise, most of them were begging to keep working on it the next day!
Summer camp was a blast, the growing comfort the students felt sharing about themselves with me by the last few days was nothing short of incredibly rewarding. My only gripe was that it wasn’t longer, as a two week program is a challenge to any educator getting to know their students. Now, I only have a week left of tying loose ends! Will report back soon 🙂
Following the Singaporean Sun, Forever — Joel Yong, BFA Industrial Design 2025
Alas, the end is here! I’ve had the most joyous time in Singapore, and there is much on my mind today that I’d love to cover here.
First, how will I be concluding things at Terra? I’ve handed off my projects for Terra to begin implementing, and I’m so excited to see the things they do with what I had the opportunity to work on! I detailed these projects in my previous blog posts, so feel free to check those posts out if you haven’t already.
I was additionally tasked to offer Terra insight on how climate-focused organizations operate in America, so I’ve compiled some resources for them to help them reconsider or reinforce their operational strategy as a climate organization in Singapore, should they be curious about adopting some business strategies that are used in the States. But I’ve just handed them a starting point, and believe it would be best for Terra to decide for themselves what resources and strategies would be useful for their organizational values and goals!
That being said, I’ve been thinking a lot about the role organizations and corporations play in the fight for climate action. Working in the climate space in Singapore felt particularly profound, as conversations about climate exist in quite different contexts than that of America. On climate action, Singapore has a track record of top-down approaches, mostly in the form of policies like taxing takeout containers or subsidizing public transportation. These are all decisions that the government determines will be beneficial for the country, with little input from the citizens. This means that while Singapore is years ahead in sustainable innovation in both legislation and technology, it also means that everyday Singaporeans don’t necessarily have the same understanding or investment in climate change as you might expect. America, on the other hand, follows a notoriously bottoms-up approach in which grassroots organizations and civic collectives pioneer the path of climate action, and the government often takes years, if not decades, to finally pass appropriate policies or legislation. This is not to say that either one of the approaches is better than the other, but rather emphasizes the importance of understanding the political and cultural contexts that climate change exists within between countries.
The role of the organization in climate is complex because while most are founded by virtue of a mission of sustainability, they are also responsible for the livelihoods and welfare of the people that they employ. So, an “effective” organization balances the desire for impact with the necessity for meeting financial bottom lines. In some seasons, the work is more focused on the former, while in other seasons the work gravitates towards the latter. Still, organizations have a unique capacity for collective action that goes beyond what any individual can achieve, making them an ideal environment for optimal impact. What I have learned from working with Terra is the importance of recognizing that your work as an NGO is only as good as the well-being and commitment of the people who make up the NGO. Especially in a sphere like climate, which can be an incredibly discouraging space to work in, care must be at the center of how these organizations are being run and dare I say, designed.
These are things I’ll continue thinking about, perhaps as long as I would call myself a designer. To me, design is about looking at problems holistically, about understanding that the deep pain points in any given problem space are nearly never surface level. And, perhaps one of the most fun aspects for me is how design is about serving as a line of communication to get others on board to join in on collective action. Following my time at Terra, I feel more confident diving in than ever before.
My time in Singapore has felt formative, to say the least. As it comes to a close, I am deeply grateful for the life I was able to experience here, the people I was able to meet and love, the culture I was able to resonate with, and the person I was able to become because of all of this. Thanks for following along on my journey, and who knows, I may be coming back to Singapore sooner than I think.
Fun fact: Singaporeans call selfies with multiple people in them, “We-fies.” And so, I will end my final entry on the Maharam blog with a collection of We-fies I’ve taken with some of the most lovely people I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and working with. Bye for now! 🌱🌟
Apple the Crow my Beloved- Carin Carrion, BFA Illustration 2025
Welcome back to my blog about my experience as an arts intern at the Q Center this summer. Now looking at the title I can understand the anticipation of finding out who Apple the Crow is but before I divulge this I must tell you Apple pushed me into becoming a Photoshop god (or at the very least more knowledgeable). This was mainly because we were working on ordering merch for Apple as they were this year’s Q Center pride mascot that was voted on by the community. After the voting was completed my coworkers and I jumped head first into getting merch sampled, formatted, and finding a local print shop we could print merch at a relatively affordable price.
The plan in mind was to have Apple the Crow merch ready for a fundraising event with a local vegan ice cream show called Kate’s Great Plant-Based Desserts or at the very least for Portland Pride Waterfront Festival, but during this point in my internship, the Kate’s event would be the aim. From behind the scenes I got to learn how the approval process for the merch was another variable to how much time it would actually be till we could even start getting the designs sent to print. Drafting and finalizing the designs for Apple felt like a training arc. Then there was the whole aspect of making sure the files could have a clear print and have them in…(imagine shivers going down my spine as I write this okay) VECTOR FILES! It was a challenging learning experience adapting a digital artwork to a vector file but in the end, we were happy the small details made it through to the final product.
Due to Apple’s initial design having many different values of similar colors, I needed to contact the original artist, Jay M, to ask for a file version with fewer detailed textual elements and readjusted colors as we wanted to make sure a printable version of Apple is still in their vision. The quick turnaround that week for drafts, files, and advertising had my life flash before my eyes….in a fun marathon way.
Then there was creating a post to excite the community for free ice cream (yum), by the way, the ice cream was so so so delicious I very much recommend if you are ever on Mississippi Avenue in Portland stop by Kate’s. We had to create some adjustments to the advertisement Kate’s kindly gave us to post, but I had to format it for Q Center’s social media while also incorporating the opportunity to preorder Apple merch. Because the Apple merch was not printed by the time the Ice Cream fundraiser rolled around my coworkers and I used our massive brains to brainstorm alternative merch we could make to sell for the fundraiser and we came up with buttons as we had the materials and tools for them in our office (which is very weird to say this now, but felt very retro).
Above where the four designs I made for the Q Center to sell during Kate’s Great Plant-Based Desserts ice cream event at the Q Center parking lot. They were really fun to do, and although we did not sell a lot at this event we did end up selling nearly all of them during Portland Pride Waterfront Festival!
This is the setup we had for the fundraising event, overal it was really nice seeing how the community engaged with the items we were selling as well as getting another layer of understanding of what a place like the Q Center means for various community members as a space to get together and find support.
Design Development at What Cheer Flower Farm | Samuel Aguirre | MFA Furniture Design ’24
As the farm goes through its redevelopment, there are constant moments to reconsider the little details of the master plan. Every conversation and onsite activity offers a moment to contemplate what’s best for the farm, the farmers, and the community. Everyone is engaged in their day-to-day tasks at hand, but in the back of mind is this focus on the bigger picture of what this space will look like and how it will function as a 2.7 acre farm, community space, and training center. The consideration is ever present and truly a team effort.
I’m excited to say through this passive, iterative process we’ve identified an opportunity to evolve my role this summer and my project has gone from creating outdoor space to creating public sculpture. Our goal for this large scale object is to serve as an identifier of who we are and where you are as a visitor, volunteer, or employee. Because this is an urban farm, the property is quite visible from many adjacent streets, highways, and businesses. I see this as an opportunity to create something large enough to become a beacon in the peripherals of all passerby’s. I hope for this this sculpture to exist with the farm through the years and become part of the physical identity of the space and community. It will become an icon to greet visitors and, if we do it right, will convey the impact What Cheer Flower Farm is having on its community and instill a sense of excitement upon arrival.
And with that, design development is underway! This marks the start of the next chapter of my time at the farm. My big picture lens has shifted focus; the undertones of my conversations are motivated by capturing the essence of the What Cheer Flower Farm. I’m tickled wit the opportunity and grateful for the responsibility. However, we still need to process the thousands of donated flowers and create 75 bouquet’s before the day is over…
Lets get to work!
Research, Research, & More Research – Henry Ding, BArch 2026
So it’s been around 3 weeks into my time as a Maharam Fellow at The ArQuives in Toronto. It’s been one of the most reflective, enriching, and unexpected experiences I’ve had yet as a student at RISD. While it was initially quite nerve-wracking, I found myself entering a space of extremely passionately queer, intelligent, and kind experts in their fields! It is no wonder that my brain has grown quite a lot since being here.
Some fun acts about The ArQuives:
- With over 100,000 items in its collection, The ArQuives is the largest independent LGBTQS+ Archives in the world and the only one of its kind in Canada!
- I’ve also been told it has one of the largest porn collections in the country, if not the world, as well.
- We do our work in a historic building that dates back to 1860! One small historic house surrounded by the skyscrapers of one of Toronto’s busiest shopping and business districts! (Think the house from the movie Up!)
- Did you know archives actually write about space three-dimensionally? A storage room isn’t 150 square ft, it’s actually 1500 cubic square ft! Even records as small as magazines are catalogued by thickness as well as diameter. How are you gonna know how many records you can store when you only think two-dimensionally?
These facts may or may not help illustrate what my experience has been as of late—combing through thousands of records in this little treasure trove of history in the heart of Toronto. Man have I done a lot of combing. My projects and initiatives are all based around discovering what home and domesticity was like for Toronto’s historic queer community. What does that look like aesthetically, infra-structurally, and politically? How can I visualize this history and make it more accessible to the public? I’m especially becoming interested in queer POC communities!
Everyday at work is a little different. I may be reading through The ArQuives’ extensive books collection, looking through old artifacts (newspapers, census records, etc…), digitizing photographic records, or watching videos made by prominent queer filmmakers in Toronto. Along the way I’m taught archival vocabulary (which is kind of a lot), tour offsite storage facilities, and learn about Toronto’s queer community from my colleagues. It’s been a lot of reading, writing, and learning.
That’s about it for now but stay tuned for a couple interviews, research trips, and new findings I’ve set up that I’m very excited for!
Evergreen – Joel Yong, BFA Industrial Design 2025
It is crazy to think that there are only two weeks left of my Fellowship! As of late, I’ve been trying to pause every now and then to try to soak in the time I have remaining in Singapore. It’s not to say I don’t miss home in the States, but I know I’ll miss Singapore much more once I leave.
Lots have been going on! If you’ve been following my previous blog posts, you’d know I’m working on developing a national curriculum alongside Singapore’s Ministry of Sustainability to introduce students to the expanding green sector in Singapore. Throughout the summer, I’ve been exploring various learning styles and methods, and what we’ve landed on is a curriculum plan to be reviewed for implementation in secondary schools across Singapore, partnered with a gamified learning workshop that Terra will be able to host. The key learning objectives cover critical topics like sustainability and circular design and engage students with how we can reimagine more environmentally-forward, regenerative urban living.
Coming from the States, I wanted to prioritize amplifying local perspectives and learning styles as I went through the design process. Accordingly, I was able to host rounds of user testing to measure learning and retention rates, and it was such a rewarding process to see Singaporean students interact and learn with the tools I had designed. After each round of user testing, I refined and reiterated the various learning plans, and I am proud to say that I am ending my time here with a comprehensive and considered project that will help further Terra’s mission of redefining climate education in Singapore.
Additionally, I’ve been able to walk the Terra team through the foundation of biomaterials and biocomposites sourced from local food waste. In the previous blog, I mentioned that I had started experimentations with eggshells, and since then I’ve been able to develop a workshop guide that will help Terra further explore biomaterials at a more long-term capacity. Terra has many exciting plans coming up after my internship ends, so I wanted to be sure they had a clear understanding of the process so that they can seek how to adapt various biocomposite experimentations to their large-scale events even after I have left.
Lastly, we’ve partnered with Singtel (a local telecommunications company) to throw a large-scale public event to bring the community together! I was able to help lead their upcycling programming, in which my team and I facilitated workshops and conversations about sustainability and a carbon-zero future. Throughout the Sunday afternoon, we saw over 500 people and it was such a privilege to be able to engage with them on such pressing issues. The highlight for me was able to work with Singaporeans from all different walks of life – I felt especially excited about working with the young kids!
For the remainder of my time with Terra, I’ll be focusing more on wrapping up and handing off my projects. The weather is as humid as ever, but I have undoubtedly been treasuring my time here nonetheless.
Hello! I am alive, well, and at the Q Center forever and ever -Carin Carrion, BFA Illustration 2025
Hi! This blog post has been crazy belated since starting my internship at the Q Center but WOW it has been lively, to say the least. During my first week (around June 5th), I got situated at my desk and started preparing Google Forms, getting introduced to my coworkers, and the projects I could start working on. This included working on logo designs for the Q Center’s Marsha P. Johnson fund, which is a community fund that offers microgrants to transgender Black and Indigenous people. I made some sketches and after discussing with my coworkers, I will be working on a finalized version of the sketch where she is holding the flower bouquet!
My first week’s adventures did not stop there, while on a break with my coworkers Julie and Ryley, I saw tiny horses attached to antique horse posts on the sidewalk, they were very cute! The Q Center is located on Mississippi Avenue and there are many local businesses such as a taxidermy shop that could potentially rival RISD’s own collection!
Speaking of local business during the first week a local pizza business called Wild Child Pizza came in and gave my coworkers and I this DELICIOUS rainbow pizza. They held a special fundraiser for the Q Center by donating a percentage they earned from the rainbow pizzas to the center. Purple was onions dyed with beets, blue was pineapple combined with citrus to make it blue, green and yellow were bell peppers, orange was seasoned squash, and red was pepperoni! Wild Child Pizza would not be the only place holding fundraisers for the Q Center during Pride month, a few weeks later a local vegan ice cream place called Kate’s Ice Cream would hold a fundraising event both at their shop and the Q Center, but I plan to touch on that event on my next blog post!
On the Saturday of my first week there also was a fundraising concert event on the weekend with music artist Bobby Jo Valintine. There I had the opportunity to talk with a volunteer named Josie, who is a local queer elder, drag king, and artist in Portland, they are also Puerto Rican! We talked about our experience growing up in Puerto Rican families and how LGBTQIA+ culture has changed or shifted, especially in finding spaces of community.
At the concert event, I helped out setting up the outside area, trained volunteers on using the online donation system, and processed donations. Bobby Jo Valentine’s performance was lovely! Bobby Jo mentioned he made a song as a hint for a past partner of his to propose to him. Later on, he would perform the song at weddings, and in the audience was a couple he had played for in the past! While the performance was happening I was sketching people at the event when there was time. ANYWAY thank you for tuning in! I’m hoping in blog post #3 I can talk about my adventure curating a gallery show at Portland Pride Waterfront Festival this weekend, but alas there is still so much internship lore I must blog about before then MUAHAHAHAHA!
Belated: The Adventure Begins!, Graciela Batista, 2024, BFA Illustration
I say “Belated: The Adventure Begins!” because this past month has been but the precursor to this summer’s main spectacular: 826LA’s Write On! Summer Camp and today, it started. I’ve chosen to hoard my blog posts until now because I suspect quite a lot of stories from the next two weeks and I only wish to give you the most thorough look into what me and my colleagues have been working hard to prepare for. However, before I get to the first day anecdotes, let me tell you a bit about my time up till now.
I arrived on June 5th, absolutely thrilled, only to be welcomed to the city of angles by an awful case of June Gloom (a Californian term I learned quite quickly, that describes cloudy, overcast skies with cool temperatures during early summer.) It was like that for two, never-ending weeks and it made sitting-at-the-computer office work a little more difficult than it had to be. I will admit, the traditional desk work that has taken up the majority of the past month was tedious but mostly because the first day on the job was so overwhelming with joy; it made the lack of people actively shuffling through the space incredibly palpable.
The first day I came into work was, coincidentally, the last day 826LA was hosting a field trip for the academic year. At 10am, a swarm of 40 1st-graders gathered into the back patio and I had no idea what was going on. Mari, the leader for the field trip, saw me lingering around task-less and recruited me to help. She described her role as “a three hour long, one woman show” and that it was. In the span of 10am – 1pm, the students wrote the characters, plot and conflict for an original story as a group, had it illustrated, typed up, printed and bound, complete with an author picture for each booklet. The whole procedure run like a well oiled machine, ending with priceless smiles from the children when they realized they would have their own book to take back home and personal feedback from the teachers concerning their individual contributions. Three of them even ran up to hug me at the end! It was a day I will never forget because I realized how much an experience like it can impact a student and how well run a place has to be, to deliver that kind of change.
The days and weeks after were significantly less underwhelming, but I’d like to think equally as important. I’ve spent most of my time developing lesson plans with the team, creating slideshows, calling families, and ordering 400 individual snacks all in preparation for camp. My original ideas considering visual art informing the creative writing process were somewhat dialed down in the process upon realizing the already decided upon theme for this year’s summer programming was music. It seemed to me that visual art, writing and music were going to be a lot to mush together in a two week endeavor, so I took a more subtle route in my lesson plan writing including poetry writing inspired by music videos and learning ode writing by studying it’s muse hands-on. We got actual tomatoes and socks for the kids to hold as they listen to Pablo Neruda’s odes — I’m psyched for that day.
Me, calling families to confirm their child’s assistance
Anyways, that’s mostly been it — clicking and clacking away on administrative duties. I’ve realized the behind the scenes requires more than I ever thought. I know I promised a run down on the first day of summer camp, but I feel it only makes sense in a second blog post recounting all there was to this first week, plus then I’ll leave you wanting more. That was my first month in LA, and now the adventure will begin, wish me luck.
Demand, Incentivize and Educate – Viola Tan, BArch Architecture ’24
Since my last blog, I’ve been mainly diving into my other project, the Building Differently project focusing on promoting modular and offsite construction technologies in Boston. We’ve been conducting interviews with developers, contractors, designers, researchers and other government officials to learn about how we can make modular work in Boston.
Modular construction is not a new thing. However, it has not been a huge success in Boston, realizing it’s potential benefit of being able to create a large amount of housing quickly and effectively. Some of the challenges we identified through research and interviews so far include storage of modular units, staging, and transportation of units from modular factories. These challenges are mainly due to the fact that Boston is such a dense city without many nearby modular factories.
What resources are there to help? My awesome colleague Holly and I are currently working on mapping the land resources in Boston that might be suitable for storage, staging, and building a micro-factory. (Image showing map in progress) These include the publicly owned vacant land and some other unconventional land resources – a researcher at MIT suggested that we look into potentially renting sports fields in high schools and primary schools during the summer, when they are not using them as much. Another important resource would be open-air parking lots that are not being used as intensely, but I’m still figuring out if they exist (as parking is such a huge problem to start with) and if so, how to find out which lots are usually more free.
I want to end with an interview insight that I found super helpful. We kept asking people: what do you think the government can do to help? One of them, a researcher from McKinsey, said that there are three things the government can do to promote a new beneficial technology: demand/mandate, incentivize, and educate.
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