When Sociology and Anthropology Professor Gail McGuire was deciding on a research project, she put out the call to community groups. The Monroe Park Neighborhood Association in South Bend jumped at the chance to dive deeper into identifying the strengths of the community.
“I had been reading about ways to map the assets of a neighborhood. We tend to focus on the negatives of a neighborhood. They wanted to see things they could build upon,” McGuire said.
The association has been around for a couple decades but had been focused on dealing with perceived negatives. Being able to identify what people saw as strengths appealed to them.
“We were excited for Gail to capture many of our unique qualities and attributes in one place and then be able to share the website with others both inside and outside of the neighborhood to build more awareness of what we are doing and a sense of identity,” said Jason Isch of the Monroe Park Neighborhood Association.
McGuire started building relationships in the neighborhood in the fall of 2023 and is just now wrapping up the research. As she was compiling the data, she realized that if the association was going to be able to act upon her findings, it needed to be more than an academic report of data.
“I had been looking into something called story mapping, which makes things visually appealing and accessible,” McGuire said.
She wasn’t able to make the story maps a reality herself, so she enlisted IU South Bend students studying design. Professor John Thompson is a senior lecturer in fine arts and graphic design. He recruited students who were looking for a client project. The work of translating the research took two semesters to complete.
“The class is a new approach to how we had been teaching the upper-level students. In it, we have been working on bringing in internal and external clients, and, after a meeting with Gail I had in the summer, I thought this might be a good project to start,” Thompson said.
McGuire was impressed by the passion the students invested in the project.
“They were really the experts. They weren’t just doing a project for class. They realized that the neighborhood association was relying on them,” she said. “They were learning about the diversity of the neighborhood and how to make the information accessible to everyone. They had to keep the audience in mind as they did their design work.”
Students Denise McGrath and Sam Fish worked on the project. McGrath said it was inspiring to see the neighborhood discuss their community.
“I believe it helped further my skills working on group projects. Receiving different people’s ideas and finding a way to incorporate them into a project was a rewarding challenge as well,” she said.
Fish said it helped him recognize the power of design in representing an organization.
“Each graphic we created for the story map felt like a project of its own, yet it was still just one small component of the larger whole. This perspective helped me appreciate how individual elements contribute to a cohesive narrative,” he said.
The students boiled down the research statistics and created something that anyone can understand through photos and stories. McGuire wanted to help people become more involved in their neighborhood, and to accomplish that, she needed to show what the research found – there are amazing people in the neighborhood that others would benefit from knowing.
Using the story maps to present her findings allowed her to translate what is normally facts and figures into something with a little more emotion.
“People like people, and all the findings we talk about on the site did come from the surveys. For me to boil everything down to a few main points was hard, but we had to find the information that was going to be useful to the neighborhood association,” McGuire said.
Since the project involved community-engaged research, she wanted to see the neighborhood through the eyes of young people as well. McGuire launched a five-week photography program with teens. The effort culminated with a photography show at the library.
For the students helping with the project on the IU South Bend campus, the benefit involved working with clients beyond the classroom.
“This is not only beneficial for the design students in their vocation. Graphic designers have to work with people from outside of their discipline on a daily basis. This also creates a more collaborative environment across campus and makes the campus stronger,” Thompson said.
Isch said reaction from neighbors has been positive, noting the project provided a reason to engage with new neighbors. The association plans to use the research findings to recruit engagement from new neighbors and those who’ve lived in Monroe Park for a long time.
