CraftNOW Philadelphia is a non-profit organization that was created to unite the leading institutions, artists, and patrons of Philadelphia’s craft community to celebrate the city’s rich legacy, With such a large network of crafting organizations, CraftNOW's new mission is to reach a broader audience, specifically, those in underserved communities who traditionally have less access to arts education.

To frame this project, our team came up with the question: How might CraftNOW help amplify the social impact of existing crafts organizations in Philadelphia and promote youth engagement in underserved communities with crafting and making?

To better understand the problem, we started by conducting research into the crafting landscape and demographics of Philadelphia. We created maps to visualize the disconnect between craft organizations and the underserved communities & children in Philadelphia.

We also conducted interviews with several different crafting organizations that partner with CraftNOW to better understand the current outreach methods, and what the organizations need from CraftNOW to advance these outreach initiatives. We also spoke to attendees of CraftNOW Create, the organization's largest crafting event. From our research, we came up with three major insight categories: Build Trust, Enable Access, and Simplify Logistics.

After discussing our research and ideation session with the client, we decided to focus our efforts on prototyping a CraftNOW Carnival. The goal of the CraftNOW Carnival is to create a casual, accessible, and approachable experience to help kids and communities come together to create! The general setup of this event would be a summer-long traveling craft experience that would take place each weekend at locations throughout Philadelphia.

We prototyped this event by exploring three main components:

Find inexpensive, accessible, and approachable locations in various communities throughout the city of Philadelphia.

Understand what support Philadelphia craft organizations would need in order to be able to participate in this program.

Perform virtual proof of concept prototype tests with children in the Philadelphia community.

I was personally in charge of designing, testing, and marketing the third prototype: a pop-in, full-day crafting event with children from underserved communities in Philadelphia. We first tested the feasibility of this prototype with a classroom of 4th graders that I teach at the BB Comegys elementary school in West Philadelphia. This led us to our actual prototype, Snowflake Extravaganza. We created a Facebook event for a full-day, pop-in-style crafting activity. We posted the event on the Philadelphia Moms Facebook page, which has over 5000 moms with a very diverse membership. On the day of the event, we spent the day on zoom crafting with elementary school-aged children from a variety of different backgrounds.