Who is the Eliot School’s community, and how can it better serve them?

Established in 1676 as a primary school for children of all heritages, today the Eliot School of Fine and Applied Arts inspires lifelong learning in craftsmanship and creativity for all through workshops, community events, and more.

By winter 2019, school had reached another pivotal point in its history; it had long outgrown its schoolhouse and was struggling to understand myriad demands of its changing community. Already, The Eliot School had hired an architecture firm to explore its physical space options and had engaged graduate students to assess its marketing activities.

What remained to be explored was a larger question with farther reaching implications: what community is the school serving, and who does it want to serve?

This study sought to understand how key Eliot School stakeholders define, "community," the values, hopes, and challenges of this community, and what the school means to its community.

The methodology of this community study followed the first two phases (discover and define) within the Double Diamond process formally introduced in 2005 by the British Design Council. 

1 / DISCOVER

The Discover phase pursued a deeper understanding of the problem context. Primary and secondary data was collected in three ways: research scan, quantitative data, and qualitiative research.

2/ DEFINE

As the study progressed, it became clear that a) interviewees defined and appreciated "community" in very different ways, and b) in their involvement with the school, interviewees often desired more than simply, "community."

Thus, the study's scope expanded to understand what value various stakeholders sought and received from the school.

The Define phase distilled the gathered data into key insights concerning the realities of relationships between and within key stakeholder groups: what and how services are delivered, cultural and behavioral expectations, and the flow of relevant information.