Design for Disaster Response LA Workshop

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“Design for Disaster Response LA was born shortly after I made a rallying cry out to people in my creative network. For months, the DfDR LA collective mobilized, collaborated, and supported each other’s growing disaster recovery and relief projects in service of the communities who were most at-risk.” 

– Jessie Kawata

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“The DesignMatters x DfDR workshop allowed us to impart upon ArtCenter students Sowing Sparks’ mission of encouraging collaboration, action, and climate resilience within local communities. Participating in this experience demonstrated the value of a community engaging in creating its own solutions, and how in-person events and group work can be wonderfully successful tools to that end.

The students learned about the relationships between fire, the land they inhabit, and the community they’re part of, and took creative action by presenting that new-found knowledge to others in an interactive zine. Their concept empowers the reader to imagine themselves taking an active role in change-making, which beautifully
highlights Sowing Sparks’ mission and serves as an example of how designers, artists, and creatives can use their skills as a force for good.”

– Jamie Watson

Workshop

On a Saturday in August 2026, 17 students gathered with professional designers from DfDR LA to create connections, explore the crucial role of art and design in helping communities heal and provide tangible outcomes to help support our local community. After greetings and an introductory presentation from Jessie Kawata of DfDR LA and Jennifer May of Designmatters, the students broke out into three working groups:

Project Keepsake: Design precious keepsakes inspired by the stories of things that families have lost in the recent fires. Led by Alvin Oei.

Project Lighthouse: Design engagement methods that enable meaningful participation of disability communities in disaster planning, because there can be no disaster response for everyone, if it’s not by everyone. Led by Jenn Wu.

Sowing Sparks: Create unique zines that combine expressive art and impactful storytelling, envisioning L.A. as a thriving, fire-resilient community in a reciprocal relationship with native ecology. Led by Christiahn Roman and Jamie Watson.

After intensive working sessions, the group came back together at the end of the day for a peer-to-peer feedback session and to prepare for the following day’s presentations.

On Sunday morning, community members from ArtCenter, the DfDR LA network and local nonprofits and neighborhoods were invited to see the final presentations and to celebrate the students’ work.

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“Project Lighthouse’s mission was rooted in building connections between communities and voices that would otherwise never have overlapped, nor ever get the chance to collaborate, and participating in the Designmatters workshop created the exact space needed to take that first step. During the workshop, we were able to bring together brilliant, passionate students with key community leaders to drive conversations that are not happening anywhere else. This first step has since rippled out into additional resources – community partner networks, social impact organizations, and subject matter experts who are offering to lend a hand in bringing Project Lighthouse’s first programs to life.”

– Jenn Wu

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“Project Keepsake has always been about coming together as a community, and the Designmatters workshop really brought that to life in a fresh new way. It made me realize that if we can accomplish all of that in just one day for a cause like this, imagine the impact we could have if more creatives joined forces outside of our day-to-day work. We could change the world one community at a time.”

– Alvin Oei