Communicating the Wellbeing of a City with Santa Monica

Introduction

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Spring 2017  

Communicating the Wellbeing of a City with Santa Monica challenged ArtCenter students to work alongside Santa Monica civic leaders and other community stakeholders to translate the City of Santa Monica’s pioneering Wellbeing Index into innovative transmedia design campaigns that would communicate a shared understanding of the community’s strengths and needs, encourage collaboration among city leaders and local organizations, and improve a collective sense of wellbeing for all citizens of Santa Monica.

Employing wellbeing data results and field research, student teams designed, constructed and tested conceptual campaigns in real-time with real residents. Teams had immediate feedback to retool and iterate on their concepts. Students drew upon the knowledge of Santa Monica experts to help guide them to create captivating, connective and resonant campaigns for residents of Santa Monica.

About Santa Monica’s Wellbeing Project

Around the world, many cities are examining and analyzing its residents’ wellbeing through various metrics that can help shape effective future policy and programs.

In an effort to deepen understanding and improve the quality of life for its 90,000 residents, the City of Santa Monica entered its Wellbeing Project proposal into Bloomberg Philanthropies’ first-ever Mayor Challenge, a nationwide competition to encourage innovation in local government. In 2013, Santa Monica received $1 million in seed money to develop the project which would use data to create a multidimensional Wellbeing Index.

For nearly two years, the City partnered with the RAND Corporation, the New Economic Foundation and a team of international experts in the growing field of wellbeing science to research factors that make a city thrive.

Data was compiled from many sources: quantifiable data about crime and disease rates, parks, education levels and use of transit services and libraries; the City also conducted an online survey to collect information from residents about personal experiences and thoughts on housing, mobility and development among other topics. More than 2,000 residents responded to the survey. Researchers also scanned public commentary on social media outlets to determine attitudes and concerns about money, jobs, economic disparity and other relevant issues.

The City defined wellbeing in six dimensions:

• Place and Planet (How are residents affected by their environment?)
• Outlook (How are residents doing?)
• Community (How strong in the sense of community and civic engagement?)
• Health (How healthy are the residents?)
• Economic Opportunity (Can diverse populations live and thrive here?)
• Learning (Do people have the opportunity to enrich their knowledge and skill sets, no matter their age?)

Research and Project Development

The students started the term with a download of the Wellbeing Index from a panel presentation by the team behind the project, including Julie Rusk, Chief of Civic Wellbeing/City Manager’s Office; and Lisa Parson, Wellbeing Project Manager/City Manager’s Office.

Julie and Lisa walked the students through the methodologies and data as well as other efforts by the City. Laura Becker and Allison Ostrovsky, who oversee the City’s public art program, gave the students insights into the arts and use of public spaces. Students also heard from Evan Meyer, the Executive Director of Beautify Earth, an initiative that began in Santa Monica to bring care, art, color and love to cities.

Student teams also went out into the community to conduct random interviews with Santa Monica residents in specific zip code neighborhoods and create a short SnapChat story video. Students asked residents where they lived and what Wellbeing means to them; videos were later combined to provide a collective overview of student research and a glimpse into the people of Santa Monica.

Over a series of weeks, the students continued their immersive field research; they were instructed to look behind the stereotypical images of Santa Monica – the beach, pier and Promenade – and discover the soul of the City through its neighborhoods and special places only locals know. The goal was to find the human voice of Santa Monica and how that corresponds to Wellbeing data.

Each student came up with three initial ideas; through discussions and careful review, two top concepts emerged. Student teams were established and groups continued ideation along with field visits. Additionally, students were in close contact with members of the Santa Monica Wellbeing Index who offered guidance, suggestions and affirmations with the teams’ concepts.

As teams began to prototype their campaigns, they continued to circle back to the six Wellbeing Index dimensions and the challenge of connecting people to data. Students had the opportunity to field test their prototypes in real-time with real residents at Santa Monica events, farmer’s markets and by creating pop-up installations. Students took advantage of the immediate feedback loop from residents by carefully refining their projects.

Projects continued to be developed, shaped and refined; midterm presentations offered the students a chance to share prototypes with their classmates as well as the Santa Monica civic leaders who offered constructive criticism on how to move the concepts forward.

Energized with the feedback, teams worked until the final presentation to flesh out their concepts into full campaigns that could be easily implemented by the City and potentially shared with other cities via toolkits.