2023–24 Impact Report

Van Alen Institute marks its 130th anniversary in 2024 — a remarkable achievement for any organization, and only possible through equal amounts of passion and adaptability. With this milestone in mind, our team spent much of the past year visioning Van Alen’s next 130 years. We spoke with designers ready to break away from practices that perpetuate inequity, and community leaders eager to wield design as a tool in their work toward justice. All of them said they need space, time, and trust to forge partnerships between people and professions often siloed from each other. With those resources, they’re ready to co-create design projects that address communities’ visions for their own neighborhoods.

In response, we’ve configured our programs on a timeline of trust. The first introduction many community organizations have to Van Alen is Design Sprints, an eight-week program that gives local leaders and designers a crash course in collaboration. Our first Design Sprints cohort created stunning branding, engagement, and advocacy tools for urgent neighborhood issues. That experience is now the foundation for mid- and long-term projects in the form of pop-up activations, public space improvements, and neighborhood-scale planning.

Because trust is the bedrock of everything we do, it also begins long before a project kickoff. We start by meeting people where they are — first literally, when our team travels across NYC to meet with community organizations pursuing justice and equity in their neighborhoods. When one group told us, “We don’t work with architects — they’re tools of gentrification,” we didn’t see that as a closed door. We mutually acknowledged that design has long been complicit in plans that accelerate displacement, and continued conversations about how it might be a tool to solve those issues instead. They decided to partner with us, completing the first round of Design Sprints with talks to collaborate again.

This is the start of Van Alen’s next 130 years: unconventional, silo-breaking partnerships resulting in projects that heal, restore agency, and build power to realize communities’ visions for their neighborhoods. That’s our vision of an equitable city — let’s build it together.

Deborah Marton
Executive Director
Van Alen Institute