Investigating sustainability and capacity building at a living Black poetry center through an equitable university library support model

The Challenge

James Madison University (JMU) sought to develop—collaboratively between Furious Flower Poetry Center and JMU Libraries—a “Furious Flower model” for integrated library support of a living, academic center for the arts with archival, scholarly, digital, educational, and performance components.

In 2019, the collaborative effort between JMU Libraries and Furious Flower Poetry Center (both are entities of JMU), was awarded funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for a planning project titled, “The Flowerings Project: Developing a Partnership Model for Digital Library Support of a Living Center for Black Poetry.”

Our Approach

Utilizing our community-centered design methodology, the Shift Collective team worked with Furious Flower and JMU Libraries leadership to develop a program that brought together a variety of stakeholders to assist in the strategic planning and design of the “Furious Flower model.” Program activities evolved from trust-building and listening, to design and prototyping. The culminating event within this process was a retreat experience that convened a diverse group of participants from the JMU and Furious Flower communities to develop key design principles and prospective prototypes for the Flowerings Project. The entire process and findings served to document the process and outputs that potentially will be followed by on-campus modeling with broad participation, and further grant proposals to support the ongoing work of Furious Flower.

Stats and Impacts

• Due to the Covid pandemic, we redesigned our work from our original proposal that was built around in-person interactions, to work entirely within the constraints of virtual meetings, from small group work to the stakeholder convening at the end.

• We gathered and documented input from about 40 Flowerings Project stakeholders, and worked with the JMU team to better understand the needs and viewpoints of various stakeholders and their desired project outcomes.

• We designed, planned, and co-facilitated a virtual two-day stakeholder convening aimed at connection-building, and equitable partnership modeling. This virtual convening brought together diverse and wide-reaching stakeholders, including local as well as national champions and partners of Furious Flower. The convening had the following objectives:

  • Gather stakeholder input about the project.

  • Build trust and community.

  • Identify opportunities for change and growth.

  • Strengthen the existing network of supporters.

  • Validate the Flowerings Project strategic direction.

  • Create outputs that will be useful for future Furious Flower Poetry Center grant proposals and fundraising.

  • Provide opportunity for stakeholders to participate in design definition and prototyping that can inform a model for community-centered design in academic libraries.

• Our final report provided a frank, expert, informed, external perspective on how the JMU Libraries can be a good partner for Furious Flower, increase direct funding to Furious Flower, and how both entities can continue to build equitable partnerships that center the work of this world-renowned center of Black poetry and scholarship.

• In 2021, the Furious Flower Poetry Center and JMU Libraries announced that they had been awarded $2 million to preserve the archives and secure the digital future of the nation’s first academic center devoted to Black poetry.

Tools and Methods

• Community-Centered Design

• Systems Change

• Equity and power analysis

• Utilized Storybox for trust and team building

• Convenings & Meeting Planning

Clients

Funding

Public Reporting