There has been a lot of discussion about wellbeing and happiness; part of the attempts to capture the essence of what a good life means as we are experimenting with concepts and measurements that move beyond GDP. Many wellbeing policy advocates argue that such policies should promote what really matters to people, something that can differ a great deal community to community. Fair enough, but how can we find out?
Understanding the desires and aspirations of a community is not easy. The “go-to” tools are surveys. But most surveys get less than 10% response rates, many as little as 1-2%. Anyone concerned about the wellbeing of under-resourced communities should raise eyebrows here. People with no wifi, or computer, or time on their hands as they work long hours in low wage jobs, seldom participate.
We stumbled on an alternative. One with dignity, inclusivity and anonymity. One that may be able to offer some valuable fresh insights. In 2018 brilliant social practice artist Jin-Ya Huang, invited me to the Wishing Tree she created in partnership with the Crow Museum and Make Art with Purpose. I was mesmerized. Seeing people’s excitement as they engaged with this contemporary interpretation of an ancient ritual, writing down their aspirations and hanging them on the “tree”. The wishing tree quickly became a beloved public art and immersive experience offered at multiple locations. When I learnt that the wishes had no life beyond the tree, the temptation was too great to resist.
We are celebrating an important milestone. After completing the first phase of this effort, we were invited to share about it at this week’s Annual Conference of the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies. The work began with buckets full of handwritten slips of papers, in multiple languages, that had to be sorted, categorized, contextualized and analyzed: an overwhelming task. Finding the simplicity on the other side of complexity takes a multidisciplinary village, and I would like to recognize our incredible team. Dr. Candice Lucas Bledsoe brought her rich understanding of Dallas, its history, culture and community. Nadia Zrelli kept us grounded in quantitative reality when I pulled too far into qualitative analysis, computer scientist D. King-Ip Lin offered up his expertise in natural language processing, Farbod Tavakkoli brought his data science to the table, Brittney Gross, RDN, LD Goss brilliantly project managed all this under Jasleen Dhillon’s guidance, and Jin-Ya Huang, mother of the wishing tree, has been there every step of the way, sharing stories of people’s experiences of, and reactions to, the wishing tree. We had an amazing group of international advisors (see comment as I am running out of space), and dozens of wonderful student volunteers. In the next phase of the work we are creating a tool that can be easily deployed in any interested community. More about some of the findings in another post!
#community #wellbeing #climateaction #techforgood
