Community Partnerships

Partnerships between the Sam Fox School and St. Louis community have supported and amplified existing initiatives and expanded on new forms of knowledge through working together.

These partnerships offer a collaborative opportunity to play important roles in addressing complex, intersectional issues and advance communitydriven ideas. Faculty and students engage, listen, and take part in dialogues with community partners beyond campus boundaries, which in turn informs and inspires the design process and new ways of thinking and doing.

BY THE NUMBERS

The Sam Fox School has partnered with over 160 community organizations.

Peace Park

Assistant Professor Wyly Brown led a course to design a pavilion for Peace Park, an ongoing community-led and informed initiative in the College Hill neighborhood. Students experienced working with a real client—the College Hill community—and participated in building the woven structure, itself a nod to grassroots movements. The park’s creation is a long-term partnership across community organizations, municipal agencies, and WashU faculty and students from art, architecture, design, social work, environmental studies, and engineering.

Sid Hastings / Washington University

Sumner StudioLab

The Sumner StudioLab brings together students from Sumner High School and WashU, along with residents from the Ville neighborhood, to discuss and design Sumner’s historic legacies and promising futures through curriculum, public workshops, graduate fellowships, and internships. This place-based program enables a robust partnership with local leaders. The StudioLab is co-led by the Center for Humanities and supported by the Divided City, a Mellon Foundation-funded urban humanities initiative.