Facilitation & Co-Design
1/3 of the bites we eat exist because of animal pollinators like the American bumblebee.
A social sector solution to local bee population decline for the City of Stoughton, WI
Year: 2023-2024
Duration: 256 hours spanning 6 months
Team: Team of 4 + Project Advisory (Panna Dhariwal, Mike Olson, Zainab Hameed, & Alesia Burton + Advisor Eric Mackey)
Engaging a local community in increasing foraging and shelter for native bees through increased awareness, education, and opportunities to engage in the renaturing of spaces.
Project Introduction
The project began with a general prompt to approach the issue of bee population decline in Wisconsin from the standpoint of bees themselves and thinking, "If bees were our client, how might we better meet their needs and reverse local bee population decline."
Our work began with three months of research into the issue as a whole, before we broke off into smaller groups each focused on addressing the problem from a different angle. This project involved intense mixed method research, deepinging our understanding of bees, bee behavior, the importance of bees as pollinators, sustainable design, Green Swans, regenerative agriculture. The prototyping process spanned three additional months during which we generated lots of potential directions through low fidelity mockups before ultimately settling on our goal to engage a local community in increasing foraging and shelter for native bees through increased awareness, education, and opportunities to engage in the renaturing of spaces.
My Role: All work was shared among members. My work specifically focused on workshop facilitation, and creation of guidebook. I also had a hand in project management, workshop design, and communication with stakeholders.
Methods: desk research, expert interviews, field visits, attendance at expert expo, ethnographic research, body storming, observational studies, low and high fidelity prototyping, co-design workshop with the community
Links: Guidebook | Final Presentation
The Problem
In today's world, we face numerous global challenges, many of which are tied to our food system—an issue that affects us all. A significant concern is the decline of animal pollinators, such as the American bumblebee, which has seen a staggering 90% decrease in population over the past five years. This decline matters because one-third of the bites we take depend on these crucial pollinators.
To address this issue, many are turning to local food sources, including community farms and backyard gardens. However, regardless of size or location, our entire food system relies heavily on pollination. Bees help grow not only fruits and vegetables but also crops that feed smaller animals, which in turn support larger meat-based food sources. Without bees, our food system is at risk of collapse.
While honey bees are a popular solution due to their efficiency and ease of maintenance, they are not native to North America. Relying on honey bees can disrupt local ecosystems by outcompeting native pollinators, affecting native plants, and altering soil composition and landscapes. By flipping the script and focusing on how to renature our environment and grow native bee species populations, we can not only address the threat to our food system. We can also begin taking tiny steps towards that help to regenerate local ecosystems and ultimately maybe even contribute to reversing climate change.
In pursuit of local solutions, we partnered with the small community of Stoughton, WI, located just thirty minutes southwest of Madison. Residents are aware of the bee population decline and its potential impacts. Some community members are already working to address the issue but lack cohesive strategies to unite their efforts.
The Solution & Output
While we set out thinking that potential viable directions might be centered around creating more need for bee based products and ultimately generate awareness and education, or helping people renature their own residential spaces, we ended somewhere very different.
After bringing many ideas to a diverse set of stakeholders, something interesting occurred. Instead of picking apart the ideas and describing how they might not work in practice, every single idea was met with enthusiasm. While exciting, this created a huge conflict and confusion about the best way to move forward. Through the analysis of each concept and intense discussion of how we might create the most positive impact, we pivoted.
The shifted focus was now on how to accentuate this interest and amplify efforts by rallying the local community to streamline efforts.
In collaboration with the community of Stoughton, we developed A Strategic Insight Guidebook to Saving the Bees: A social sector solution to the bee population decline problem. This dynamic, transferrable artifact aims to empower communities to enhance the health of local bee populations, with intentions to run a pilot program in Stoughton itself.
This guidebook acts as a resource as well as a roadmap for how to structure and delegate collaborative efforts. Designed to be primarily digital (with printed copies in key community locations) for easy distribution with environmental sustainability considerations, the guidebook breaks down suggested steps that can be taken, who might do so, and how they might go about it. The designed ecosystem includes digital tools that supplement what is already provided in the guidebook to facilitate further customization of these efforts.
In a nutshell, bees are dying and with that, so is our agriculture and our environment. Despite the commendable efforts of nonprofits, we need to understand that it is not enough. The challenge still persists: how might we mobilize full communities, no matter how large or small, to increase the health of local bee populations? Our solution—a guidebook that encourages (but does not require) governmental intervention, yet inspires individuals and groups to initiate change. It’s designed to dismantle significant, yet overlooked barriers to action, ultimately bringing the community together to engage in renaturing spaces with attention to increasing foraging and shelter for native bees through increased awareness, education, and opportunities to do so.
By employing and creating new community partnerships, we can take steps towards systemic change in a way that could truly regenerate native bee populations.
The Process
While this project followed the suggested design thinking double diamond path, everything about this project was centered around community engagement through a life-centered lens. We absolutely would not have ended up where we did without collaboration from educators, beekeepers, city officials, non-profit leaders, local business owners, and even resident families. We developed relationships through social media interactions, impromptu site visits, phone calls, and emails until connections were established that allowed for both virtual and in-person workshops.
Key project events and milestones included a visit to a local beekeepers expo to catapult us into this world of "bees," extensive desk research, and discussions with experts to wrap our heads around WHY bee populations are declining and what this really means. This helped us identify that this issue is much more specific and centered around native solitary bee species (not to mention other pollinators).
Most importantly, there was a moment we realized we were somewhat stuck. Here we were with a hundred different ideas and unsure where to go from there. It was at this point that we dropped everything and simply got in the car. We knew we needed to get out of our own heads and digital whiteboards and immerse ourselves in the environment we were discussing. This was a true game-changing moment that ultimately led us to discover a local beehive monitoring business in a city with a strong Sustainability Committee interested in addressing this topic.
If it weren't for true collaboration and community engagement, we likely would have presented a solution that doesn't appropriately address the challenges this particular group of stakeholders was facing, therefore not making much of a positive impact at all (and possibly even creating negative ones).
