Sasaki Foundation announces Design Grant Program – United States

Theme and Focus Areas

• The Call for Proposals—Shared Voices: Charting a Course for Community Action
  • The challenges in addressing environmental resilience, displacement, affordable housing, access to mobility choices, meaningful public engagement, and other social equity considerations in planning and design are so broad and complex, they require a shared approach to facilitate all the necessary conversations and deliver solutions. Most of these challenges faced by Massachusetts communities are not limited to local neighborhoods—their effects are felt and shared across the Commonwealth and beyond. Multiple futures are at stake, and they can make a difference by acting now.
  • The Hideo Sasaki Foundation recognizes the need for interdisciplinary approaches, diverse community voices, and regional cooperation as key drivers to find shared solutions and create shared impact.
    • Creative Community Building
      • They seek themes of collective memory and community storytelling, investment in historic neighborhood fabric, and local business development. Designing and planning for their communities can extend beyond the concept of placemaking to include the idea of placekeeping—the preservation of local identity through strengthening social bonds, celebrating neighborhood history, and developing strategies for enhancing neighborhoods.
    • New Models for Housing
      • They seek strategies to improve housing affordability, promote a more diverse housing stock, and address gentrification and displacement. Housing shortages in Massachusetts cities require innovative approaches to planning and design. Displacement of families, caused by economic and environmental forces, is exacerbated by the limited supply of affordable, family-oriented housing units.
    • Innovation in Transit and Access to Mobility Choices
      • They seek design solutions for challenges to their transportation systems. Strengthening public-private partnerships, expanding transportation choices, bringing safety to the forefront, and leveraging technology can provide a more accessible and functional transportation system. In Massachusetts, local mobility networks and regional systems have tremendous potential to improve accessibility, equity, and safety for users.
    • Innovation in Health and Wellbeing
      • They seek efforts to enhance community health through the built environment. Equitable access to outdoor spaces, creative reuse of the public realm, and innovative and inclusive programming are integral to their collective community health. Codesigning innovative solutions to challenges within their built environment can begin to positively affect their physical, emotional, and mental wellbeing in cities across Massachusetts.
    • Proactive Approaches to Climate Adaptation
      • They seek responses that address the impacts of climate change, including extreme heat, stormwater, flash flooding, and coastal and river flooding. Challenges associated with climate change, especially related to the urban heat island effect and flooding, disproportionately impact communities of color and low-income communities.

Funding Information

• They will award up to 3 grants of $15,000 each to winning teams. Grants also include access to design experts.

Grant Expectations

• Winning teams will spend 10 months working on their proposed projects.
• You will engage in at least 3 scheduled work sessions with Sasaki designers to advance your project.
• You will gain access to monthly programming to hear from design experts on relevant topics.
• You will build connections through the Sasaki Foundation’s network.
• You will co-learn with your peers in the Design Grants cohort.
• You will deliver the following:
  • Project work plan and projected budget, including specific actionable deliverables (like research, community engagement, design creation, pilot testing, or installations)
  • Final report, including photos and visuals, to share as open source on their website and in the annual research publication
  • Final presentation

Eligible Projects

• Community toolkits
• Advocacy campaigns
• Place-based interventions
• Community design processes
• Data collection and analysis
• Digital tools
• Groundbreaking community programs
• Art installations
• Innovative prototypes
• Neighborhood dialogues

Eligibility Criteria

• The Design Grants fund teams of two to four people to create design solutions for challenges in their neighborhoods. The only team member requirement is including a community representative. Past teams have included designers, artists, community leaders, nonprofit organizations, activists, community organizers, data scientists, urban planners, neighborhood experts, creatives, students, municipal staff, and more. (Note, teams must partner with a public charity to serve as fiscal agent. The public charity is not required to be part of the project team.)
• The Design Grants program requires that two to four people apply as a team.
• Projects must engage communities in Greater Boston or the Gateway Cities.

For more information, visit Sasaki Foundation.