A children's guide to Muncie & Delaware County, Indiana

As communities plan for a sustainable future, they may consider elementary students, as the next generation of citizens, to be an ideal audience for placemaking efforts. This creative project uses local history and storytelling elements to cultivate place attachment among elementary students in Delaware County, Indiana. The creative process incorporates design thinking strategies to facilitate collaboration with stakeholders from a local historical society and a local elementary school to determine a practical project outcome. Emerging themes from stakeholder sessions and academic literature form the parameters of the project; the ideal project would have a playful approach, convey relevancy or meaning, include diverse representation, and incorporate elements of storytelling, visual communication, tangibility, and interactivity. The prototype, A Children’s Guide to Muncie & Delaware County, Indiana, combines these themes with local history resources in a tourist-style guidebook to connect local elementary students in third, fourth, and fifth grade to their hometowns and encourage an interest in the history and pride points of the community. A mid-fidelity prototype was created with placeholder content to demonstrate how a guidebook may be structured to represent multifaceted aspects of the community, incorporate local history stories, and use visual design elements to create appeal for an elementary audience. Feedback from the project partner indicates that the concept, format, and design are promising as a template but further development is needed to determine the focus and specific content to include. This creative project demonstrates how communities can use history as a tool to develop and share the local identity of a place and its people to its youngest citizens.This is a 6 hour creative project.Thesis (M.A.