Week 3: Building Connections

With all the new sites opening up, Brilliant Detroit is always bustling and there’s plenty to observe. As I’ve mentioned in my previous posts our job will be to create a guidebook for current managers and future expansions of Brilliant Detroit. Our research is occurring at the perfect point in time because Brilliant Detroit has just finished expanding to a new location (the Osborn neighborhood) and thus the process is still fresh in many of the employees minds, and new events are happening everyday. This week we got to go to one of said events: their first monthly community dinner! The event was quite exciting, packed with children (who gave me more energy than I’ve had in months), and delicious food! The kids were anywhere from four months old to sixteen years, and despite most not knowing one another before the night, got along quite well. From watching dance routines, to creating courses for matchbox car races, we were certainly kept entertained the whole night.

This experience was a really cool one, because we got to see some of the live action for how community is developed at Brilliant Detroit. Two of the site leads, Bernita and Larry, were connecting with everyone who was at the event and even anyone who passed by on the street. The way they connected with each individual in unique ways showed how committed they are to making the community for everyone, not just some. Talking to them and observing more about how they spend their day to day hours forming those connections will certainly be one of the more interesting components of our task. In order to truly capture Brilliant Detroit in a guidebook, we will have to define their somewhat vague job of building a community in a very explicit way. I’m excited to discover what exactly goes into community building and delve more into how specific conversations are handled.