An instrument for community

The first sprint moved between diary studies, a community survey, a week of engagement in Kansas City, and drafting in New York — building the shared material the plan would be written from.

1. Week 1
   Diary studies

   Eighteen student diaries and eighteen alumni diaries fielded across disciplines, demographics, and time since graduation, to understand how the KCAI community experiences art, community, and the institution's place in Kansas City and beyond.
2. Week 1
   Community survey

   One hundred fifty respondents across donors, neighbors, the City of Kansas City, art and design enthusiasts, and arts organizations, on perceptions of KCAI past, present, and future.
3. Week 2
   Community engagement in Kansas City

   On campus for the week. Faculty and staff salons surfaced individual priorities and cross-functional ambitions, broken into themes from the diary studies. The steering committee mapped perspectives across constituencies. The board explored emerging aspirations. A campus-wide briefing closed the week.
4. Week 3
   Drafting in New York

   The long-term strategic vision and values drafted from stakeholder input, then reviewed with the steering committee and cabinet team. A prototype framework with a hypothesis on short-term strategic priorities. An alignment worksession with the steering core to refine the framework and assign SMEs to develop measurable goals against each priority. A creative brief written to guide the prototype build.

The work translated the vision drafted in Sprint 1 into something the institution could carry — a set of interactive prototypes tested in the studios, an expert interview series, and a synthesized toolkit.

1. Week 4
   Prototype and symposium in Kansas City

   Six teams of two students and two core team members briefed on the strategic vision, values, and priorities, then sent into the studios to design and build interactive representations. The week closed with an art installation where the community and leadership encountered the prototypes, paired with an in-person survey to interrogate the values and priorities.
2. Week 4
   Expert interviews

   Eleven two-hour interviews with practitioners across arts and design, education, and community. The conversations explored both the field's current challenges and opportunities and the new vision and values that emerged from Sprint 1's stakeholder work. Each interview was followed by a fifteen-minute synthesis between the strategic team and the steering core.
3. Week 5
   Synthesis and toolkit in New York

   SMEs finalized measurable goals against each priority. The installation toolkit built. A final alignment worksession with the steering committee and cabinet signed off the strategic narrative, framework, and toolkit.