Arts & International Affairs: Volume 2, Issue 1 | Page 145

about isn’t in the final exhibition but it helped us to develop a level of trust.
JP: Is openness and listening enough to build trust? How do you balance
what you’re hearing to what may be a comfortable design for them?
AC: I have a really talented staff. We do all these things as a team. We do
workshops with the clients and ask a lot of questions. Then we start to put
ideas on paper because we work in the design realm and a lot of it is visual.
We start to feed back the ideas for the visitor experience so a client has
something to check to see if we are understanding their messages. For me,
the greatest reward is when a project opens and the people whose story
we’re telling say they’re happy and they feel their story is being told. Then I
feel it’s a success.
There’s no design ego. Nothing should ever look like a Quatrefoil design
project because the design should reflect that cultural organization, that
community. It’s their story. It’s not about us; it’s about them.
JP: But I imagine it does look like a Quatrefoil design. That’s why people
come to you.
AC: They come to us for our process. We work with in-house curatorial
teams, historians, community experts and technical advisors.
JP: What kind of research do you have to do? How do you organize the
history you need to know before you walk in?
AC: We have a kick-off workshop with the client organization to bring
consensus around a vision for the project and a mission. We talk a lot about
what our goals are for the people who will visit. What do we want them to say
when they walk out? What do we want them to learn and feel from being here?
That gives us a framework. Once we have the framework, we can identify the
stories that support these outcomes.
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