Alex Gilliam
Founder of Public Workshop: Redefines the way youth and communities participate as citizens and leaders in the design of their neighborhoods and cities.
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Alex Gilliam
Biography
A cheerleader of possibility, Alex Gilliam is the Director of Design and Learning at Tiny WPA, a nonprofit in Philadelphia, PA that he co-founded in 2014. Tiny WPA's mission is to build better-designed spaces and stronger, healthier, and more equitable places in Philadelphia by supporting citizen-led design improvements throughout the city as well as creating significant opportunities for residents to learn, earn, and lead in the design and making of their communities.
Alex Gilliam believes that great design, rich learning, citizen-driven innovation, play, and equity building are not mutually exclusive but deeply interconnected. Uniquely combining his skills as a designer, teacher, skilled builder, and social entrepreneur, Alex is redefining the way youth and adults participate as citizens and leaders in the design and building of their city and communities. He is widely recognized as an expert on participatory design, loose parts and adventure play, placemaking, design-oriented workforce development programs, and K-12 design education.
For over 20+ years, Alex has partnered with numerous organizations, institutions, architecture firms, and city agencies around the world to create multigenerational community-led design-build projects; develop placemaking initiatives that bring people together in new ways; construct maker spaces with people of all ages; devise transformative youth design leadership programs, and create innovative participatory design tools that center stakeholders in a design or civic process. Such clients include Chicago Architecture Foundation, Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative, Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, Habitat For Humanity, Drexel University, Hester Street Collaborative, Landon Bone Baker Architects, Mayor's Office of Philadelphia, Open House New York, Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, People's Emergency Center, Philadelphia Water Department, Science Leadership Academy, University of Pennsylvania, University of Texas, Van Alen Institute, Gehl Architects, and the Taipei City Department of Urban Development.
In addition, Alex has been featured on NPR and in magazines such as Metropolis, Architect, American Craft, and The Architect's Newspaper as well as showcased on various websites including Edutopia, Fast Company, Next City, BMW Guggenheim Lab|Log, GOOD, Kaboom!, Core 77, Yahoo, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and NBC's TODAY. His work is also included in numerous books on participatory design, placemaking, equitable design, and learning innovation.
Alex received a B.S. Arch with a minor in History from the University of Virginia and a Master of Architecture from the University of Texas in Austin. Additionally, he was an Outreach Fellow at the Rural Studio and a Field Fellow at the National Building Museum.
Alex Gilliam
Featured Videos
Current: CM 2013: Alex Gilliam -- Let Youth And Communities Design & Build Our Future
Time 14:28
Alex Gilliam
Featured Keynote Programs
The incredible importance of play, playful learning, and student created play spaces
In the current moment there is tremendous pressure for students to ‘catch-up’ from the years lost to inadequate remote or hybrid learning. Students are not the only ones suffering from this pressure, teachers are burning out too. Neglected in this push is the need to rebuild school communities, to give students the time to heal and feel ‘well again’ so that they can focus on learning. Prior to the pandemic, play, exercise, and recess were already diminished and often nonexistent in many learning environments. Now more than ever, play is needed to help struggling school communities rebuild. This can happen in many different ways including incorporating kinesthetic design processes and activities into STEM classes; having community build days or refocusing a school maker space on creating homemade ‘loose parts’ such as movable balance beams and seesaws for recess; or involving the whole school community in creating outdoor learning environments and nature-based play spaces. Alex has significant experience in all aspects of this work.
Designing 'with' rather than 'for'
Or how to get out of the way and let young people lead in the creation of spaces and places that are important to them. Designing and creating ‘with’ rather than ‘for’ is of the utmost importance if we want to not only help our learning communities heal and grow stronger but also if we hope to make these spaces more equitable and inclusive. Alex and his organization Tiny WPA have developed innovative tools and processes for realizing everything from a co-designed piece of furniture to a space. This includes deep insight into how this work and approaches can be integrated into traditional school design processes.
Workforce development
If we have any hope of creating more equitable learning environments or cities, we not only need to rethink how we design these places and spaces but also ‘how’ and ‘who’ makes them. Tackling the challenge of limited access to jobs for people of color and women in the building trades is only one part of the solution. There are many hidden, yet rich opportunities within the actual building of a school, recreation center or public space for people to learn, earn, and lead. We simply need to have the imagination to rethink things like FF & E budgets and challenge the low standards of what people generally conceive as being possible in a workforce development setting. Tiny WPA is pioneering many examples of this type of thinking, design, and fabrication in buildings and spaces around Philadelphia.
Rethinking ‘risk’ in learning, making, play, and kids ‘hanging out’
Alex has put power tools in the hands of tens of thousands of young people and inexperienced builders around the world, with no liability waivers. He has design-built 2 story rolling tree houses in a middle school cafeteria with students and regularly has teens build 3 story tall towers in 20 mins and climb to the top. He has created numerous teen hang-out spots with young people in communities that are deeply struggling with crime and decades of disinvestment. In none of these situations have the worst cases scenarios ever been realized, whether that be even the most basic injury, property destruction, or bad behavior; in fact, quite the opposite has happened in every single scenario. Taking an approach to learning, creating, and placemaking that first and foremost starts from a place of trusting people has resulted in safer cultures of ‘building greatness’; not just richer learning but more and a greater breadth of students actively participating in this learning; and more vibrant, well-maintained places.
Alex Gilliam
Featured Articles & Resources
Alex Gilliam | The Grid's '10 Philadelphians making change'
Photo via Grid (by Mark Likosky)
Congratulations to K-12 education expert and Founder of Public Workshop, Alex Gilliam on being named one of '10 Philadelphians Making Change...
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