School of Planning, Design and Construction National Charrette Institute

***This article contains content that may elicit an emotional or trauma response.***

NCI’s Complete Charrette System Certificate trainings provide a great opportunity for multidisciplinary and multi-experience learning. Practitioners and volunteers from across the country convene with a variety of educational and experiential backgrounds. It provides for some rich peer learning and networking.

Over the past few years, the topic of trauma is often raised and discussed during the training. Participants are interested in building skills when working with either individuals and/or communities living with trauma.

While there are no exact equations or formulas when working in a trauma space, there are some core principles of trauma-informed practice that are universal and are a good starting point for community conversations.

NCI recently had firsthand experience that may be helpful to reflect on. On February 13, 2023, Michigan State University (MSU) experienced a mass shooting on its campus that resulted in the deaths of 3 students, wounding of 5 more students, and impacting thousands more. After the initial shock from this tragedy and immediate crisis was stabilized, conversations began about how to memorialize, honor, and remember those lost and affected.

Being a member of this community, NCI was asked to support and facilitate a community engagement process to develop the Feb. 13 Memorial Request for Proposals (RFP) that would result in a physical remembrance on campus. We began working with the Feb. 13 Permanent Memorial Planning Committee in October 2023. A community-wide survey was launched around the one-year anniversary that included 1,968 survey responses, and between March and April over 200 focus groups were offered. This engagement helped guide the RFP in soliciting proposals for memorials. To read more about the Feb. 13 Permanent Memorial process link here.

From this experience, we learned that trauma can be individual, but also collective; we learned that trauma is pervasive and far reaching, but also creates resiliency that can strengthen communities. While we may not be asked to facilitate an entire community that has experienced trauma, certainly we come in contact with individuals experiencing trauma on a daily basis whether we know it or not. Therefore, these lessons would be good to incorporate into our daily practice.

• Trauma-informed work requires recognition of the disparity in experiences. For example, February 13th was experienced very differently by those who had survived a mass shooting in their high school and were now students at MSU. It was also experienced differently by those students who come from a home environment that may have been unsafe, violent, volatile, abusive, etc. Adverse experiences such as living in poverty, food or housing insecurity, or other life stressors can compound and create stronger reactions when faced with a traumatic event. So, understanding and recognizing that there isn’t a universal experience of trauma due to these types of disparities is essential with regard to interventions and care.

• Take it even slower! Certainly there is tension between taking it slow and the time compression principle of a charrette (outlined in a previous newsletter that addresses this tension). It is important to remember to let the community set the pace. Often in our dominant culture we are quick to get things done. There were plenty of times when we had to take a pause from “project management mode” and wait for certain processes and/or conversations to work through the communities we engaged with. The effects of grief and trauma ebb and flow and adaptability is incredibly important.

• Provide trauma warnings and an opt-out option with self-care resources before embarking on a potentially trauma-related topic. As a survivor of a family member’s suicide myself, I appreciate being given a warning that I might be taken back to one of the worst days of my life by the subject matter at hand. It doesn’t need to be perfect or fancy, just a gentle “heads up” of where we are headed can be enough to either give someone time to settle and participate or decide to opt out.

• Acknowledge that it is ok to not be ok. Sometimes, just creating space for the grief and trauma validates those feelings and can provide some relief and encouragement for people to show up with their whole selves. Life is messy. Embrace the mess and move forward with it.

• Be mindful of culture and lived experiences. Trauma-informed work is often audience specific. Consider the audience that will be receiving information or that is being asked to engage. Then, customize it as much as possible to ensure that it is applicable, useful, helpful, and responsive to their needs.

• Use resources! Being a member of MSU’s community meant that we had to manage our own feelings as well as be aware of the trauma others experienced. Our facilitator trainings blended information about how to facilitate and how to help ourselves. There were plenty of times when Marie and I had to step in and out of leading a conversation to care for and collect ourselves. We also were able to build a community across units with people who helped us learn and understand trauma-informed practices.

• Provide resources! We also had the privilege of working with MSU’s mental health resource-providers who were always on-call when we were holding an engagement. They provided valuable resources for participants and helped coordinate support animals at the in-person focus groups. Local nonprofits and non-governmental organizations may be able to assist in this as well. We had “fidget” tools and even had a trauma-informed yogi in the room who was at the ready with breathing techniques. 

Our roles are not therapeutic or clinical in nature, but rather ones that can provide a calm, supportive environment to listen, learn and welcome someone as a whole person, experiences included.

And we have to give a big shout out to our facilitator colleagues from MSU Extension and across campus and the state who bravely volunteered to facilitate some hard conversations around this topic. Their willingness to help was inspiring and expanded NCI’s capacity to be able to offer a massive amount of focus groups in a short period of time and in a way that incorporated these lessons.