Mackenzie Webb

The Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design (CIRD) helps rural communities enhance their quality of life and economic vitality through design. CIRD’s Design Learning Cohort brings together rural community leaders from across the country to connect with each other to share and learn how design can address their particular community’s needs.

Every local design workshop hosted by the Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design (CIRD) starts the same way: with community members rallying around a vision for a brighter future. CIRD’s design workshops offer rural communities the chance to work with a national team of designers, architects, and planners to develop design concepts that can help turn that vision into a reality. With support from the CIRD resource team, local design workshops bring together local residents and leaders from local non-profits, community organizations, and government to develop actionable solutions to a specific design challenge.

CIRD's May 2022 local design workshop in Frederiksted, St. Croix, focused on reviving a historic fish market. Led by local nonprofit Clean Sweep Frederiksted, the workshop is a notable stop along the way to broader community revitalization in this beautiful and historic small town. To celebrate the completion of workshop’s design book, here are some of our favorite photos from Frederiksted’s local design workshop.