Access as a participatory design principle: Grant writers moving from securing resources to codesigning with communities

This article invites grant writing instructors to balance the dominance of rhetoric- and genre-centric curriculum in grant writing by adopting participatory design (PD) as a methodology for making grant writing community centered. During the spring 2022 semester, my grant writing class pushed back on partnering with our planned nonprofit. The nonprofit’s smartphone application, students explained, prevented access because it was smartphone dependent, a niche service, and an eclectic idea. But after students visited historic sites of the 1898 Wilmington, NC Massacre, noting how the history has been skewed and erased, their opinion of the nonprofit changed. This teaching case details the students’ experiences through my observations and an analysis of three reflections. The paper offers a way for viewing PD as it relates to grant writing, explaining how user-centered design (UCD) and PD can help students become aware of the different layers of access present in grant writing projects. The paper argues that we need to help students view grant writers as participants and designers, not just rhetorically sound writers, in order to persuade them of their influential role in coordinating PD work. Participatory design can help prioritize securing access to funding while at the same time helping community members become designers of the projects that impact their community.

Access as a participatory design principle: Grant writers moving from securing resources to codesigning with communities Academic Article