Larkin Street Youth Services
Larkin Street Youth Services provides a range of services to homeless and at-risk youth in San Francisco and has been particularly critical to the young LGBTQ community here. We developed this community project, called the Guerrilla Street Museum, through a design studio at the California College of the Arts. We worked with Larkin Street’s arts programs to develop a ‘museum of the street’ kiosk to collect and display creative expressions of young people’s lives on the streets and serve as a touchstone for outreach. The Market Street Prototyping Festival displayed the work on the street during a 3-day outdoor festival, with many of the homeless youth stopping by to see themselves reflected in the Guerrilla Street Museum.
Larkin Street Youth Services has an active arts program for the homeless youth they serve. We designed The Guerrilla Street Museum to exhibit their work –such as these powerful self portraits.
The CCA student designers collaborated with the Larkin Street youth to first understand their needs and ambitions as clients. We then had weeks of prototyping options before selecting a final form for construction. Neal Schwartz led the studio, but as always, drew heavily on the S^A team for student critiques, construction and installation assistance, and enthusiastic support.
