How can we create and sustain strong ties with our neighbours? A group of residents in the Queenstown estate of Singapore sought an unlikely ally for answers: design. Inspired by a design thinking bootcamp organised by the DesignSingapore Council, they set out to transform Singapore’s oldest public housing estate into a vibrant “community without walls”. These everyday Singaporeans show us that even ordinary people can draw on design principles of empathy and problem-solving to generate creative solutions for issues close to our hearts.
Article by Justin Zhuang.
Once a month, the empty grass patch next to Block 46 Stirling Road in the Queenstown estate of Singapore comes alive as a bustling community square. Residents from the surrounding Queenstown neighbourhood gather to hang out. They chat, sing, play games, and sometimes work on art and do gardening together. Regardless the activities, there is always food and lots of fun and laughter!
Meet the “Queenstown Kakis”, a group of residents who have built themselves a community from the ground-up. Founded by Melissa Kwee, the group welcomes not only residents of Queenstown but also people from all over Singapore. Today, it has over 380 subscribers on its public Telegram channel where regular updates on its activities are posted.
Queenstown Kakis is about bringing out the best in each of us for the good of all: we seek to discover the gifts and talents of neighbours to create a place where everyone feels seen, known, welcomed and fully alive.
— Melissa Kwee
Sparked by a design challenge
It all started in November 2021 when Kwee joined a challenge organised by the DesignSingapore Council’s (Dsg’s) School of X to create more loveable neighbourhoods in various estates across Singapore. One of them was Queenstown, which the former chief executive officer at the National Volunteer & Philanthropy Centre was then planning to move into. Kwee saw an opportunity to build a community with her future neighbours and signed up for the initiative with friends who lived in and around Queenstown.
During the half-day bootcamp led by Dsg’s School of X, the motley crew – including a hawker, a tennis coach, a food and beverage operations manager, a digital storyteller, a social worker, an active ageing advocate, and even a child – learnt design thinking skills to develop proposals for Queenstown. Through interviews with residents, they came up with the idea to build a “community without walls” by introducing modular furniture and prompts in common areas to encourage interaction between neighbours. Another was to discover “Happiness Hosts” – residents with various talents who were keen to share their passions with others. Both won the challenge and led to the birth of Queenstown Kakis.
“As a team, we had decided to continue working in the community whether we won the bootcamp or not. The bootcamp by School of X was thus a springboard for us to flesh out and develop our ideas and explore ways to implement them,” says Kwee.
Indeed, it was key in helping the group translate its vision for the neighbourhood into concrete ideas and plans, adds fellow volunteer from the core planning committee of Queenstown Kakis Janice Chia.
“Without the design thinking process, we wouldn’t have been able to know what we wanted to achieve for Queenstown Kakis. But in those very quick three hours, it provided an informal blueprint for what we wanted to do in the year ahead,” she says.
Design thinking allowed us to be more organised in what we wanted to do and see the vision of what we wanted to achieve…. It forces people to think you have a great idea, but how do you make that idea come to reality?
— Janice Chia
Designing communities differently
Queenstown Kakis launched its first public event in April 2022 to introduce itself to the neighbourhood. They were scratching their heads on how to do so when the nine-year-old in their group, Eva Nabila, suggested they just say hello and make friends. It just so happened that Kwee was renovating her new house at Block 46, and it had a construction hoarding facing an empty grass patch. The group decided to invite residents to create a welcome mural on it and from then on, started holding fortnightly gatherings in front of it.
Initially, when residents saw these gatherings, they wondered if Queenstown Kakis were from the government or a social service organisation. Such apprehensions helped the group realise they needed to create greater awareness for their efforts. Instead of planning events for residents, they asked them for ideas and tried them out together. These ideas included starting a gardening group, a craft group, and even a workshop to create dyes from flowers around the estate. This ground-up approach of designing communities is what attracted volunteers like Nigel Goh to join the group.
It’s not the normal Singaporean efficient way of a community of smart people coming together, thinking of ideas and then arrowing the appropriate people to get the idea done. That gets the job done well, but you may not be actually building communities. Whatever we do at Queenstown Kakis has to be something that someone in the community wants done.
— Nigel Goh
It was this ground-up approach of seeking input from the residents that many talents within the neighbourhood were discovered. One example is Chef Said, who shares his love for cooking by volunteering not only to prepare meals for the group’s events but also to run cooking classes for them. This not only brings Said satisfaction from seeing others enjoy his food, but more importantly, a strong sense of belonging and connection with the people he calls neighbours.
“You don’t know what everyone’s individual problem (is), but you’re here to be there for them. So they now know where to go to if they need some help,” he says.
Empowering a community of contributors
Said experienced this personally when his catering business was struggling. Queenstown Kakis encouraged him to persevere and also created opportunities to showcase his skills. They engaged him to cook for their gatherings and gave out his name cards to friends. Some members who had marketing and sales experiences offered to help him market and design brochures too. The group felt these ways of helping are more sustainable than simply giving money, Nigel explains. It also reflects the group’s desire to build relationships amongst its volunteers.
“Our approach is not so much about meeting needs in the community as in drawing out aspirations, facilitating potential of residents and then supporting their aspirations for the community,” he says.
Kwee adds that their work of building communities is supported by the design process, which seeks to understand the context, challenges, and opportunities through the eyes of various users.
“Seeking to more fully understand one another is the basis of building relationships. These relationships then activate the co-creative power that the community needs in order to thrive,” she says.
Community is not built by a budget, project plan or someone with a job title. Community is built through the love and care of ordinary people who love and care about each other and the spaces they share.
— Melissa Kwee
It may be messier and more complex, but Janice says Queenstown Kakis’ way of designing communities is more empowering. She believes it can help build a more caring Singapore too, especially as its society ages and faces a growing shortage of caregivers.
If we empower more people to support other people around them, even seniors or people with disabilities, Singapore will be a nicer place where everyone can contribute in their own unique ways!
— Janice Chia
What the Queenstown Kakis have achieved may seem easy, and the role of design is subtle. However, this is the beauty of design – it doesn’t always manifest as a tangible product but rather as an outcome. In this case, the outcome is the community bonds that design has helped to crystallise, transforming the neighbourhood into a more loveable place.
Do you know someone who harnesses the power of design to improve lives? Nominate them for the “People of Design” initiative for an opportunity to be featured!
