Andrea Ngan

Selected Work
Offerings
About








 










2025

Year

2020 - 2022

Public Art

The Trust Project





AboutThe Trust Project weaves together reflections on community life in Kensington and Harrowgate. A crowd-sourced poem captures memories, observations, and thoughts on what makes these neighborhoods special. Lifted into the sky, the poem casts colorful shadows on the ground below, while encouraging Harrowgate Park visitors to look up and out from their immediate surroundings.


Role
Oversight
Co-Organizer


Audience
Harrowgate and Kensington Residents

StudioCreative Resilience Collective

PartnersMural Arts
Friends of Harrowgate Park










Overview
The Trust Project was guided by the need to acknowledge the challenges faced and strength demonstrated by Kensington and Harrowgate communities. Despite difficult conversations about public space, belonging and care that have put some residents at odds with one another, a sense of mutual support prevails between neighbors.

A Community Advisory Board co-designed events and activations around the project through the spring of 2021. Advisory gatherings allow for continued reflection on the meaning of trust between community members, and the role of public art in these neighborhoods.

This project was funded by the Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services (DBHIDS) as a part of the Kensington Wellness Initiative, funded by the Hummingbird Foundation.
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Process
Our design process worked to mirrored the equity-centered recommendations we offered in the Toolkit. We did this by:

  • Creating pathways for diverse collaborators across City government and communities to inform and co-create guidance. 
  • Designing in the open and releasing pieces of the Toolkit over time. This helped keep collaborators engaged and allowed us to be remain responsive to their feedback.
  • Reflecting on the strengths and weaknesses of our design process on a weekly and monthly cadence. This enabled us to pursue opportunities to improve how we worked together as a cross-disciplinary team.








    Strategy

    The Toolkit website was launched publicly on June 30, 2023 to house generational wisdom from City staff, community-based practitioners, and residents. 

    • 29 guides covering project planning, accessibility, and evaluation. 
    • 35 tools and templates that help readers apply learnings immediately. 
    • Features that allow readers to submit feedback, suggestions, and stories. 
    • Mobile and desktop friendly versions of the site. 









    Credits
    Core Team
    Theo Loftis
    Michelle Delgado
    Felicia Blow
    Jenna Spitz
    El Sigelman
    Feini Yin

    Community Advisory Board     Darlene Abner-Burton
    Jeremy Chen
    Margo Geppert
    Jim Hardy
    Kyle Hearing
    Carly Nájera
    Zoely Ramos
    Julio Reyes
    Sandi Pereira
    Marissa Rumpf

    Partners Friends of Harrowgate Park
    FundersMural Arts, City of Philadelphia Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation. This artwork is part of the Kensington Wellness Initiative, funded by the Hummingbird Foundation