Diary Disks Collect The City’s Memories

There was already one message written on the large black circle with the prompt ​“I hope,” written in several languages. That first inscribed message read ​“that our memories will not all be of darkness.”

The disk was located at the entrance to the Wooster Square Farmer’s Market this past Saturday morning. A woman with a child in a stroller approached the disk with a white marker. She knelt and added her own message. Within the hour, many more would follow.

The large black circle was part of Diary Disks, a collaboration among Design Brigade — a team of Yale undergraduate and graduate design students interested in creating community-based public art projects — the City of New Haven’s Department of Arts, Culture and Tourism, the International Festival of Arts and Ideas, and many partner organizations, including New Haven’s branch libraries, Yale-New Haven Hospital, the Yale School of Medicine, Fairhaven Heights Pilgrim Church, NXTHVN, the Bradley Street Bicycle Co-op, and CitySeed.

The project began in May 2020 when the City of New Haven approached Design Brigade with the idea of creating a memorial for those affected by Covid-19 ​“through the lens of social justice,” said Ye Qin Zhu, who graduated from Yale’s School of Art in 2020. ​“We had no expectation for what it would look like.” The team began thinking about the possibility of a permanent memorial, but also recognized that ​“there was an urgent need to create something” now, said Winter Willoughby, who graduated in 2020 with a degree in psychology. The team reached out to several community groups ​“trying to get at what the city needs — what the people need and what they were asking for.”

The project crystallized during the city’s celebration of Juneteenth, when Design Brigade set up blackboards in East Rock Park, as well as bringing Post-It Notes and Sharpies, and asked the gathering there of about 100 people a series of questions. ​“We weren’t expecting many responses,” Willoughby said. Instead, they got about 100 Post-It Notes. ​“People were crowding around the boards having discussions.”

“Socially distanced, of course,” Zhu said.

“It was really lovely to see people talking about the questions we were asking, and talking to each other,” Willoughby said. All of the team’s design concepts grew from that day. ​“People were asking for reflective, healing spaces. They were asking for green spaces. They were asking for places to be safe spaces. Also more creative spaces.”

The idea of the blackboards stuck. Early versions of the idea involved something more ​“architectural,” Zhu said, ​“standalone structures” that people could interact with and write on to ​“create impromptu memorials.” As conversations continued, the team started thinking about the merging the blackboard with the idea of a ​“portal,” a ​“memory archive — the ability to go back in time and look at our past, and our future,” Willoughby said.

So the team got to the idea of making black, stand-alone disks, each with a prompt attached to it. It was ​“the most simple engagement,” Zhu said. ​“We didn’t want to add too much to it because it was taking away from the story. We wanted to center whatever people were writing…. We want it to be a floating disk, a floating portal, as much as we can.”

“A big part of this project is co-creating with the community, not for the community,” Willoughby said. Each partner got to decide what the prompt would be. Some were ​“aspirational,” as with CitySeed’s ​“I hope.” Others were reflective — ​“I remember, I lost, I miss.” The diversity of prompts came out of conversations with the partner organizations, some of whom thought the people they served wouldn’t react to a more positive prompt, and needed something that acknowledged the struggle they had been through.

“The pandemic’s not over, and people are handling it in different ways,” Willoughby said.

The first three Diary Disks hit the streets last week, Zhu said, at the Yale School of Medicine on Cedar Street, at Fairhaven Heights Pilgrim Church, and the Bradley Street Bike Co-op. Three more, including CitySeed’s, were deployed over the weekend. The last disks will appear at the branch libraries. In June, during Arts and Ideas, all 10 disks will be brought together on the New Haven Green to give people a chance to see what their fellow citizens have said. An 11th digital disk is available through the project’s website.

“We really want this to be an archive for the city to drive future initiatives,” Willoughby said. The team thus hopes to be able to bring the disks together in a more permanent way, perhaps as an installation, perhaps as an exhibition.

“We tried to reach as broad a spectrum of voices as possible,” Zhu said. They got to hear ​“what people were going through, what people think the idea of a memorial is, and that ultimately dictated the design.”

“The world is going through a tough time,” he added. ​“It’s so important to spend most of the time listening.”

While Willoughby and Zhu explained the concept, writers and messages gathered on the disk. Some were short and simple: ​“to see children laugh, smile, and play again”; ​“rejoin our friends and family with renewed appreciation.” Others were longer. One talked about adaptation and lessons learned. Another talked about grief of losing someone to Covid-19. One seemed to sum up what several of the others were saying. In response to the prompt ​“I hope,” the messenger wrote ​“that we never go back to ​‘normal.’”

To learn more about the Diary Disks and where they will appear next, visit the project’s website.