Cana Communities celebrate their 40th Anniversary with
a specially designed book
Cana communities is a crisis care organisation working with people who are experiencing loneliness, mental illness, addiction and homelessness. The Cana team has been developing the contents of the book to raise awareness of its activities, celebrate life and share the experiences of its members, volunteers and supporters. Prior to contacting Shopfront, Cana had collected some incredible stories, anecdotes and images for the book that they brought to us in the hopes of bringing this idea to fruition.
The project represented a perfect opportunity to link volunteer students from UTS SOUL Award and students enrolled in coursework through the Shopfront Community Program.
Cana Communities with the UTS Design Students Dream Team
Not only did we need students with strong writing, editing and design skills; the project needed empathetic students who were aware of their own reaction to difference – skills developed in SOUL workshops.
A writing student, Larissa Bricis, was the first to sign up to work with Cana. She developed a spreadsheet of all the existing materials which helped the organisation identify the kinds of stories that were missing.
Shopfront was then able to recruit volunteer journalism students to help fill the gaps. Soon there was a great team – including Serina Hajje, Karren Vergara, Anastasia Koninina and Tess Gibney– working to develop the book’s content. These students made field trips to Cana sites to record stories from participants and volunteers about belonging, personal journeys, challenges and the role Cana has played in community members’ personal triumphs.
Shopfront students visited Cana Community's farm in Orchard Hills to conduct interviews with members and volunteers
The completed manuscript was then handed over to the dream team of designers – Aaron Rossano, Linda Te, Mishlene Khouri, Shuwen Zhang and Yan Lin – who closely engaged with the Cana team to craft a simple and beautiful book design that incorporated Cana’s images. As an added extra the design students created a blog so Cana can continue to collect and share its stories.
This project is an excellent example of how Shopfront can work with an organisation to scope a project, identify skill sets required, facilitate student engagement opportunities including volunteers, interns and course-work projects and project manage from beginning to end.
The Cana team were thrilled to see the project come together and the book carries the following acknowledgement:
‘A new energy was brought to the book through the UTS Shopfront students, Larissa Bricis, Tess Gibney, Serina Hajje, Anastasia Koninina and Karren Vergara from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences who contributed their skills through meeting with participants and recording their stories. A visual communications team from the Faculty of Design Architecture and Building – Aaron Rossano, Linda Te, Mishlene Khouri, Shuwen Zhang and Yan Lin – worked diligently with Aleida Jansen creating this beautiful product we have today’.