Maya Lo
My design approach centres on participatory frameworks, cultural identity and curatorial practice, exploring how design can revisit and interrogate existing social contexts and structures. Committed to amplifying underrepresented communities, I work across exhibition, communication and cultural curation to ask how intentional, socially engaged design can build visibility and belonging.
How do you spell Scotland?
How do you spell Scotland? is a participatory exhibition framework that surfaces the diverse experiences of Scots in the negotiation for identity. The project provides a language kit for accessing this conversation through reflective practice, relatability, and cultural retention. The submission process is designed for low-risk generosity, inviting young Scots into a reflective period within the familiarity of home to explore what belonging means to them. The final stage of this travelling street exhibition is to create public visibility for this private network of communication. Phrases and expressions gathered from these language kits are curated for installation across flat blocks for set periods, garnering public empathy and raising the profile of these personal accounts. This curatorial practice remains reflexive across seasonal iterations, as external factors continue to influence language, culture, and public understanding. These acts of informal expression create mobility and developed connection to self, Scotland, and each other.
Culture Comms – Reciprocal Assimilation
A cultural framework to support reciprocal assimilation in new migration through a stitching workshop that develops into a keepsake trade of sharing and receiving culture. This responds to new patterns of migration in Scotland and the social and psychological consequences of this for new populations. The Culture Comms project is intended to preemptively encourage low-pressure interaction between different cultures to enable new community dialogues and engage local/migrating populations to interact more mutually, whilst preserving culture through storytelling.
