Guided by Community · Chicago
We AreGeographers.
And your new favorite people for Museum, Cultural Institution, and Park work.
Why think spatially?
Spatial isn’t just a service. It’s the lens on all three.
We make spaces into places by examining the things that usually don’t go into a plan. The map decides who shows up, not the invite list. A clean number can still do harm. And no one experiences a drawing — they experience the place.
Space is not place.
What we are hired to do
Rooted in human-centered design, run by planners, built to change the plan rather than describe it.
The distinction
Every plan is made in space. Every plan lands in place.
Spatial experience is the lived geography of your site — five things no site plan holds, and all five decide whether anybody comes back.
The five things a drawing missesReach
A gallery across the highway, a park across six lanes. Neither is “just across the street.” Your free Tuesday is only free to people who can be somewhere on a Tuesday.
Friction
The admission fee, the hushed lobby, the permit, the missing bus stop, the elevator out since March. Each one edits your audience.
Avoidance
The gallery no one lingers in. The trail no one walks after dusk. Nobody draws these, and everybody follows them.
Memory
What happened on this land, and whose story the walls tell. The field where the school used to be. The wing named for someone the community remembers differently.
Belonging
Whether the gallery, the trail, or the gathering reads as yours. The lobby, the signage, the guard, and the price — do all four say the same thing?
The name
We chose the harder preposition.
Informed by community
Gather input. Consider it. Decide anyway. The community is a data source — consulted, thanked, filed. The plan would survive their absence.
Guided by community
They set the direction. We bring the craft. The plan cannot survive their absence, because it was never ours to begin with. It is in our name on purpose — so you can hold us to it.
From the people we answer to
A value you cannot be failed against is not a value — it is a mood.
Guided by Community has become an essential resource for our team, helping build skills and knowledge within our team and supporting our team's efforts to build justice and equity-related skills within our larger organization. They provide tailor-made training that meets people where they are and operate within a growth mindset that provides a safe space for growing.
Erica M.
Senior Director, Environmental Defense Fund
Working with Guided by Community has been an inspiring and enriching experience for our organization. They co-hosted with our Equity Team to deliver a workshop around Story-Driven Data Collection: How to Gather Useful Information from Your Community. GBC uses their expert knowledge to make data understandable, and they delivered a wonderful facilitation that was insightful as well as easy for our diverse community in attendance to follow.
Samantha H.
Director, Greenlink Analytics
I've seen Guided by Community work on many projects, and what really shines through is how much they care about what people in the community need and want.
Alexander D.
Partner, Community Organization
Trusted by teams at
- Environmental Defense Fund
- Greenlink Analytics
- Woodstock Institute
- Equitable Cities
- Loyola Institute for Racial Justice
- CAFHA
Let’s read your place together.
Tell us about the site, the community, and the decision you are trying to get right.