Study Architecture 
ProPEL 
Author(s): Jade Yang & Trace Gainey
On May 14, 2024, the American Centers for Disease Control released an alarming set of statistics as part of their series “Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report”: unintentional drowning death rates have been on the rise since 2019, reversing a decades-long trend of decline. As part of the strategy to address such concerning data, the US National Water Safety Action Plan has outlined a list of pointed recommendations for the near future, such as building and revitalizing public pools across the country, and implementing water safety education programs that are culturally and socially-attuned to the complex, racialized history of these contested spaces. As documented by artist Hannah Palmer and journalist Ann Hill- Bond in their 2023 multimedia installation Ghost Pools, the past and present state of the public pool in the city of East Point, Georgia typifies the racialized barriers and inequities associated with access to public pools. Using their artistic project as an ethos and foundation, our research centers the experiences of the East Point community, a community of 38,000 majority-black residents who have been without a public pool for decades. Our work argues that design processes, when embedded in community experience and storytelling, can be transformative acts of dialogue and repair.
https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.113.85
Volume Editors
Sara Jensen Carr & Rubén García Rubio
ISBN
978-1-944214-48-7
