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AYAKA
YAMASHITA

Researcher 
Producer

Co-founder of EDAYA
Harvard GSD DDes’25 
Lecturer at Univ. Nagano

EDAYA
Since 2012 ++ selected work
  1. Bamboo Instruments
  2. Bamboo Jewelry
  3. Exhibition
  4. Bamboo Glocal Village
  5. Textbook/Book

Harvard GSD
Since 2019 ++  
  1. MDes Thesis
  2. Harvard Gazette
  3. Community Service Fellow
  4. Class projects at GSD 
  5. Class project at MIT 
Since 2021 ++ CLL
  1. Cape Ann Fieldwork

Int'l Development Work
Since 2014 ++




Mark

3. Community Service Fellow





Fellowship project
Harvard Graduate School of Design | Summer 2020 - May 2022
Collaboration with Patricia Kayobera, Nisa Saidati Nisubreko


Dear Grandmother, ( Your Basket, Voice and Home; the story of a Rwandan refugee in Worcester, Massachusetts)
“Dear Grandmother” is a 10-month digital storytelling project for Rwandan Refugee youth in Worcester, Massachusetts. The project features the voice of Saidati, a high school refugee student, and her grandmother, an African Agaseke (basket)-making master, Patricia, who had experienced three genocides in Rwanda before coming to the U.S. in 2009. As a Harvard GSD Community Service Fellow, I initiated this project with guidance from the Refugee Artisans of Worcester and collaboration with Crocodile River Music in August 2020. The project aims to weave together several creative themes: introducing African refugee arts, accelerating intergenerational communication, and enhancing refugee-non refugee connection.

Biweekly sessions are designed as a hands-on learning experience. The sessions consist of mainly two parts; narrative design and video production. With the emphasis on the importance of the learning process, the project aims to produce the video as a final outcome of the 10-month journey. At the GSD Kirkland Gallery exhibition starting in April 2020, the trailer of the video, website and the storyboard were introduced. The project also became a part of GSD public projection. 

>> Official Website 
>> Kirkland Gallery Website
Mark