How Village Tech is Helping To Keep Duncanville Beautiful

Rebrand, Renew, and Conserve – How VT is breathing new life into the Keep Duncanville Beautiful initiative for the City of Duncanville, and how MOSAIC was the catalyst for this project.  

The City of Duncanville’s “Keep Duncanville Beautiful” (KDB) committee was seeking new perspectives for their branding in the way of multimedia content that has a fresh voice to it. Something that could add more relatability and modern approaches to their PSAs (Public Service Announcements) and other branding content (such as their logo, social media, website, info videos, and graphic design). 

Once they experienced the Escape Room at MOSAIC, it was clear that the talent to revitalize their brand and presence as a city was here, at VT.

Several board members from the City of Duncanville’s KDB initiative attended MOSAIC and approached Mrs. Podany after visiting the Escape Room. They liked the voice-over and filming/production talents and requested a meeting to discuss more about it. Mrs. Podany openly welcomed and facilitated the opportunity. 

After meeting with the COD the following week, however, it was clear they wanted the voice of VT students to be their voice and to revamp their entire public persona.

Mrs. Podany assembled a team of students (Donovan Carter, Adrianna Ramirez, Marco Diaz, Ovet Trujillo Jr, Eva Walters, Andrew Weikel, Gracie Wagner, Tiffany Miller, and Seleste Simpson), led by herself and the Forge Staff (James Cahalen, Kobbi Blair, Hayes Austell, and Kelly Scheib), to complete the multiple challenges presented to them in a short amount of time. 

How this evolved out of a MOSAIC experience is exactly what this Village is about. A visit turned into a conversation of interest and has become a city-altering conservation and social/branding restoration project. This could only be facilitated through the alchemy that is, by no accident, the very design of Village Tech Schools.

We spoke with Andrew Wiekel, one of the participating students in this project. He discussed the processes they used that involve the community they’re creating for in deciding what works best for everyone, in an iterative process of the identity branding.  

“We’re working with COD (City of Duncanville) to redesign both their branding and a lot of their PSA (Public Service Announcement) videos – anything city code, anything that relates to what they do in KDB and nature conservancy”, said Andrew.

“We were trying to determine which style they liked, so we went to Duncan Switch (monthly street market in Downtown Duncanville) and we set up 3 vision boards with different iterations of logos and styles for KDB. We let the community vote on which one they liked the most, and we got a lot of different interesting feedback. We got to interview over 100 people. The feedback was very useful and interesting.”

He continued, “This is a special project. However, 2 of the team members on this project did their Junior internships at the City of Duncanville – Seleste Simpson and Eva Walters,” (thanks to the incredible Junior Internship program here through Mr. Kelly Heathman!!!). 

“Seleste and Eva were working to conserve the Ladd Land – the land across from the school where they’re trying to develop the land with a museum or housing development. It’s the one bit of green space we have that’s not a park and they want to develop it. We’re trying to conserve it – it has river otters and beavers, it’s the endpoint of the 10-mile creek; there’s a lot of wildlife there that until just last week I didn’t even know existed! We’re finding a way with this to advocate for clean-up efforts and conservancy using this platform to give this place a spotlight,” he said, in true Village Tech spirit.

The whole team of students chimed in when we took their group photo to express their excitement about this project.

 “This experience gives us the opportunity to be involved in fields that we may want to be a part of as a career, to get a taste of it.” – Gracie Wagner

“Overall, I think being able to preserve actually what little land we have too, here for the future that we’ll actually be able to leave our mark is one of the most impressive things about this project.” – Eva Walters

“I’m really excited to be a part of this to help rebuild the community – it’s a wonderful opportunity to be able to do this for our community, especially for Duncanville and VT, I’m just happy to be part of this!” – Tiffany Miller

“I really like the group of people we’ve been paired with. The amount of work that just a small group of people have, and for us being asked by the COD to be able to redesign things and change up what is the future of our city, is very important.” – Ovet Trujillo JR

“We get to show what VT is about – our work, our passions.” – Adriana Ramirez

You can feel the bubbling enthusiasm and excitement about the opportunity to be part of this project when you speak with them. It’s truly exciting. Find out more about the Keep Duncanville Beautiful program here at the COD’s website: https://www.duncanvilletx.gov/cms/One.aspx?portalId=61116&pageId=73379

Check back often on their website and social media channels to watch the VT transformation!!!