Behind the Scenes of the Interview Process

Author: Madison Harper | Major: Architecture | Semester: Spring 2025

My name is Madison Harper, and I graduated as a Fay Jones School of Art and Design student with a Bachelor of Architecture and a minor in Theatre. My mentor for this project was Jessica Colangelo, Associate Professor in the Architecture department of Fay Jones. My main study was completed during the Spring 2025 semester, and I examined how art and design impacts a community’s sense of belonging in El Dorado, Arkansas. I graduated in May of 2025, and I will begin work at Polk Stanley Wilcox in Little Rock, Arkansas where I hope to pursue community-based and/or theater design.

This research was conducted as a series of interviews that was then compiled into a fifteen-minute documentary. This study is important because as architecture develops, it is important to take into consideration the ideas and feelings of the community surrounding the built work. By immersing oneself in an area and asking questions about the place and its people, a more well-rounded design can be developed. This project was completed through finding the storyline that connected art, design, the built environment, and community, and this way of research could be applied to future architectural designs. Not only is the storytelling aspect important for understanding the people of the area, but storytelling through interviews leads to discovery of information that simply is not available online.

This study began as research about adaptive reuse theaters since I had a love for theatre and architecture but quickly developed with my discovery of how adaptive reuse buildings are tied to the psychology of place and community. At about the same time I found the research regarding place and community, I took a Storytelling and Architecture class, where I explored architectural storytelling through videography. My mentor was the professor that taught the Storytelling and Architecture class, and that is when I decided I wanted her to be my mentor for the project.

The biggest challenge that I struggled with during this process was learning how to successfully communicate with members of an unfamiliar community and then applying the information from that communication to a documentary, a form of media that was also unfamiliar. I left this project with many more questions than answers, but I also left with a stronger need to understand communities before completing architectural projects. It is important to me to have a reliable understanding of the people in an area to develop a strong design, and this project showed me that the only way to successfully understand the whole picture is by going and talking to people. I did research on El Dorado online, but most of what I found online only talked about the oil boom and the Murphy Arts District. After speaking with people in El Dorado, there was so much more to the history of the arts in the area than could be found online. This realization further solidified how important the concept of verbal storytelling is to fully understand an area.

When learning to communicate with people during this study, I also learned how to be flexible. There were at least three interviews that got canceled the day of because someone got sick, but instead of just leaving out a piece of information, I used the contacts I had already established to schedule more interviews for that same weekend. This perseverance and adaptability are mainly what led to the success of the project.

My mentor was helpful during this project as she not only kept me focused on my main question, but she also asked questions that helped me push past the surface level of research and develop a deeper understanding of my original research question. She was encouraging, communicated quickly and thoroughly, and truly took an interest in the project.

The other two members on my committee were Greg Herman and Shawn Irish, and they helped with the overall organization of the project through committee meetings. Shawn Irish was also successful in helping me secure a virtual interview with someone from the theatre community in El Dorado, and this contact helped me arrange more interviews with additional community members.

Once I arranged these interviews, I traveled to El Dorado for a weekend to do as many of the interviews as possible in person. While I was there, I explored the downtown and arts districts, I gathered photographs and background footage, I visited the town’s museum and archive collection, and I went to the El Dorado Film Festival. Traveling to the town was beneficial as I was able to understand the context of the area that I was working with.

Before I am officially done with the project, I will be going back to El Dorado in June to show them the final cut of the documentary. Hopefully, they will bring more questions and conversations to the table through this interaction. I will be starting as an Architectural Designer by the end of the summer where I hope to continue this form of investigation. I want to work in community-based design, so my goal is that my research is something that I will be able to apply to my life in the work force.