- CollegeLondon College of Communication
- CourseMA Service Design
- Graduation year2025
This service system, co-created with the Nisu Yi Ethnic Culture Centre in Mengzi, Yunnan, China aims to revitalize the endangered Nisu Yi language. Through a year-long journey of workshops, digital archives, toolkits, and community festivals, the service connects people with their linguistic roots. It encourages the community to celebrate, document, and sustain their mother tongue, strengthening confidence and pride in their language.
Final work
Overview of Main Service Touchpoints
- What is the service?
Voices of Roots is a year-round, community-led service system that supports the revitalisation of the Nisu Yi language through online archiving, place-based celebration and promotion. It provides the tools, touchpoints, and processes that help communities document, share, and sustain their mother tongue in everyday life.
- Who is the service for?
Nisu Yi community / Nisu Yi Ethnic Culture Centre (NYECC) / Other minority language communities / Urban Audiences & tourists
- Where does the service take place?
Online — via the NYECC WeChat Official Account, digital workshop archive, reflection tools, and the Nisu Yi Digital Museum.
In Yongning & Renhou village — through community-led language workshops and the annual Nisu Yi Language Festival.
In urban public spaces — through leaflets and posters placed at the Honghe Prefectural Museum and Guanlan Subdistrict Community Service Center.
Degree Show Exhibition
In the exhibition, the researcher presented stories from the fieldwork to reveal the challenges and opportunities within the community. Through her reflective and nuanced narration, the display also conveyed the emotional connections she developed with community members throughout the project.
Research and process
What we eat in a year
This Voices is from Nisu Yi Community. It mainly describes the daily life style of Nisu Yi Community in Yongning and Renhou Village, China.
What to Eat in a Year
Bajun Li
What do we eat in a year?
In a year, there’s something to eat every month.
On the sixteenth day of the first month,
Aunties and grannies come back from New Year visits —
there’s meat to eat, and rice cakes to eat.
In February and March,
we eat fresh green vegetables.
In April, we eat mulberries.
In May, we eat hard peaches.
In June, we eat duoyi fruit.
In July, we eat watermelons.
In August, we eat peanuts and flatbreads.
In September, we eat olives.
In October, we eat tomatoes.
In November and December,
there are weddings and celebrations —
there’s food to eat, and drinks to share.
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