Rainbow School

Overview

Rainbow School is a virtual school built on Zep from blueprints co-designed by eight Korean queer youth and a community organization. Our research critically reads the school as a designed artifact, asking how its spaces and interactions make desired school futures tangible and open them to shared reflection.

My role

I contributed to the paper’s theoretical development, examining the institutional work needed to sustain inclusive school practices and how a virtual school can communicate a community’s vision beyond organized events.

Approach

The community’s design work preceded our academic analysis. Drawing on a systematic walkthrough, design documentation, and 57 public guestbook entries, the research team examined what the school’s design proposes and what possibilities it opens. Community collaborators contributed design rationales and organizational context.

Findings

The school makes queer experiences part of ordinary school life through its facilities, activities, and characters’ responses to discrimination.

Resources embedded in school spaces suggest ways to support students while bringing questions of confidentiality and institutional responsibility into view. Inclusion depends on the work of sustaining these arrangements as well as making them visible.

Guestbook messages connect the imagined school with visitors’ experiences and hopes. The virtual environment can continue to communicate the community’s vision beyond organized gatherings.

Manuscript

Title: Rainbow School: Virtual World-Building as Feminist Utopian Practice with Korean Queer Youth

Status: Under review at CHI 2027.

Access: For a copy of the manuscript, please email ytpeng@unc.edu.