Third Lead Collective
Third Leaf Collective is a practice-led, participatory design research project that explores and illuminates the fluid, hybrid, and continually negotiated nature of diasporic identity.
Third Leaf Collective is a practice-led, participatory design research project that explores the dynamic formation and ongoing negotiation of Chinese diasporic identities. The project consists of a toolkit and an online archive, developed through cultural probes and focus groups with 30 members of the Chinese diaspora. The toolkit prompts participants to map their self-positioning on foreign soil through diagrams with verbal or written reflections, using three lenses: relational, cultural, and spatial. These multimodal narratives are collected into a living digital archive, fostering ongoing dialogue within and across diasporic communities. By bridging cultural specificity with universal emotional experience, the project illuminates the fluid, hybrid, and continually negotiated nature of diasporic identity.
Generative Toolkit –
Building on the insights and expressive responses generated through the cultural probe and the focus group, we developed a creative toolkit aimed at supporting storytelling practices rooted in the lived realities of the Chinese diaspora.
We identified three directions to guide diagramming and reflection. These directions offer complementary lenses through which individuals can map their diasporic experiences with clarity and depth:
- A Relational Lens on Social Relationships:
Reflect on and diagram how your important relationships unfold across geography and emotion.
- An Internal Lens on Social and Cultural Environment:
Reflect on and diagram how you experience the people and culture surrounding you.
- A Spatial Lens on Immediate Physical Spaces:
Reflect on and diagram how you feel about the physical environments you currently inhabit.
Archival Website –
The other part of the project is a web-based archive. It serves as a living, evolving space that preserves and shares both the creative toolkit that guides reflection on self-positioning, and the personal narratives gathered from the Chinese diaspora community. As an open and accessible platform, the website amplifies voices that are often overlooked, fostering ongoing dialogue within and beyond the community. By continually aggregating stories and creative responses from the toolkit, the archive traces how Chinese diasporic identities are dynamically formed, negotiated, and reimagined—turning individual reflections into a collective cultural memory.
We use the metaphor of ginkgo leaves for this project, with each leaf representing an individual in the Chinese diaspora community. The imagery of ginkgo leaves drifting through space echoes the dispersion of diasporic individuals and their stories on foreign soil, each leaf carrying a fragment of memory, emotion, or ancestral connection. In many ways, our act of gathering and holding these stories feels like collecting fallen ginkgo leaves.
Narratives Collected –
“我是一名大学老师，我的学校位置比较偏远，所以我画了一个一圈。旁边的星星点点是我的学生，我每年大概会有150-200个学生，平时都在比较封闭的场景上课。
我画了一个飞机，意味着我每年都回到其他地方旅行或参加会议，然后我每次都会带回所闻所见和学生分享，这样就是两个圈层，我可以尽可能在世界的范围内吸收能量并输出给小圈里的学生。”
“I’m a university lecturer. My school is quite remote, so I drew a circle to represent it. The scattered dots around the circle are my students—each year, I teach about 150 to 200 of them, mostly in rather enclosed classrooms.
I also drew an airplane. Each year, I travel to conferences or other places and I always return with stories and insights to share with my students. In this way, there are two circles: one outward, one inward. I try to absorb energy from the wider world and bring it back to nourish my small circle of students.”
”我是中间的漩涡，背后的大树是我的伴侣，意味着我和他没有特别明显的距离，虽然我们之间有着物理距离，但心理上我觉得他就像在我身后的大树，给我遮风挡雨。
我用不同的符号画了两个朋友，用不同的线条、图案画了我们之间的连接关系。像太阳的那个朋友一直散发着向外的积极的能量，我们的互动、链接也是非常直接的。另一个朋友是一团线条，我也不知道到底是什么，而我们的连接可能时疏时密，也比较难以用语言形容，更多的是心照不宣。”
“I am the whirlpool at the center.
Behind me stands a large tree—my partner. Though we’re physically apart, I don’t feel the distance. He’s like the tree at my back, shielding me from the wind and rain.
I used different symbols to draw two friends, and illustrated our relationships through distinct lines and patterns. One friend, like the sun, radiates outward with bright, positive energy. Our bond is open, direct, and full of warmth. The other friend is a tangled mass of lines。 I’m not quite sure what it is. Our connection ebbs and flows, difficult to describe in words. It’s more of a silent understanding.”
“我与身边的事物不论距离远近都有链接，有些虽然可能在链接之外，但他们也散发出能量波及到我，同时我也在自己的存在中散发能量波及到身边的存在。
我把身边相遇的人当作各种各样的形状，有大有小，棱角不同，像石头一样——我经常拿石头来比喻人。类似于我与身边以及之外的石头的互动。
背后的螺旋线条是一种连接关系——似近似远。”
“I feel connected to the things around me, whether they are near or far. Some may lie outside of these visible links, yet they still emit energy that reaches me and in turn, I too radiate energy that touches the beings around me.
I see the people I encounter as shapes: some large, some small, each with their own edges and contours, like stones. I often use stones as a metaphor for people. It’s about the way I interact with the stones around me, and those beyond my immediate reach.
The spiral lines in the background represent these connections: sometimes they feel close, sometimes distant, but always present.”
“我画的左边的黑点是我自己。更多的是我对环境的感受。我刚来英国，还在对环境探索中。像爆炸一样的线条代表我对环境的兴奋，但波浪又代表我对环境保留有一些恐惧。所以我是带着兴奋又恐惧的心情在探索。
旁边的星球代表周边其他文化的朋友（比如美国、中国、加拿大）我会觉得我和他们的距离会变得比较清晰。”
“The black dot on the left represents me. More specifically, my feelings toward the environment around me.
I’ve just arrived in the UK, and I’m still in the midst of exploring this new terrain. The lines that burst outward reflect my excitement, almost like an explosion of curiosity. But the wave-like patterns hint at a lingering fear. I’m navigating this space with a heart that holds both eagerness and apprehension.
The nearby planets stand for friends from other cultural backgrounds—American, Chinese, Canadian. With them, I’ve started to feel the distances between us more distinctly, as if the space between our worlds has come into sharper focus.”