Yukiei Matsumoto is the mayor of Naraha, Japan. In April 2012, the entire town of Naraha was under evacuation orders because of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster. Matsumoto has been taking the lead in the town’s recovery. In September 2015, the evacuation order was finally lifted, which made Naraha the first municipality to repatriate residents to the town since the accident. This year’s Graphic Design VTLS stems from the perspective that creative work can be an agent of advocacy. For students exploring creative scholarship, the story takes an emic perspective as Matsumoto provides his testimony from crisis to recovery of an entire town impacted by a nuclear accident. His narrative will enable us to make connections to viewpoints, systemic contexts and the possibilities of how art and design can be a part of public service before, during, and after crisis situations. This interterm, the GD program and Professor Claudine Jaenichen will be hosting a workshop, Design for Emergency Management, here at Chapman, which will touch further on this topic of design thinking and emergency planning.