a survey from emergent grounds 11.23.20

a decentralized effort organizing students and alumni practitioners for antiracist, anticolonial, feminist education in the built environment design professions.

Greetings y’all,

We would like to begin by saying thank you to all who voted, especially in the swing states! 

We begin a new phase for the fight for Black Liberation in a complex and multifaceted context of victory and defeat. It renders visible truths that some have long known, which others must now confront.  Though the residue of Trumpism will remain publicly and privately for longer than we would like, we will continue to carry the torch to bend our reality towards equity and justice with the tools we have before us. 

With that, we’re writing to share a survey that will allow us to measure our progress and plan for the next phases of holding our academic institutions to account. We are also happy to amplify a few opportunities that segue into a dialogue about leadership, structural change, and resources. 

1. Emergent Grounds for Design Education is working with Design as Protest Student Organizing to catalogue the responses from academic institutions with a brief survey. Responses to the survey will be used to record and compare strategies from various institutions and develop an index for student organizing and progress. Feel free to share broadly with your networks. We look forward to sharing our findings!

2. The University of Virginia has assembled a search committee for their new dean for the School of Architecture. If you are interested in this opportunity to build support and develop grounds for interdisciplinary research or would like to make a nomination, please see the position description from the executive search group.

This opening offers an opportunity for organizers on this Southern front to ask ourselves what it means to be a dean. What do we need from our leaders to see structural change in our academic institutions? How will their responsibilities change as we push changing values of what we learn and teach? 

3. At the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), an anonymous gift invests in the future of design education with ten new professors to develop fields of research for race and decolonization studies. Rather than solely investing in scholarships for Black, Indigenous, and Latinx students, how else can funds raised be allocated for most effect? How can we be more intentional about inclusion beyond the classroom and into the design canon? 

4. The University of Oklahoma Gibbs College of Architecture journal, Telesis, invites scholars to explore the topic of Isolation through anecdote, article, essay, illustration, manifesto, photograph, project (past, present, or future), short story, or other work. Outlines for Early Feedback Submissions are due tomorrow, Tuesday, November 24. Submissions are due Monday, December 7.

Looking forward to the holidays, we hope for a restorative time of reflection on years past of both joy and resistance, and times when these existed simultaneously. Remember to support local, Black-owned businesses instead of Amazon or Target this holiday season. FastCompany has compiled 10 apps which make it easier to buy Black at local and national scales. If you’re dorks like us, you may be looking to give or receive books; the Oprah Magazine has you covered with a list of 125 Black-owned bookstores across the US, helpfully organized by state.

Thank you for your continued attention and actions towards anti-racist transformation of design education and practice, in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.

If you have questions or resources to share, get in touch with us via email emergentgrounds.edu@gmail.com or on Twitter, @emergentgrounds.

Black Lives Matter. Black Joy Matters.

Emergent Grounds for Design Education