incidents from emergent grounds
an opportunity, some questions, and continuing conversations
Greetings,
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.
We’re writing to share an opportunity and resources that elevate the nuances of cultural change to support safe spaces for the critical thought of Black, Indigenous, Latinx and other people of color. We hope to prompt conversations around these important questions: How do we measure the broad effects of inequities through data and political actions? Looking beyond quantitative data, what are the qualitative characteristics of systemic oppression? What are their opposites? Responses to these questions must be subjectively claimed and shared.
Enterprise Community Partners released an RFP for the research of the deeply rooted intergenerational effects of systemic racism and strategies to promote upward mobility and racial equity in Washington, DC. This research continues as an evolution from their partnership with WE on Undesign the Redline. Proposals are due on November 5.
What tasks are embedded in the project of radicalizing architectural education? In her announcement of her resignation from City College of New York’s Spitzer School of Architecture, Lesley Lokko sheds light on the specific complexities of race and gender in the United States of America.
What are the limits of safe spaces for Black Lives? Level, a publication for Black and Brown Men on Medium, publishes the series Abolition for the People in partnership with Kaepernick Publishing. If you would like to learn more about the pervasiveness of coded systemic racism, you are invited read along on topics about broader issues of abortion, the prison industrial complex, and the many layers of the current public health crises.
What are the fruits of safe spaces for Black Visionaries to imagine and develop fields of study? For this, we return to lessons from Lesley Lokko, architect, educator, novelist, and co-founder of the Graduate School of Architecture at the University of Johannesburg. Through FOLIO: Journal of Contemporary African Architecture Vol 2: Noir Radical, a radical agenda addresses roots of identity into three parts: development, discipline, and discourse.
How can design education be the tool for supporting our growth? Lisa C. Henry, Lesley Lokko, Shawn Rickenbacker, Sanjive Vadiya, Claire Weisz and Dr. Sharon E. Sutton will make "A Case for Public Design Education" tomorrow, October 15th at 6:30 PM. Background reading for the event hosted by NYRA and Dark Matter University can be found here. Register here.
As another reminder, please vote. If you have the time or resources, continue to support policymakers who will support an equitable present and future.
Get in touch with us with an email or tweet.
Black Lives Matter.
My-Anh Nguyen and Chris Daemmrich