Equity Centered Community Design
9.27.2021
Equity-Centered Community Design is a process that asks you to leave everything you’ve learned before at the door before entering. As humans, it is our nature to want to learn and to want to solve things instinctually, but sometimes that can hinder us. When designing to fight oppression in a community, we will most likely not understand everything the community is going through. Because of this, we must come in with the most open mindset, and that means hanging up your judgment, and taking off your previous knowledge, and leaving them at the door like garments. This vulnerability will allow you to empathize with the community and will help to inform your design to its full capacity.
“A designer is anyone that has the agency to make a decision, however small, that will impact a group of people or the environment.”
“A designer is anyone that has the agency to make a decision, however small, that will impact a group of people or the environment.”
A designer is anyone with the intention that acts upon it; it doesn’t matter what your education level, class, race, gender, or religion is. Because anyone is able to make a change, there are many more designers in the world than we think. Being an Equity-Centered designer means not only being vulnerable to new ideas, but it means to also acknowledge the depth of those issues and the intent to dismantle power constructs. It asks that you expand your language to accommodate the new setting you are in. It takes a determined but empathetic designer to be able to solve problems from the inside of a community because helping a community means getting to know them and understand them and earn their trust to be able to make a change that will all around be beneficial.
Another helpful vulnerability is to lean into things that are unknown and uncomfortable. The less you know about a topic, the less bias will influence your intent. Open yourself to trust and to be trusted. Trust is earned, and will never come easily. Be able to just listen. Thinking while you are listening is a block to avoid. You want to be open to receive all of the information you are being entrusted with, without a coating of your own bias. You want raw new knowledge, and Equity-Centered design offers a creative and vulnerable problem-solving process to collect that information.
Another helpful vulnerability is to lean into things that are unknown and uncomfortable. The less you know about a topic, the less bias will influence your intent. Open yourself to trust and to be trusted. Trust is earned, and will never come easily. Be able to just listen. Thinking while you are listening is a block to avoid. You want to be open to receive all of the information you are being entrusted with, without a coating of your own bias. You want raw new knowledge, and Equity-Centered design offers a creative and vulnerable problem-solving process to collect that information.