Equity & Justice Initiatives

The Center for Design and Material Culture is proud to participate in Human Ecology’s Equity & Justice Network. The E&J Network supports the continued evolution of our school into a community wherein people with diverse backgrounds find success, share knowledge, and work together to advance equity and justice.

Developing a Common Language Around Cultural Appropriation

For more than 50 years, the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection (HLATC) has been a destination for those passionate about global textile traditions. And for the past five years, the collection has been the foundation of a curriculum that seeks to help those visitors understand the difference between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation. The collection serves a wide range of researchers and community members as well as scores of UW–Madison students. Follow the button below for more information about this curriculum.

Developing a Common Language Around Cultural Appropriation

 

Equity & Justice Network Lecture Series in Design Studies

The CDMC partners with the Equity & Justice Network Taskforce in the Design Studies Department in the School of Human Ecology to host a cross-departmental Equity & Justice Speakers Series in Design Studies.

At its core, Design is about Equity and Justice.  Designers aim to make the world better for everyone through thoughtful, innovative, beautiful, empathetic and sustainable practices.  The Design Studies E&J Network Committee considers excellence in design in each of the areas represented in our program: Interior Architecture, Textile & Fashion Design, Design Strategy, and Material Culture. We are committed to highlighting professionals that advocate for underrepresented groups, design excellence and innovation in all fields, design approaches that emphasize the importance of empathy and community engagement, interdisciplinary approaches that allow for a more inclusive and diverse approach to design, and other topics such as designing for justice that focus on the world changing possibilities of design education. The E&J Network in Design Studies will expand our students’ worldview and help build a new Scholarly Community within Design Studies and Human Ecology.

Lecture records from this series are available below.

 

Crafting New Futures Using “Ideas Arrangements Effects”

Kenneth Bailey | co founder of Design Studio for Social Intervention

The Studio proposes that we can redesign systems if we follow a simple premise: “Ideas are embedded in social arrangements, which in turn produce effects.” They offer arrangements as a rich and overlooked terrain for social justice and world building.

More info…

Designers are Critical to Equity & Inclusion

Valerie Fletcher |Executive Director of the Institute for Human Center Design (IHCD)

Design is a social art.  Designers create the environments for human life – from our physical spaces to the products we depend upon to the  information that permeates our lives.  It’s a powerful role but requires an active choice to use that power towards justice, equity and inclusion.

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Unsettling: Learning of Equity in Creative Expression and Teaching

Xia Gao | Associate Professor in the Department of Art, Art History & Design at Michigan State University

“I would never feel confident to say that my work centers on equity. I would often say that it addresses cultural, social, economic, gender, and environmental issues. However, as a female immigrant trying to find my identity in shifted contexts, a sense of unsettlement has played a big part in my artistic expression…”

More info…

Visible/Invisible: Designing Afro-Futures

D. Denenge Duyst-Akpem | Associate Professor, Adjunct, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

This lecture highlights Duyst-Akpem’s ongoing engagement with site, body, visibility, and identity via audience-interactive performances; through design for healing and protection; and in mobilizing radical pedagogical approaches to creating new futures of equity and possibility.

More info…