The Black in Design conference at Harvard University this past weekend featured presentations from some of the top names in design and social activism, including Hamza Walker, Walter Hood, Sharon Sutton, and DeRay Mckesson. Not bad for a student-led movement that began less than three years ago.
“We didn't really understand how big this thing would become back when we started planning it back in 2014,” says Cara Michell, an alum of Harvard Graduate School of Design’s African American Student Union, the organization behind the conference.
The whole Black in Design idea started with Michell and a bunch of other students of color at the school talking about how they as architects, planners, and designers could affect racial justice issues nationwide. That grew into a panel discussion and brainstorming charette with design and planning practitioners one evening in May 2015 on what their professions could do about issues such as police violence. The students used information shared from that session to pull together a conference in October that year called Black in Design, for which Michell co-chaired the organizing committee. Phil Freelon, the lead architect for the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, was the keynote speaker at that conference, a year before the museum officially opened. Now open, the Black in Design movement is officially part of the museum’s legacy and heritage.
[For more on this story by BRENTIN MOCK, https://www.citylab.com/equity...till-matters/542394/]
Photo: Black in Design conference. Harvard Graduate School of Design African American Student Union
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