In February 2019, the Zilkha Center hosted an interactive art installation called the Equity Drafting Table (EDT). Created by the International Living Future Institute, the EDT is a framework intended to open a dialogue about equity in the built environment. Broadly speaking it poses questions like: “What will it take to make my community inclusive and robust for all?” and “How can the planning, design, construction, and inhabiting of our built environment create more equitable spaces?”
The Interactive Exhibit
The exhibit was a series of categories (Transportation, Housing, Food System, Governance, etc) with a number of prompts/questions in each category. Passersby were invited to take a notecard, write a response to any and all of the prompts/questions, and then pin them to the boards. The exhibit was left up for a week and outreach was done in a number of ways to invite all members of the community to participate.
The Zilkha Center reserved Baxter Hall in the Paresky Center (the College’s student center) for a week and had three mini-launches with food the first day. With the Davis Center as a co-sponsor, our organizations got the word out through newsletter, emails, and student tabling. ZC interns photographed the comment cards daily to make sure that no comments were missed – in case any got taken down throughout the week.
The Results
The Zilkha Center shared the results in a public forum in April 2019. The Zilkha Center shared the results with the College’s strategic planning working groups in the Fall of 2019 and will continue to bring the findings to committees that we are part of.
We invite students, faculty, and staff to utilize the information collected to inform and advance equity and sustainability in your areas of campus.
Continuing the Conversation
The responses to the EDT are available for you to utilize to make the college, the town and various subsections of the college more equitable. Use it as you see fit. If you are interested in sharing the projects, classwork, presentations, etc that come from utilizing the EDT framework or the Williams community responses back with us, we would love to highlight your work and potentially add it to this student sustainability projects database for others to utilize in the future.
Hosting the EDT in Your Community
If you are from a college or community that is interested in hosting your own Equity Drafting Table, contact ILFI.
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