AIA Oregon Social Justice Action Plan
Year in Review
In June of 2020, we invited our professional community to a Social Justice Listening Session in the wake of the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery & Rayshard Brooks. The event offered a platform for attendants to express their feelings about long standing social injustices, identify what leaders in our profession need to understand towards creating welcoming and inclusive environments and brainstorm what we can all do together to improve our communities.
Channeling these conversations and contributions into a long-range plan towards promoting social justice, AIAO’s Social Justice Action Plan Steering Committee has been at work not only creating a framework of six goals highlighting impact areas and strategic actions but also working Chapter-wide to implement change at all levels: from the Board, to committees, to individual membership commitment.
Access to the Profession
AIA Oregon is committed to supporting the entire pipeline to the architecture profession for our BIPOC communities, beginning with our youngest learners. By actively engaging with K-12 education programs, we can help students understand the role of design in placemaking. We have been working with several groups to better define CTE programming for high school curriculum that better aligns with teaching students about the social impacts of architecture and to better prepare them for the next steps towards an architecture degree. We are also working towards rolling out a high school internship program with coordinated efforts with the Department of Education that would allow for paid summer internships. Several firms are already actively engaged in different programs and we are expanding and consolidating a list of active programs for school districts and firms to access. This has been a great work in progress with several organizations across the state and with the CoEDI Committee, Architecture Foundation of Oregon (AFO) and NOMA PDX. We look forward to many more opportunities to collaborate with the communities. The Fellows Committee has also committed to advancing their mentorship programs and have an active member on the SJAP committee to coordinate efforts.
Expand and Enhance Community Relationships
AIA Oregon is committed to supporting BIPOC organizations who are working towards a more equitable environment. Co-Chairs Kelly Chanopas and Octavio Gutierrez of the Committee on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion focus their programming around community organizations working in a variety of ways to enhance BIPOC voices and to collaborate with AFO and NOMA PDX to put on several of our more successfully attended events. It is important to highlight organizations that are already doing the work towards a more equitable community to be able to bring in their expertise.
Jennifer Wright, as Portland Section Director, leads the Portland Section Steering Committee and the Custom Residential Architects Network (CRAN) Committee, is a liaison to the Fellows Committee, chairs the Design Awards Task Force and co-chairs the Facilities Committee. The framework outlined in the SJAP has served to drive decisions and efforts in all of the groups she is associated with. Acknowledging that this plan is a work in progress and the efforts serve to propel our organization forward towards a better model of our profession, there are certainly areas where more focus and help is needed. Maintaining momentum means celebrating the incremental successes, so in the wake of this anniversary, we share with you some of the ways that the various groups & committees have had impact towards our social justice commitments.
The Portland Section Steering Committee committed to expanding and enhancing community relationships and created a standing agenda item at the top of every monthly meeting to cover community engagement. The open forum ranges from discussions about organizations that members are part of that they feel we could benefit from knowing more about or partnering with, events people have attended that they want to share about, educational resources, etc.
The CRAN Committee is in its infancy, but initial discussions have prioritized topics around supporting more inclusivity in the AIAO’s annual home’s tours to reach a broader audience & highlight more diversity of housing alternatives. They have also prioritized championing programs that recognize and award innovative home improvements and adaptive reuse rather than encouraging the unsustainable growth of new single-family homes.
Advocacy
The Fellows Committee has committed to taking action towards broadening their outreach efforts in finding & supporting potential Fellows and advocating for community engagement towards helping repair the City of Portland. By connecting with aligned organizations and expanding their professional/personal relationships they are working towards a goal of becoming a resource to the community where, as a collective, their years of experience could contribute towards pro-bono services.
Continuing Education Training
AIA Oregon acknowledges that the content that we highlight on our platform plays a role in shaping public discourse about architecture in our communities. The Social Justice Action Plan Framework includes goals and commitments that have increased the diversity of both the designers and the kinds of projects that we showcase. We understand the importance that role models play in the development of our young architects. Increasing the visibility of minority architects will help to inspire the next generation of architects from underrepresented communities. It is our intention that this will give support to minority-owned businesses and increase their access to equal opportunities.
AIA Oregon also acknowledges that community engagement is an essential part of the design process, and that space is not neutral when it comes to delivering cultural messages to the public. AIA Oregon is committed to incorporating programming that helps to bring this awareness to our members by hosting workshops that include Critical Race Theory. Highlighting projects that create ways for the public to have a voice in the designs of their spaces will inspire our members to think more broadly about the design process.
The InProcess Lecture Series has put these goals into action, working with NOMA PDX to re-frame the series with a wider lens. The series is committed to including these concepts as essential conversations about the design process. It is our sincere hope that increasing diversity in our programming will contribute to more inclusive office cultures and help to reduce barriers that minority architects face in the profession. AIA Oregon will continue to evaluate our programming with an eye for justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion, bringing our members towards a future where people of any race, nationality, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and ability level are included and thrive within our workplaces and the spaces we create.
Equity Within the Organization – AIA Oregon
AIA Oregon is committed to expanded representation of the BIPOC community in the organization, including leadership at the board and committee levels, the staff team, vendors, and consultants. This commitment includes evaluating the processes in place to recruit, select, and retain people in these roles, to eliminate the barriers restrict people's access to opportunities, and to reach out to underrepresented communities when opportunity become available.
Every fall we have an opportunity to elect new board members for the following year. We actively discussed making sure to have board members who agree with our Social Justice Action Plan and to participate in bias training. Every board member unanimously agreed to participate and expanded participation to committee chairs and newly elected board members joining the board in 2021. and we completed six sessions with Futurework in December 2020. The goal is to make sure that any and all members in a position of leadership are aware of our goals and can continue to focus on the SJAP in the future.
The Facilities Committee has been tasked to help with the selection of a new AIAO Portland Section location. In evaluating the next home of the AIA, the SJAP framework has helped guide the discussion towards the benefits of collaborating or sharing space with other aligned groups, of considering both physical and virtual access to resources and acknowledging that the elements we prioritize as important define our organizational values. By crafting an intentional roadmap of social justice impact areas and defining specific actions towards these efforts, AIAO has shown that within a year’s time the plan has served to reframe dialogue, focus our intentions and quantify what we, as an organization, feel is important to advocate towards.
Over the last few months, we also had the opportunity to hire a new Executive Director. We created a diverse task force that included emerging professionals, senior members, BIPOC members and representation from each section. The task force worked with the AIA Equity Guides to establish a job description and to establish hiring processes to submit a nation-wide search. The focus was to emphasis the skillsets and interest to assist AIA Oregon to move the organization forward to better align with our goals. We are happy to welcome Heather Wilson and her family to Oregon!
Celebration of Architecture and Architects
Planning for the 2020 Design Awards was guided by the need to better reflect the membership of a State-wide chapter rather than Portland-centric firms. Intentional changes included moving towards using the 10 strategies highlighted in the AIA National’s Framework of Design Excellence as a guiding criterion towards judging the projects, with the intention of reducing personal bias and introducing a common understanding of successful design. Changes were also made in the selection of the jury, prioritizing architects from each region in the US rather than all from one City and maintaining the importance of a jury diverse in age, race and gender.
Moving forward, we are working towards expanding the People’s Choice Awards to include programs in each of the state’s five sections. These local awards programs are a valuable way to connect with the community, recognize projects with purpose and educate the public on the transformational value of good design.
Looking forward
There is always more work to be done and our SJAP is a work in progress as we move through each year in anticipated growth. Looking back over this past year, we have been able to get quite a bit into focus and we are excited to continue to push for a better and more equitable organization. This process is not aiming at a goal post for completion. This is a shift in existence and we always welcome your involvement to make sure we continue to make progress.
Thank you!
Social Justice Action Plan Task Force Members
Amy Vohs Jennifer Wright
Ben Arico Kelly Chanopas
Octavio Gutierrez Sophia Austrins
Becca Cavell Heather Wilson
June 2021