About

The Antiracist Classroom is a student-led organization at the Art Center College of Design. We’re a group of mostly graduate and undergraduate students, alumni, some staff and faculty, who are committed to cultivating racial equity in art and design education, research, and practice. This event was centered around people, practices, works of art and design, and spaces that seek to embody or enhance racial equity. We see racial equity as the condition of freedom from racially determined experiences and life outcomes, as derived from an intentional and meticulous dismantling of white supremacist frameworks that undergird the institutions in which we operate.

Design is touted the world over as a force for global transformation and speculation. Meanwhile, many institutions of design—schools, firms, city offices, nonprofits, and more—still fail to imagine and form themselves into institutions that veritably unsettle age-old racial hegemonies and grapple with what it takes to right an obviously imbalanced ship.

The purpose of this convening was to provide a series of opportunities for young creators—of color, especially—to engage with and through art, design, media and/or technology. We aimed for the content to ignite and sustain a movement toward a more racially equitable, informed, and carefully-considered practice and lifetime learning environment. Participants contributed to and learned from the following themes:

01

Take up space

Occupy physical and virtual space with social events, media, objects, works of art and design, installations and experiences that provoke dialogue, challenge the norm and inspire views of race and equity that we don’t typically encounter in our fields.

02

Construct a counter-canon

Equip more artists / designers of color [and become equipped themselves] to produce and document art, design, media, technology and writing that contributes to a counter canon or forces the prevailing canon to shift.

03

Imagine and manifest alternatives

Experiment with and model ways that institutions (colleges, design firms, governments, and more) might consider transforming their curriculum, policies, and programming to construct a more inclusive, equitable, critical, or representative reality.

Who Should Attend

Our intended audience is artists, designers, technologists, and media creators — especially, but not limited to, people of color — who want to contribute to cultivating an antiracist educational and professional field. This includes:

Graduate and undergraduate students;
Educators, staff, and administration at art / technology / design educational institutions, primarily post-secondary institutions and high schools;
Early career practitioners (e.g. artists, designers, others in relevant roles)

Convening Organizers

This event is coordianted by the Antiracist Classroom.

Antiracist Classroom Organizers
Godiva Veliganilao Reisenbichler, ACCD MDP
Bianca Nozaki-Nasser, ACCD MDP
Lauren Williams, ACCD MDP
Nidhi Singh Rathore, ACCD MDP

Committee Members
Bryan Ortega, ACCD Fine Art
Allegra Padilla, Coordinator of Community Programs at Occidental College

Faculty Advisors
Elizabeth Chin, ACCD MDP
Arden Stern, ACCD Humanities & Sciences and MDP
Esther Pearl Watson, ACCD Illustration
Everard Williams, ACCD Photography

Disclaimer

Art Center is a multidimensional institution. While we are grateful for support received from our academic department, the Center for Student Experience, and the Research Committee of the college throughout the academic year, we also exist with the express intent of challenging the institution to do better.

Reconstructing Practice

How can we construct an antiracist art and design practice? How do our curriculum, research practices, and models reinforce or dismantle problematic racial hierarchies? What role does simply occupying space play in this endeavor?

Reflecting on Reconstructing Practice

Toward an Anti-Racist Art & Design Field

Video

Shot and edited by Sade Young

Photo Gallery

Photos by Joel Aaron