Panel at AIA Seattle's 2020 Community Engagement Forum, on the topic of "Establishing Meaningful Relationships with Communities You Serve." The forum discusses ways to build the knowledge, resources, and skillsets to form more authentic relationships and coalitions with community, and transform our profession from one that works for community to one that works with.

1. Sarah Fathallah
@SFath

2. I acknowledge that the city of Oakland, from where I am presenting
today, sits in the territory of Huichin, part of the traditional,
ancestral, unceded territory of the Lisjan Ohlone people.
As an immigrant who settled here, I have benefited and continue to
benefit from the seizure of this land. I am grateful to the Lisjan
Ohlone people who are still here, and continue to live on this land,
despite a history of erasure, forced removal, and genocide of
Indigenous peoples.
I commit to naming their existence, because naming is an exercise
in power when what is being named has been historically erased. I
also commit to continue learning about the history of this land, to
center and join the struggle of the Lisjan Ohlone people and
Indigenous peoples everywhere, and fight for Indigenous land
stewardship and rematriation, today and every day.

3. Authentic Connection
in BIPOC Communities
Sarah Fathallah
@SFath

4. Centering lived experience
Being in solidarity
Naming systemic forces
Practicing critical reflexivity
Ceding power
Building relationships
Extending hospitality
Honoring resilience
Building communities of care
Striving for healing
Inspiring direct action
Fighting white supremacy

5. Centering lived experience
“Redesigners are individuals that really are thinking about the
reality of being embedded. That’s actually the best place to be
because you have that living knowledge, and are, many times,
affected by the outcomes of whatever you’re creating. It
eliminates this tendency of savior complexity. They are always
asking, “How do I improve, innovate, and create interventions to
better my best community and address the issue that’s relevant
to my lived experience?” They are constantly building upon
existing resources.”
— Antionette Carroll, How to Redesign for Justice, 2020.

6. Centering lived experience
How can we ensure that the individuals and
communities most affected by the outcomes
of our work are the ones in charge of
influencing them?

7. Being in solidarity
“Design justice practitioners choose to work in solidarity with
and amplify the power of community-based organizations. This
is unlike many other approaches to participatory design, in
which designers partner with a community but tend to retain
power in the process: power to convene and structure the work,
to make choices about who participates, and usually, to make
decisions at each point.”
— Sasha Costanza-Chock, Design Justice: Community-Led
Practices to Build the Worlds We Need, 2020.

8. Being in solidarity
How can we shift towards contributing our
skills and resources to community-led
processes, instead of seeking community
participation in processes that we initiate
and control?

9. Naming systemic forces
“The relationships between people and problems are often
governed by sets of heuristics—techniques that allow problems
to be solved with speed, agility, and economy. However, these
preexisting schemas can perpetuate exclusionary assumptions
and biased practices [...] that govern relationships with people in
our organizations, schools, and governments. By making them
visible, we can assess their impact and create a space for
reflection and repair.”
— Caroline Hill, Michelle Molitor, and Christine Ortiz, Racism And
Inequity Are Products Of Design.They Can Be Redesigned, 2016.

10. Naming systemic forces
How can we build a more robust
understanding of the hegemonic institutional,
structural, and historic forces at play in the
communities with whom we work?

11. Practicing critical reflexivity
“Critical reflexivity is foundational to socially just,
anti-oppressive research. [...] It enables us to examine the ways
in which our own values, identifies, and positionality affect our
research and particularly our relationships with participants.
[It’s] a recognition that the researcher is not separate from but
exists in relationship with what s/he is trying to understand. [...]
Critical reflexibility is an ongoing process rather than an event.”
— Susan Strega and Leslie Brown, “From Resistance to
Resurgence”, Research as Resistance: Revisiting Critical, Indigenous,
and Anti-Oppressive Approaches, 2005.

12. Practicing critical reflexivity
How can we embed the uncomfortable,
ongoing process of critical reflexivity in our
practices to uncover and challenge the
assumptions embedded in ourselves?

13. Ceding power
“When designers work on complex social sector issues, they
often enter situations with power inherently given to them (even if
they don’t realize it). They’re seen as the ones with the newest
knowledge, the ones with solutions, the innovators. [...] But the
more experienced you are in understanding the mechanics of
power, you’ll find that power is remarkably renewable. Power is
restorative the more you give it away.”
— George Aye, Design Education’s Big Gap: Understanding the Role
of Power, 2017.

14. Ceding power
How can we recognize and shift power
differentials, prioritizing the safety and
well-being of marginalized people over the
comfort of privileged people?

15. Building relationships
“The philosophical premise of take what you need (and only what
you need), give back, and offer thanks suggests a deep respect for
other living beings and is integral to Indigenous methodologies.
[...] In a relationship-based model, research is a sincere, authentic
investment in the community. This requires the ability to take time
to visit with people from the community; the ability to be humble
about the goals; and the ability to have conversations at the start
about who own the research, its use, and its purpose.”
— Margaret Kovach, “Emerging from the Margins: Indigenous
Methodologies”, Research as Resistance: Revisiting Critical,
Indigenous, and Anti-Oppressive Approaches, 2005.

16. Building relationships
How can we structure engagements with
communities in a relational praxis that aims
to minimize extraction, and address issues of
ownership, accountability, and
responsibility?

17. Extending hospitality
“In many cultural contexts, hospitality is critical to demonstrate
care and respect and foster connection. In co-design, we long to
be seen, heard, valued, and treated as an individual. [...] When we
offer hospitality (giving before we get), we’re rewarded with
people’s time, full participation, and the previous commodity of
their hopefulness.”
— Kelly Ann McKercher, Beyond Sticky Notes. Co-Design for Real:
Mindsets, Methods and Movements, 2020.

18. Extending hospitality
How can we increase our practices of
hospitality to ensure communities feel
appreciated, supported, welcome, and that
they can come as they are?

19. Honoring resilience
“Non-indigenous research has been intent on documenting the
demise and cultural assimilation of Indigenous peoples. Instead, it
is possible to celebrate survival, or what Gerald Vizenor has
called ‘survivance’—survival and resistance. Survivance
accentuates the degree to which Indigenous peoples and
communities have retained cultural and spiritual values and
authenticity in resisting colonialism.”
— Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and
Indigenous Peoples, 1999.

20. Honoring resilience
How can we join in celebrating communities’
survival and active resistance rather than
contributing to and perpetuating narratives of
their problems and downfall?

21. Building communities of care
“What does it mean to shift our ideas of access and care (whether
it’s disability, childcare, economic access, or many more) from an
individual chore, an unfortunate cost of having an unfortunate
body, to a collective responsibility that’s maybe deeply joyful?
What does it mean for our movements? Our communities/fam?”
— Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Care Work: Dreaming
Disability Justice, 2018.

22. Building communities of care
How can we fight against ableism and build
communities of care where no one is left
behind?

23. Striving for healing
“Just like the absence of disease doesn’t constitute health, nor
the absence of violence constitute peace, the reduction of
pathology (anxiety, anger, fear, sadness, distrust, triggers) doesn’t
constitute well-being (hope, happiness, imagination, aspirations,
trust). Everyone wants to be happy, not just have less misery. [...]
One approach is called healing-centered, as opposed to
trauma-informed. A healing centered approach is holistic
involving culture, spirituality, civic action, and collective healing.”
— Shawn Ginwright, The Future of Healing: Shifting From Trauma
Informed Care to Healing Centered Engagement, 2018.

24. Striving for healing
How can we move beyond minimizing the
potential for triggering and retraumatization
to understanding the ways in which trauma
and healing are experienced collectively?

25. Inspiring direct action
“Radical love should ask how the work in which we are
engaged helps to build respectful relationships between
ourselves and others. [It] means asking ourselves if what we
are contributing is giving back to the community and if it is
strengthening the relationship of all of those involved in the
process. Is what is being shared adding to the growth of the
community? Is what we are working toward leading to a more
peaceful and equitable society?”
— Andrew J. Jolivétte, Research Justice: Methodologies for Social
Change, 2015.

26. Inspiring direct action
How can we ensure that the processes we
support aim at producing better life
outcomes and materials conditions for
community members?

27. Fighting white supremacy
“[Trauma] is a spontaneous protective mechanism used by the
body to stop or thwart further (or future) potential damage.
Trauma is not a flaw or a weakness. It is a highly effective tool of
safety and survival. [...] White supremacy—and all the claims,
accusations, excuses, and dodges that surround it—are a trauma
response. [...] These ideas have been reinforced through
institutions as practice, procedures, and standards.”
— Resmaa Menakem, White Supremacy as a Trauma Response, 2018.

28. Fighting white supremacy
How can we actively fight against the norms
and standards of white supremacy culture in
our work and our organizations?

29. Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture
● Perfectionism
● Sense of Urgency
● Defensiveness
● Quantity over Quality
● Worship of the Written Word
● Only One Right Way
● Paternalism
● Either/Or Thinking
● Power Hoarding
● Fear of Open Conflict
● Individualism
● Progress is Bigger, More
● Objectivity
● Right to Comfort
Source: Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun, Dismantling Racism: A Workbook for Social Change Groups, 2001.
Cited by: Creative Reaction Lab, How Traditional Design Thinking Protects White Supremacy, 2020.

30. Thank you!
Sarah Fathallah
@SFath