#40 - Pathways to Equity with Shalini Agrawal

Design Voice Podcast

Shalini Agrawal brings over 25 years of experience in community engagement, and has dedicated her career to bringing diversity and equity in design, art and architecture. She is co-director of Pathways to Equity, a leadership experience for responsible community-engaged design, and founder and principal of Public Design for Equity, an equity-driven practice for equity-driven outcomes. Shalini is on the board of Architects Designers and Planners for Social Responsibility, and Association for Community Design, as their Director of Fellowship. She is Associate Professor in Critical Ethnic Studies, Interdisciplinary Design Studios and Decolonial School at California College of the Arts.

In this episode, we talk about:

• How working for Philip Johnson early on in her career made Shalini realize she wanted to explore alternative avenues of architecture
• How a trip to India made Shalini want to design projects with people, not just for people
• What inspired Shalini decide to co-found the Pathways to Equity program
• How we can acknowledge our power and privilege as design professionals, and recognize that every time we step into a community we are a guest
• How architects should change their mindset when it comes to Community Engagement
• Holding ourselves and our profession responsible for spatial injustice, and what individuals can do about it
• The interdisciplinary courses that Shalini teaches at California College of the Arts, including her Radical Redesign course
• On questioning the status quo to think about where equity can live
• Taking an Equity Pause
• The ADPSR holding the AIA responsible for their code of ethics and wanting them to address the prison industrial complex.
• Holding space for and supporting women of color in design and architecture