The exhibition ‘Diversity? You tell us’ will be on show from 13 June until 5 September. The show seeks to understand diversity and inclusion as experienced and reflected upon by students and faculty members of the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment.
Diversity is everywhere, and the world is trying to come to terms with it.
Be it through the Diversity Group at our own Faculty; governmental initiatives to encourage the involvement of various categories of minorities in education or at the workplace; and the very recognition that the task of designing (built) environments necessitates a reflection on the diverse range of individuals and collectives who will interact with those spaces.
But what does ‘diversity’ mean? In a profession where the cis-white male has occupied a hegemonic position, is it a queer woman-of-colour who champions queer feminist discourse? In the Netherlands, a former colonial power, is it descendants of the formerly colonised who bring forward decolonial philosophies? In a secular democracy, is it religious ideas that contribute to diversity? Diversity inherently has diverse meanings, nuances and significances for everyone. Paradoxically or not, the goal is to include them all.
More often than not, issues pertaining to one facet of diversity & inclusion are related to other facets in ways that tokenistic D&I campaigns, reliant on simplified labelling exercises, fail to capture. Postcolonial theory might have a relationship with gendered wage gaps in design practice which could affect intergenerational and international spatial relations in the future. These intersectionalities demonstrate a richness of knowledge that diversity & inclusion champions and from which it is useful to learn. But, of course, every individual has had unique interactions with intersectionality, diversity and inclusion.
