Exhibit Columbus partners with Indy company for lectures on inclusive design

Exhibit Columbus is collaborating with an Indianapolis company to bring together speakers for a four-part lecture series on inclusive design.

The first session of “Daylight: Season Two,” in a collaboration with People for Urban Progress in Indianapolis, is coming up at 5:30 p.m. March 21 at INDUSTRY, 545 Kentucky Ave., Indianapolis.

People for Urban Progress is a company that makes products such has handbags, duffel bags, and other specialty items using salvaged material and utilizing local talent to create its designs.

The company created a line of products from the used 2017 Exhibit Columbus street banners and other to-be-discarded materials to create products including messenger bags, handbags and wallets that are available through the Columbus Area Visitors Center.

[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]

Andrea Cowley, People For Urban Progress’ executive director, said the series is a basic way to demonstrate how to “create a collective voice” so that people who will be interacting with a city’s design have a say in what is created. She used herself as an example.

“I’m not an architect, and I’m not a designer, but I know what I’d like to see in my city,” Cowley said. “And the trend for inclusive design is just that: What if you really listen to the people who are going to be interacting with your design?”

She mentioned that her agency is serving with Exhibit Columbus merely as an organizer.

“We’re not going to say we’re the experts in what inclusive design means,” Cowley said. “But we know people who do it really, really well.”

Richard McCoy, director of Landmark Columbus, an organization working to preserve and protect Columbus’ architectural legacy, and the umbrella agency over Exhibit Columbus, said many individuals who are participating in this fall’s Exhibit Columbus are speaking at the four-part lecture series, which continues on April 24, May 9 and June 27.

That resulted in Exhibit Columbus partnering with People for Urban Progress on the series, which is promoting having authentic conversations about the realities of equity, dignity and justice when defining thoughtful and responsible design for a city.

The March 21 session is also a collaboration with the Indianapolis Section of the American Institute of Architects.

One of the speakers will be Jha D Williams, spoken word artist and senior associate in the Boston, Massachusetts, office of MASS Design Group, one of the five Miller Prize Winners for the 2019 Exhibit Columbus exhibition which opens Aug. 24. And the other speaker will be Danicia Malone, artist and programs and facilities manager at the Black Cultural Center at Purdue University.

Born and raised in Boston, Williams received her bachelor of science in architecture from Northeastern University, taught for two years at the Boston Architectural College, and then pursued a master’s in architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. After graduation, she returned to her home city to continue curating and co-hosting her monthly open mic, ‘if you can Feel it, you can Speak it’ Open Mic Movement, and began working at Sasaki Associates, Inc.

As a designer, she urges that design and the built environment are vehicles for equity, justice and social change. In February of 2018, she joined the non-profit organization MASS Design Group where she currently works as a senior associate.

Malone serves as Purdue’s Black Cultural Center’s program and facility manager. She is an arts and culture ambassador and urban planner pursuing her doctorate on the user-experience of race. As a Next City Vanguard Fellow and Intercultural Competency Facilitator, she challenges the ideas of public space and place-making to encourage a people-centric status quo.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in Urban Planning and Spanish from Ball State University and a master’s degree in nonprofit management with a focus on global relations and sustainability from Indiana University. As a creative director, interaction designer and urban planner based in the Midwest, she spearheaded projects in Monteverde, Costa Rica; Dallas, Texas and New Orleans, Louisiana.

[sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”If you go” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]

What: Daylight: Season Two, a four-part monthly series bringing together national and local leaders around the topic of inclusive design

When: 5:30 p.m. March 21 (series opening event)

Where INDUSTRY, 545 Kentucky Ave., Indianapolis.

How much: Free

How to register: Go to Exhibit Columbus’ Facebook page at facebook.com/exhibitcolumbus/ and click on the link to make a reservation

[sc:pullout-text-end]