EDI Fall Event Series: imagined, unimagined, unimaginable with Tara Wren

Equity, Diversity and Inclusion initiatives have long sought to combat structural marginalization, while recent critiques highlighted the gap between institutional goals and real impacts, especially in higher education. Through this semester's event series, we seek to explore how art and design communities, through participatory and collaborative methods and practices, can address challenges and contribute to more meaningful and impactful EDI work.

The event series are open for students, faculty, and staff.

Our guest speaker for the first event, "imagined, unimagined, unimaginable", is Tara Wren.

Building on a previous installation and ongoing community project, The Archive of the Invitation, and the essay, “The Unimagined Student and Frameworks of Sufficiency,” this workshop invites participants to extrapolate, from the structures and assumptions of the institution, the characteristics of students, as imagined by the university.

Through small group discussions and visual representations, participants will consider the gap between the realities of many of our students, and the imagined student, making these unimagined students more legible to workshop participants. This process highlights which students the existing institutional structures best serve- who the university is made for.

Next, we will explore the characteristics of students who fall outside of that imagined group - those who must do extra work to learn or work within the institution. Finally, a world-building activity will foster participants in considering what sorts of invitations can be made to previously unimagined students, through explicit acts, modified or open structures, and mitigated systems, to create joyful and welcoming spaces for the learning they need and want to do.

This workshop will be neurodiverse-friendly, disability-led, and welcoming feedback from the participants at any stage in the workshop on how to make it more welcoming to them.