Papers

Shifting Perceptions: Transforming anti-racism praxis into prototypes

Format: Papers, RSD11, RSD11: Confronting legacies of oppression, Topic: Cases & Practice, Topic: Culture & Society

Sameer Singh

Edmonton Shift Lab

The Edmonton Shift Lab is a unique social innovation lab from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, that is doing ground-breaking antiracism work through a combination of systems thinking, design thinking and Indigenous epistemologies. For the last five years, the Shift Lab has worked with volunteer community members from the human services sector in Edmonton to explore anti-racism approaches that could be impactful and scalable. Fighting racism requires a systemic approach and keen insights into behavioural science. Our findings challenge the established diversity, equity, and inclusion workshop approach and improve upon it through the creation of tangible, actionable prototypes that are being adopted by community partners. These prototypes include a subscription box service, a public safety brochure, a tabletop board game, an app and an educational curriculum for landlords. Each shows promise in making systemic change to the attitudes and actions that contribute to racist behaviours. We have begun collecting and tabulating feedback about what works and what doesn’t, and we are eager to share these observations in the context of systemic design.

Keywords: systemic racism, colonialism, antiracism, oppression

Citation Data

Author(s): Sameer Singh
Year: 2022
Title: Shifting Perceptions: Transforming anti-racism praxis into prototypes
Published in: Proceedings of Relating Systems Thinking and Design
Volume: RSD11
Article No.: 162
URL: https://rsdsymposium.org/shifting-perceptions-transforming-anti-racism-praxis-into-prototypes
Host: University of Brighton
Location: Brighton, UK
Symposium Dates: October 3–16, 2022
First published: 21 September 2022
Last update: 30 April 2023
Publisher Identification: ISSN 2371-8404

Copyright Information

Proceedings of Relating Systems Thinking and Design (ISSN 2371-8404) are published annually by the Systemic Design Association, a non-profit scholarly association leading the research and practice of design for complex systems: 3803 Tønsberg, Norway (922 275 696).

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Open Access article published under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International License. This permits anyone to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or form according to the licence terms.

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Author(s). (20##). Article title. Proceedings of Relating Systems Thinking and Design, RSD##. Article ##. rsdsymposium.org/LINK

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