Today was the much-heralded (in my circles at least) ‘Built environment day’ at COP26. I have been trying to follow it on Twitter, which is ideal for those of us with short attention spans who are also meant to be working. There are some exciting events going on, and some brilliant and passionate speakers, and people who really want to make a difference, and I was going to write a blog today to try to reflect some of this.
However as I was scrolling through the online images from COP26 looking for an image to illustrate this piece with, I realised that I was looking at endless shots of individuals giving individual speeches, most of them male, white, and wealthy, interspersed with a few shots of groups of other people (generally not male, less white, often from poorer nations) outside, collectively marching, or protesting, or glueing themselves to pavements. This really brought home to me what many others have been pointing out: the very limited inclusion of people from poorer demographics and poorer countries, and of indigenous peoples, and of activists from non-established groups, and of women. I also watched with shock the clip of the Israeli MP who couldn’t get to her event last week because she was in a wheelchair. This was one very visual piece of evidence showing the exclusion of one person. As ever, what we see is the over-representation of white middle class able-bodied men (and to a lesser extent women) in the position of making decisions and being heard.
I know that there are some wonderful, brilliant, deeply caring people out there in these, as in all, socio-demographic groups, and I honestly thank those of them who care enough to try to change things. Many are my friends and colleagues, and I think the world of them. But collectively can they really know all the issues and concerns and needs of the rest of us? As we are talking about our environment – everyone’s – including the built environment, this has really started to trouble me.
These thoughts, I admit, are partly seeded by my own experience this year. I was invited to speak at a fringe event at COP too (thank you ArchitectsCAN!) as well as to a parallel event in Milton Keynes. I couldn’t physically go to either because I have a chronic auto-immune disease, and not only would the effort of travelling have exhausted my limited reserves of energy, I am also very vulnerable at the moment to catching Covid as I’m on immune-suppressants. Therefore my thoughts, and my experiences, haven’t been included. I have been excluded from other things in the last year too, because for me to participate would have meant things had to be done differently.
But it makes me think that maybe this is the case for all of the excluded. Perhaps it isn’t just that we should find more money, more accommodation, more support to allow ‘others’ to participate in events and in decision-making processes that are designed by and for the current status quo? Perhaps we need to re-design how we approach such world decisions, from the start. This isn’t about the inclusive design of places, however important that is. This is about designing events, ways of working and ways of making decisions which can include everyone.
The Open University where I work is a great example of how such wider redesign can work. Rather than designing a new university building in the 1960s, the Open University took the concept of university education and redesigned it from scratch to make it accessible to everyone (see https://www.open.ac.uk/library/digital-archive/exhibition/74/theme/2/page/2) . These days at any time we have people studying with us in distant countries, on oil rigs, in prisons and secure environments, people who left school at 15, people with PhDs, disabled and ill people, neurodiverse people, retired people, carers, people on shift work, people changing careers, people building careers, people with burning interests in obscure subjects … everyone. And this is possible because of the radical redesign and reconsideration of what a university could be.
The most sustainable solutions are those which are designed by everyone. Let’s hope that COP26 makes a real difference to climate change. But let’s also hope that COP27 is redesigned in a way that allows all people to participate equally in a way that works best for them.
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