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SPACE
MATTERS:
Race, Equity, and Campus space
Built environments are an under-examined mechanism of social reproduction. Hidden in plain sight, space* is embedded with socializing messages that pass largely unacknowledged. So commonplace are the spatial arrangements of classrooms, resource centers, administrative offices, and libraries that the ways educational settings act to normalize social hierarchies and reproduce systems of power often escape critical scrutiny. To bring space out of hiding is to expand an understanding of how social inequities persist through the material world. Space Matters -- a student participatory action research project -- is a strategy to expose and transform the hidden curriculum of college space.
Excerpt from the 2017 project proposal submitted to Portland Community College by Amara H. Pérez
This website was developed by student researchers and the project coordinator of a 2018 critical race spatial inquiry project called Space Matters. It is our hope by sharing our work that other students, researchers, educational leaders, architects, planners, activists, and organizers will be inspired to engage critical race theory (CRT) in their educational communities as a strategy for institutional and social change.
*SPACE (n.) : 1) material objects, spatial arrangements, and built environments, 2) cultural artifacts, and 3) ideology
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