Leadership Tomorrow - Geoff's Reflections on Challenge Day 4: Arts + Culture

Schemata Workshop is excited to announce that Principal Geoff Anderson has been selected as a participant in the Leadership Tomorrow (LT) class of 2021.

LT is an intensive civic leadership program focused on interconnections between elements of Seattle Foundation’s “Healthy Community” framework. The program helps participants further develop their leadership skills and practices, focusing on the goal of creating a healthy, just, and inclusive Puget Sound region. In particular, the program has been actively evolving its approach to racial equity, supporting participants’ development as antiracist civic leaders.

Geoff’s Reflection on Challenge Day 4: Arts + Culture

photo of Public Works Program courtesy of Seattle Repertory Theatre

As a fan of many arts and cultural events and organizations around Seattle, I was looking forward to our Arts & Culture Challenge Day. On any normal year I make a habit of attending several plays at the Seattle Repertory Theatre and the Seattle Children’s Theater with my family, operas at McCaw Hall on date nights with my wife, museum shows with my daughter, and of course, and I love to take advantage of the wonderful food by patronizing restaurants around the city. However, in 2020 this topic was burdened with the additional considerations of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has affected all these cultural institutions, and has disproportionately impacted BIPOC artists and organizations.

For the Challenge Day, we broke into three groups that each had the opportunity to join a conversation with one or two amazing leaders in the Seattle arts and culture community. These included Elishaba Johnson of Wa Na Wari, Tim Lennon of LANGSTON, Brian Carter of 4Culture with Leilani Lewis of the UW, and Angie Kamel of the Seattle Rep’s Public Works program with Becky Witmer of ACT.

I chose the latter because I have a great appreciation for the Rep, and I was curious about their Public Works Program. Angie brought this program to Seattle in the past few years and worked hard to not only explain the program to the Rep’s Board but get them to support it. At the program’s core, it seeks to build diverse relationships throughout the community. They hold workshops with community groups, resulting in a “Grand Play” production with as many as 100 people on stage. Because of the hard work and years of relationship-building, they were able to continue this tradition despite the pandemic, pivoting to a virtual community theater performance of their own musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. This kind of community resilience is inspiring.

We also learned about some of the other amazing creative problem-solving that our local arts organizations have implemented in the past year. According to ArtsFund, 100% of arts organizations are currently offering some sort of digital programming. The Seattle Symphony is broadcasting performances with musicians positioned spread at a safe distance throughout the theater space, including areas normally reserved for the audience. Artists are banding together to create organizations like the Seattle Artists Relief Fund through LANGSTON, and community kitchens are cropping up across the city.  

I particularly enjoyed reading about some of the amazing and diverse restaurateurs who are persevering through the pandemic. It happens that one of the first charitable contributions I made when the pandemic hit was to the Seattle Community Kitchen Collective to support not only the food service workers, but the provision of free meals in the community. My wife and I had been awaiting the opening of Melissa Miranda’s restaurant Musang, and were excited to hear they quickly and innovatively pivoted to this generous concept as soon as the pandemic hit (a stark contrast to the reaction of Tom Douglas). We learned that many other amazing chefs joined the effort, including Chef Kristi Brown of That Brown Girl Cooks and now Communion (who we were lucky enough to have cater our Schemata company holiday party last year!), and Tarik Abdullah who led a grassroots effort to build Feed the People Plaza. These chefs are not only good at their craft but are an inspiration for how to build community and bring people together through arts and culture.

Photo of Feed the People Plaza courtesy of Gabe Guarente / Eater Seattle.

If there is one thing that this pandemic has made me acutely aware of, it’s how much I miss community. Arts and culture organizations are unique endeavors that bring people together to share a collective experience. This is the foundation of building community. I am inspired by the level at which people have rallied to support the arts through this pandemic, but I also worry that it won’t be enough. I believe arts and culture play a role in the health of our community. I am also reminded how important it is to me personally. I write these reflections on Inauguration Day, wondering if a new administration may be willing to support a New Deal-type program that puts an emphasis on saving and restoring arts and cultural programs. What better way to bring unity? I also take it upon myself – what can we each do, professionally and personally, to better support the arts moving forward?

As I finish writing this, I am not only hungry to eat at one of the aforementioned restaurants, but am also feeling like I want to make a better effort at engaging in virtual opportunities to enjoy the arts. I was pleased that our family had kept a tradition of seeing the PNB’s production of the Nutcracker virtually, even dressing up to gather around the TV. It wasn’t quite the same, but I was able to appreciate the close-ups of the costumes in a way I hadn’t been able to from the 3rd balcony.  This piqued my interest – maybe there are added benefits to the virtual format? I am looking forward to engaging in more opportunities in the future that not only support arts and culture and lift my spirits, but also build community across distance. - Geoff Anderson

Leadership Tomorrow - Geoff's Reflections on Challenge Day 3: Health + Wellbeing

Schemata Workshop is excited to announce that Principal Geoff Anderson has been selected as a participant in the Leadership Tomorrow (LT) class of 2021.

LT is an intensive civic leadership program focused on interconnections between elements of Seattle Foundation’s “Healthy Community” framework. The program helps participants further develop their leadership skills and practices, focusing on the goal of creating a healthy, just, and inclusive Puget Sound region. In particular, the program has been actively evolving its approach to racial equity, supporting participants’ development as antiracist civic leaders.

Geoff’s Reflection to Challenge Day 3: Health + Wellbeing

“King County has big racial disparities in coronavirus cases and deaths, according to public-health data”, Seattle Times, 2020

With the heading of Health & Wellbeing, I was expecting to learn about the inequities of our healthcare system and the varying health outcomes along racial and socioeconomic lines. I was not expecting this week to focus instead on our criminal justice system. I have generally supported the elimination of the Seattle youth detention center, which has been in the media for the past few years, but it was impactful to learn more in-depth about the context surrounding the issue.

Money, power, and resources are all social determinants of our health. The World Health Organization has outlined two broad determinants of health: structural and political. These result in the unequal distribution of materials and resources, rendering those who don’t have access more vulnerable. The intermediary determinants are material, psychological, and biological circumstances. The everyday discrimination of black people, and the ongoing segregation of where we live affects our access to medical care, and manifests in poorer health outcomes for BIPOC. Studies show that even education levels cannot help reduce this discrepancy (on average, a white high school graduate will live longer than a black person with a college degree). To learn more, check out the King County Health Disparities Dashboard.

Photo of five-week Restorative Practice course courtesy of Choose 180.

In June 2020, King County made a declaration that racism is a public health crisis and adopted an "Anti-Racism Crisis Response Bill of Rights" which includes goals related to public health, behavioral health, infrastructure and environment, economic development, and the criminal justice system. We ended up spending a significant amount of time discussing the last topic on the list.

The “School to Prison Pipeline” and the impact of youth detention are concepts with which I’m familiar, but I didn’t fully understand the history and the racial biases which continue to play out. The increase of the number of police in schools (under the premise of school safety after incidents like the Columbine School shootings) has resulted in the use of those police as enforcers of discipline for student transgressions. As we all know from the outrage expressed this past summer, this rule enforcement is not distributed fairly amongst white and black students. While students are sent to the principles office at similar rates regardless of race, evidence shows that the enforcement methods used with black students are much more severe, with significantly more expulsions. According to the U.S. Office of Civil Rights, black students are three times more likely to be suspended than their white counterparts for comparable offenses. This makes them highly susceptible to the downward spiral associated with loss of connectivity to the community and other support systems. It does nothing to restore or heal them.  

I am convinced we need to invest more in alternatives to youth detention. We need to invest in the concepts of restorative justice. A great case study on this is the Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth (RJOY) program described in “Discipline with Dignity: Oakland Classrooms try Healing Instead of Punishment.” 

TransformHarm.org outlines the following regarding the concept of Restorative Justice:

Three assumptions underlie Restorative Justice:

• When people and relationships are harmed, needs are created

• The needs created by harms lead to obligations

• The obligations are to heal and “put right” the harms; this is a just response.

Three principles of Restorative Justice reflect these assumptions: A just response:

•  Acknowledges and repairs the harm caused by, and revealed by, wrongdoing (restoration);

• Encourages appropriate responsibility for addressing needs and repairing the harm (accountability);

• Involves those impacted, including the community, in the resolution (engagement).

On this Challenge Day we also got to meet with two very inspiring individuals to discuss these topics: Dr. Ben Danielson, Senior Medical Director of Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic; and Sean Goode, the Executive Director of Choose 180. Both individuals spoke passionately about the need for supporting BIPOC youth in our community.

Sean Good repeatedly spoke to how BIPOC youth are "A possibility to be developed rather than a problem to be dealt with." He talked about how a goal for his organization, which empowers youth and mentors them to have the skills necessary to avoid engagement with the criminal legal system, is to no longer exist.

Dr. Danielson inspired our efforts by asserting that “equity work is the intentional shifting of power - imprisonment is the ultimate taking of power.” He went on to explain how young people’s minds are in development and how the actions taken directly affect their long-term health and wellbeing. It was just a couple weeks after this meeting, that Dr. Danielson made headlines by stepping down from his position at the Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic after more than 20 years, in a statement against the racism that had been accused of existing in the organization.

We should not define people by the worst thing that they have done or that has happened to them, but instead look for the possibilities and potential in people (particularly children), and foster their well-being. Not only will it yield better results for the individual and society as a whole, but it’s also likely a less costly solution. - Geoff Anderson

Stay tuned for the third installment of Geoff’s reflections, coming next week!

Leadership Tomorrow - Geoff's Reflections on Challenge Day 2: Basic Needs

Schemata Workshop is excited to announce that Principal Geoff Anderson has been selected as a participant in the Leadership Tomorrow (LT) class of 2021.

LT is an intensive civic leadership program focused on interconnections between elements of Seattle Foundation’s “Healthy Community” framework. The program helps participants further develop their leadership skills and practices, focusing on the goal of creating a healthy, just, and inclusive Puget Sound region. In particular, the program has been actively evolving its approach to racial equity, supporting participants’ development as antiracist civic leaders.

Geoff’s Reflection to Challenge Day 2: Basic Needs

Healthy Food Access Map | Courtesy of Seattle City Council “Report on healthy food availability and assessment of Seattle’s Food Bank Network”

For the Basic Needs Challenge Day, we studied topics which were relatively new to me, centered on poverty and food insecurity. We researched various supportive programs for those in poverty such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and explored the concept of food deserts, the benefits of community gardening, and the effect of food insecurity on children’s education.

It was educational to read the details of the Governor’s 10-year Poverty Reduction Plan, with the very first strategy being to “understand structural racism and historical trauma, and take action to undo their harmful effects in state policy and programs.”  Another strategy I was glad to see was to “decriminalize poverty and reduce reliance on the child welfare, juvenile justice, and criminal justice system.”

The next way we approached the topic was to break into groups and roleplay how to best advocate for strategies to address communities’ basic needs. The scenario positioned us as advocates, attempting to convince a mock city council that our solution was best. From the outset, it was clear that the problem was flawed in the premise that only one solution could work, when, in reality, there are multiple approaches.

Founding members of the East Oakland Grocery Cooperative. To donate to the cooperative click here.

One group was positioned as supporting either a cash grant program for households below the poverty level or an arrangement to fund a community food bank.  A second group advocated either for community farming or subsidizing a school breakfast program. My group was charged with choosing between funding the SNAP (food stamps) and subsidizing a grocery store/market.

Possibly to make the argument more difficult for ourselves, my group decided to advocate for the grocery store/market. Specifically, we supported the idea of a food co-op that would be collectively owned by a community in a food desert. Our main case study was the Greensboro Community Cooperative.

Members of the Dorchester Community Coop. To donate to the cooperative click here.

We proposed to use available funds in support of the co-op’s creation through providing a grant, possibly by selling land or a building that the city owns and encouraging the use of local food providers. After more research we learned that sadly our prime example had ultimately failed. Despite the precedent, we persisted with our proposal, knowing that there are lessons to be learned in failure. Following the Challenge Day, we learned about other successful examples, as well as new co-ops attempting to form, such as the East Oakland Grocery Cooperative in Oakland, CA, and the Dorchester Community Coop in Boston, MA. For more information on these and others: https://stonepierpress.org/goodfoodnews/food-coops-food-deserts

As our project continued, we learned that old habits can be hard to break. Even a co-op market in a food desert, where there is obvious need, requires sustained business and marketing support to survive. We also looked at policies like those enacted in Los Angeles in 2008, where “the Los Angeles City Council voted to enact a moratorium on new fast-food outlets in a 32-square-mile zone encompassing some of South L.A.’s most arid food deserts, an area where about 97 percent of the population is either Latino, African-American, or of mixed race. Having fewer fast-food restaurants created greater demand for more and better food choices, so Councilmembers subsequently passed another measure offering grocery stores and sit-down restaurants financial incentives to open up in underserved communities. These policies have so far succeeded in bringing the first new supermarket to South L.A. in about a decade” (Food Empowerment Project).

Ultimately, we all know that there is no silver bullet to solve these problems. Understanding more about the options that are continuing to be devised be creative leaders is just the first step. Implementing these ideas effectively will help everyone’s basic needs be met, as well as their ability to do something beyond that: thrive. - Geoff Anderson

Stay tuned for the third installment of Geoff’s reflections, coming next week!

Leadership Tomorrow - Geoff's Reflections on Challenge Day 1: Neighborhoods and Communities

Schemata Workshop is excited to announce that Principal Geoff Anderson has been selected as a participant in the Leadership Tomorrow (LT) class of 2021.

LT is an intensive civic leadership program focused on interconnections between elements of Seattle Foundation’s “Healthy Community” framework. The program helps participants further develop their leadership skills and practices, focusing on the goal of creating a healthy, just, and inclusive Puget Sound region. In particular, the program has been actively evolving its approach to racial equity, supporting participants’ development as antiracist civic leaders.

Geoff’s reflection:

I am grateful to have been selected to partake in the Leadership Tomorrow program. Throughout the year, we will research various topics as they relate to leadership and racial equity. Monthly Challenge Days will allow us to meet and discuss these issues – working with and learning from community leaders, and exchanging ideas with our LT classmates. As I progress through the program, I will be writing short summaries on the SLOG that capture my personal impressions of each month’s research and discussions on the Challenge Day topics.

Challenge Day 1: Neighborhoods + Communities

Redlining Map of Seattle | National Archives, Seattle Public Library online collections/Courtesy of Wing Luke Museum

Out of all the topics we will discuss this year, this first -- on neighborhoods and communities -- is the one I felt I already understood best. As an architect, I have spent my entire career devoted to community-based projects such as affordable housing and recreation facilities. I have advocated for healthy community development within the profession and the larger Seattle community. Although I was already aware of many of the issues they presented in the study, I recognized that I always had more to learn, especially from the other leaders in the program.

The mural outside the Seattle Mennonite Church in Lake City, Seattle, which reads “We at Seattle Mennonite Church acknowledge that we are on the unceded ancestral lands of the Duwamish people. A people that are still here, continuing to honor and bring to light their ancient heritage.”

Each of our LT meetings begin with a Land Acknowledgment, recognizing that we occupy the ancestral lands of the Duwamish and other native tribes, and that we honor the land and the tribe itself. Coincidentally, around the same time we were learning the value of land acknowledgement, Schemata was selected to work on an affordable housing project with the Seattle Mennonite Church in Lake City. Even in the early stages of the project, Seattle Mennonite Church has expressed their gratitude to the Duwamish people, and their interest in expressing this value and respect as a central aspect of their project. In fact, the church currently has a Land Acknowledgement painted into a mural on the side of their existing building.

Starting with a recognition of the ancestral lands seems particularly poignant when delving into the topic of neighborhoods and communities. The first readings we explored were related to this fact, and gave us a better understanding of the tribal history of the region. To date, the Duwamish have been unsuccessful at achieving federal recognition, despite the treaty history and current appeals status. To learn their history and contribute “Real Rent” in support of the Duwamish people, visit their website: https://www.realrentduwamish.org/.

The specific topics we covered were land transfers, eviction moratoriums & prevention, wealth creation & homeownership, and community resilience. The history of redlining, and the resulting generational wealth gap, are concepts that I have known about for years. However, at LT we delved even further into the extent to which these continue to widen the gap in wealth and homeownership over the past 50 years, despite progress on civil rights. We can all appreciate that homeownership is the single greatest wealth builder in American society. We need to work harder to provide opportunities for affordable home ownership that removes the embedded racial barriers that still exist. For example, adjusting credit score models to allow for utility bills or rent to be included, or finding other ways to evaluate a borrower’s creditworthiness. We can also advocate for Opportunity Zones that specifically call for homeownership opportunities to encourage development in underserved neighborhoods.

As I continue to collect news stories and articles related to this topic, I hope to improve my advocacy, not only for affordable housing, but also for other systemic solutions to racial inequity; and to be able to continue to develop my antiracist lens that I will carry through all my leadership work. - Geoff Anderson

Stay tuned for the second installment of Geoff’s reflections, coming next week!