Reimagining and Redesigning: Responses from the Creative Reaction Lab Community
As the world around us continues to shift in response to the uncertainties of the pandemic, we see opportunities for transformative growth in our communities. So we asked members of the CRXLAB community: What are the spaces that still need reimagining and redesigning?
Robert Beckles
Program Coordinator
I believe 2020 highlighted the need to reimagine and redesign labor. The coronavirus was/is a clear and present danger that forced everyone to reconfigure our approaches and mindsets around productivity in very concrete ways; but the virus has also functioned as a metaphor, I think, for other forms of harm perpetuated at and via the workplace. In the wake of the pandemic, I’ve observed people confront threats to their well-being that have nothing to do with the virus itself (e.g. wages, remote work, caregiving, healthcare, self-care, essential work, etc.). In that way, I think the clarity of the pandemic has opened up space for a larger conversation about more subtle and/or previously normalized ideas and ways of laboring that we couldn’t address before.
Rochelle N. Saenz
Seeds of Power Fellow
A situation in which redesign and reimagining are needed is assistance to those who are finally stepping out to the “real” work. After being in lockdown for several months, our perfect step-by-step plans in life were completely thrown to the side and a lot of people looked into uncertainty. I believe that as the network we are, we should assist those on how they will be placed out into the world, what they’re going to do, and how to achieve it.
Sabrina Dorsainvil
Board Director
There is no shortage of things that need reimagining and redesigning. The way in which we approach learning in our schools, public processes and decision making in the context of government, our approach to physical spaces for folks navigating homelessness and substance use disorders and much more have a moment to truly be shifted. This was a year of assessing the state of relationships and testing creative ways of staying connected and surpassing the status quo of acknowledgment without action. I begin to particularly consider shifts emerging with how we approach issues related to health equity, climate justice, accessibility, racial justice, Trans + Non-Binary folx unique needs, and relationships with Indigenous communities to name a few. It has been exciting to see public investment in gathering spaces (streets for people!), the recognition of arts capacity to be transformative on a clear community level, the prioritization of rest and care and assessing what is necessary, what has been perpetuated without just cause and what we actually want as a collective people. It’s clear there’s a reverberating restlessness and call for radical imagination flowing from so many spaces.
Varun Bather
Learning and Education Associate
I believe that there is a big need for redesigning and reimagining towards developing “equitable transitions” while disruptive technology startups think about alternative sustainable ways of moving forward. Oftentimes, while in the search for technological innovation, the startups forget for whom they are innovating in the first place, and what are the consequences of it towards historically underinvested communities. I think that we cannot move towards environmentally sustainable practices if they are not partnered with equitable practices.
Tepra Wells
Program Coordinator
My belief on the things that need to be reimagined and redesigned from the year 2020 is the importance of mental and physical rest. Mental health is still an extremely underfinanced or under-supported department. There was mass devastation during the year 2020 from a global viral disease, highly publicized cases against police brutality, soaring unemployment rates, and many more. With all this going on, there was still demand or an obligation to move on with life as nothing happened. I would love more spaces in the professional world to provide assistance like Creative Reaction Lab does with its employees.
Sarah Minegar
Board Director
2020 really punctuated healthcare inequities at the intersection of ‘individual freedoms’ and ‘public health.’ From anti-vaccine proponents to school masking debates to people with uteruses fighting for their right to bodily autonomy, it seems like we need to reimagine and redesign for equitable health outcomes. We talk a lot about protecting ‘freedom’ but that only illuminates whose lives and health and well-being we value and prioritize. The practice of Equity-Centered Community Design (ECCD) has the potential to help us realize our capacity to empathize beyond our own experiences and afford each other essential care, dignity, and equitable livelihood.
