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Watch Live:
Monday, February 1: Restorative Justice, Loving Engagement, and Black Women
Tuesday, February 2: Diversity, Globalism, and Collective Value
Wednesday, February 3: Trans Affirming, Queer Affirming, and Empathy
Thursday, February 4: Intergenerational, Black Families, and Black Villages
Black Lives Matter Week of Action is a national, student-run event, held during the first week of February, dedicated to unapologetic conversations and presentations on Black culture, expression, and justice. SCI-Arc’s prestige is based on revolutionary conversations demonstrating a direct influence on the educational spectrum and the overall discourse of design.
As a private institution with global recognition, SCI-Arc's student body represents over 50 countries—but with less than 3% being Black, there’s a deficiency of Black culture imbued in the development of architectural theory, practice, and design. SCI-Arc’s Black Lives Matter Week of Action embraces a unique opportunity to unite creative disciplines within cultural and societal issues, embodying the students’ mission to create a collective platform of speakers with diverse disciplinary interests ranging from art to activism.
Black Lives Matter at School is a national coalition of educators, parents, administrators, and scholars organizing for racial justice in education. The movement dedicated a week in February to the annual Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action to coincide with and augment Black History Month. Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action is an act of unity to challenge the insidious legacy of institutionalized racism and oppression that has plagued the United States since its founding. The guiding principles of the Black Lives Matter movement are celebrated and discussed throughout the week: Restorative Justice, Empathy, Loving Engagement, Diversity, Globalism, Trans Affirming, Queer Affirming, Collective Value, Intergenerational, Black Families, Black Villages, Black Women, and Unapologetically Black. The Black Lives Matter Week of Action is supported and celebrated by thousands of schools, both K-12 and colleges/universities across the United States.
The week-long series of events at SCI-Arc is organized by Undergraduate students Allyn Vialt (B.Arch '21) and Babatunde-Majadi Adejare (B.Arch '23).
Moderator= Babatunde-Majadi Adejare
Secondary= Allyn Viault
Bios for BLMWA
Allyn Viault (B.Arch ’21)
Allyn Viault initiated the campaign for the annual Black Lives Matter Week of Action at SCI-Arc and now serves as the co-organizer for its inaugural event. A Los Angeles native, Allyn actively participates in her local community by also serving as the creative director for Feed the Streets LA and co-director of Design Students for Action.
Allyn is currently an Undergraduate Thesis student at SCI-Arc. During her academic career she has worked closely with faculty and alumni including Mira Henry, John Cooper, Marrikka Trotter, and Talbot McLanahan.
Babatunde-Majadi Adejare (B.Arch ’23)
Babatunde-Majadi Adejare is a Southern California native and Nigerian American designer. After transferring from South Florida to SCI-Arc’s undergraduate program in 2020, he's become a part of multiple projects with the institute, including assisting the development of workshops through Pop-Arc, one of SCI-Arc's high school programs, and informing decisions through the Committee for Equity and Inclusion.
Outside of his experience in architecture and design firms such as Tom Wiscombe Architecture, he has worked on television production, product design, and special event coordination. He has aspirations of establishing an architectural practice alongside fashion, film, and interior design after his expected graduation in 2023. Raised by Black activists, historians, and academics, he’s established his intention of bettering Black people and our communities through his design work and scope of influence.
Panelists
Pascale Sablan, FAIA, NOMA, LEED AP, Associate at Adjaye Associates, with over 14 years of experience, has been on the team for a variety of projects around the world. Pascale is the 315th living African American, woman registered architect in the US. She is an activist-architect who works to advance architecture for the betterment of society, bringing visibility and voice to the issues concerning women and BIPOC designers. She founded the Beyond the Built Environment organization positioned to uniquely address the inequitable disparities in architecture. In 2020, Pascale was voted President-Elect of the National Organization of Minority Architects, the fifth woman to hold this position. She was awarded the 2020 AIA New York State President's Award and the 2021 AIA Whitney M. Young Jr. Award for her advocacy efforts and ascended to the AIA College of Fellows, the youngest African American to reach that honor. Pascale has given lectures at Colleges and Universities nationally as well as cultural institutions such as the United Nations and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Kahlila Williams is a student leader and organizer with Students Deserve and Black Lives Matter Youth Vanguard. After the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and countless others, Black Lives Matter sent out a nationwide call to #DefundThePolice. Shortly after, Williams joined Students Deserve and their call to defund the school police and reinvest in Black futures. She began to speak at school boards, help organize and speak out at actions, and be featured on panels for her work. She has been recognized in The LA Times, Lalist, People’s Magazine, as well as featured in a PSA with Levi’s. She continues organizing within her school and her community as she is the founder of her school's Black Student Union and Students Deserve chapter. Her main goal by the time she graduates is that Black students are able to attend schools that are police free and they aren’t criminalized or targeted.
Brooklyn-born and based out of New York City and Los Angeles, David 'Mr. StarCity' White has become increasingly recognized for his experimental storytelling through means of figurative painting and poetry. Mr. StarCity creates bodies of work that span a diverse range of media from painting to sculpture, poetry to music, performance to the moving image. In recent years, Mr. StarCity has become increasingly recognized for his playful abstract portraits of both real and imagined subjects, embodying an otherworldly synthesis of the beauty, passion, and conflict that define our world.
Throughout his works, Mr. StarCity critically addresses the lasting effects of generational trauma on Black identity, emotional well-being, and more broadly on the stigmas associated with mental illnesses. Mr. StarCity’s work manifests the experiences and social histories of subjects often omitted from colonial narratives in a kind of autoethnography that is equally attuned to individual perspectives and collective structures. His work continues to be inspired by real-life experiences and encounters with strangers, friends, family, and figures that extend beyond the representational. His extended research into human emotion helps to breaks down stigmas and taboos in relation to mental and emotional well-being.
White has exhibited with renowned international galleries and institutions in New York City, Miami, Los Angeles, London, and Stockholm. His work has been featured in Juxtapoz, InStyle, Cultured, New American Paintings, and Hyperallergic. Recent notable projects include the US premiere of BLACK VOICES with Ross-Sutton Gallery, a digital takeover on the corner of London's prominent Oxford Street with W1Curates, a Soho Beach House Miami takeover and mural exhibition, and an in-depth interview with Nathaniel Mary Quinn featured in Juxtapoz Magazine's Winter 2021 issue.
Bryan Lee is the Design Principal of Colloqate and a national Design Justice Advocate. Lee has twelve years of experience in the field of architecture. Lee is the founding organizer of the Design Justice Platform and organized the Design As Protest National Day of Action. He has led two award-winning architecture and design programs for high school students through the Arts Council of New Orleans and the National Organization of Minority Architects.
Marlon West joined Walt Disney Feature Animation in 1993 as an effects animator on The Lion King. West went on to create effects for Pocahontas, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Mulan, Tarzan, Fantasia 2000, and The Emperor’s New Groove. He served as head of effects on Atlantis, The Lost Empire, and Home On The Range.
West worked as a digital artist, animating special effects for Chicken Little and Meet the Robinsons. He recently served as head of effects animation on Frog Princess and Winnie The Pooh. West served in the same role on Frozen and Feast, which both earned Academy Awards. He most recently served as head of effects animation of Moana and Frozen 2.
Always a music fan, he has worked as a DJ in various venues and styles. A native of St. Louis, West lives with his kid and thousands of books and records in Glendale, CA.
Charles L. Davis II is a designer, architectural historian, and cultural critic at the School of Architecture and Planning at SUNY Buffalo, where he teaches design studios and courses in history and theory. He received a PhD in Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.Arch from SUNY Buffalo. His academic research examines the racial discourses of the modern architectural style debates and its long-term effects on the cultural biases of contemporary practice. His book manuscript, Building Character: The Racial Politics of Modern Architectural Style (2019) traces the historical integrations of race and style theory in paradigms of “architectural organicism,” or strategies of design that personified buildings to mirror the essential characteristics of the populations they served. He is also co-editor of the forthcoming book Race and Modern Architecture: A Critical History from the Enlightenment to the Present, which challenges designers to “write race back into architectural history.” This research has been supported by grants from the Canadian Center for Architecture, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Davis also manages the academic blog “Race and Architecture” and the experimental design practice Studio DaSP (Design as Social Praxis), which expands the ways architecture serves as a tool for mediating social needs. His work has been exhibited at galleries in New York State and North Carolina.
Ravyn Wngz is an African, Bermudian, Mohawk, 2Spirit, queer, and transcendent individual. Ravyn aims to challenge mainstream arts and dance spaces by sharing her stories while continuing to create opportunities and platforms for marginalized LGBTTIQQ2S people with a focus on African/Black communities. Ravyn is a co-founder of ILL NANA/DiverseCity Dance Company—a queer, multiracial dance company that aims to change the landscape of dance and provide accessible, affirming dance education to the LGBTTIQQ2S community. Ravyn is the artistic director of OVA—Outrageous Victorious Africans Collective—a Dance/Theatre collective that shares the contemporary voices of African/Black and Queer/Self-Identified storytellers. Ravyn is part of Black Lives Matter Toronto steering committee, a group committed to eradicating all forms of anti-Black racism, supporting Black healing,, and liberating Black communities.
Elegance Bratton (Director and Writer) began making films as a US Marine. He holds a BS from Columbia University and an MFA from NYU Tisch Graduate Film. His documentary Pier Kids follows queer and trans homeless on NYC’s iconic Christopher Street Pier to unpack the legacy of Stonewall for queer people of color. He is the executive producer/creator of Viceland’s GLAAD-nominated series MY HOUSE (2018) and is a Tribeca All Access and a Film Independent Fast Track fellow (2019). Bratton is a grantee for the 2020 Frameline completion fund with his film Buck that also was a world premiere for Sundance 2020 and a part of the Sundance Talent forum. Elegance also produced -Ship: A Visual Poem. Bratton and Pier Kids are nominated for the 2021 Stranger than Fiction Spirit Award.
DeRay Mckesson is a civil rights activist focused primarily on issues of innovation, equity, and justice. Born and raised in Baltimore, he graduated from Bowdoin College and holds honorary doctorates from The New School and the Maryland Institute College of Art.
Mckesson has advocated for issues related to children, youth, and families since he was a teen. As a leading voice in the Black Lives Matter Movement and a co-founder of Campaign Zero, he has worked to connect individuals with knowledge and tools, and provide citizens and policy makers with commonsense policies that ensure equity. He has been praised by President Obama for his work as a community organizer, has advised officials at all levels of government and internationally, and continues to provide capacity to activists, organizers, and influencers to make an impact.
Spurred by the death of Mike Brown and the subsequent protests in Ferguson, Missouri, and beyond, Mckesson has become a key player in the work to confront the systems and structures that have led to mass incarceration and police killings of black and other minority populations. He is also the host of the award-winning weekly podcast Pod Save The People, which creates space for conversations about the most important issues of the week related to justice, equity, and identity.
Mckesson frequently appears on national media outlets including The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, NPR, MSNBC, CNN, among many others. He has also been featured on the cover of The Advocate, Adweek, and Attitude Magazine and has been highlighted in a range of publications including Vogue, Vanity Fair, Interview Magazine, VICE, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Baltimore Sun. He is a board member of Rock The Vote, was named one of the World’s Greatest Leaders by Fortune Magazine in 2015, one of the 30 Most Influential People On The Internet by Time Magazine in 2016.
Arts educator and independent filmmaker Ben Caldwell grew up assisting his grandfather, who projected movies at a small theater in New Mexico. His passion for the visual arts led him to study film at UCLA and reside in the neighborhood of Leimert Park, epicenter for the African American art scene in Los Angeles. After teaching film and video at Howard University in Washington, DC from 1981-84, Caldwell returned to Leimert Park and created an independent studio for video production and experimentation that became the KAOS Network, a community arts center that provides training on digital arts, media arts and multimedia. It remains the only organization of its kind in South Central Los Angeles that offers courses in video production, animation, website development, video teleconferencing, CD-ROM production, and internet exploration. Its legendary Project Blowed is a weekly open-mic workshop that gave birth to rappers and rap groups such as Aceyalone, Medusa, Busdriver, Freestyle Fellowship, and Jurassic Five.
Caldwell’s films often trace historical and cultural connections. Eyewitness: Reflections of Malcolm X & the O.A.A.U. (2006) presents the Harlem reunion of ex-members of the Organization of Afro-American Unity. La Buena Vida
(The Good Life) (2008), filmed over the course of three years while Caldwell taught at the California Institute of the Arts, documents the cultural exchanges between a group of hip-hop artists and musicians from Los Angeles and their counterparts in Havana, Cuba.
As a storyteller and visual artist Jeremy Kamal uses fiction to explore relationships between culture and ecology. A graduate of the Harvard GSD with a degree in Landscape Architecture, his work continues to explore themes of landscape and the concept of culture as a terraforming phenomenon. Through fiction, Kamal is interested in expanding our understanding of how psychological abstractions such as thoughts, values, rituals, addictions, and emotions are part of a continuum with the material world around us.
Natou Fall Mira Henry Kordae Jatafa Henry
Ashten Winger, also know by the name Whoopi, is a Los Angeles-born multimedia designer, developer, and creative director.
He was first introduced to computers at the age of five by his uncle, an aerospace engineer, and quickly embraced the medium. Winger has combined his loves for art and computing and is now working at Netflix as a motion graphics designer. He has also contributed to a variety of projects ranging from high-profile commercials to international festivals.
Artists: Brodinski, Chromeo, Deadmau5, Deep Dish, Diplo, DJ Mustard, Fatboy Slim, Holy Ghost!, Jason Bentley, Jhene Aiko, Kaskade, Kendrick Lamar, Laidback Luke, Macy Gray, Pete Tong, RiFF RAFF, Snoop Dogg, Tiesto, TOKiMONSTA, Wiz Khalifa, YG
Companies: Adidas, BET, Complex Media, Def Jam, G-Shock, Goldenvoice, Hennessy, Insomniac, Interscope Records, Konami, Line, Live Nation, Mad Decent, Mnet, PayPal, Red Bull, SBE, The Hundreds, Viacom, V Squared Labs, Vibe Media, Vice, Xbox, YouTube
Kordae Jatafa Henry is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker and visual artist. The core of his practice stems from a multidisciplinary background, having earned a dual Master of Architecture/Landscape Architecture from University of Pennsylvania School of Design in 2015, as well as a Master of Arts in SCI-Arc’s postgraduate Fiction and Entertainment program in 2018. His release of his 2019 short music film Earth Mother, Sky Father has led him to take the stage at the 2019 Design Indaba Conference, become a recent nominee for the shots 2020 Awards’ New Director of the Year, and exhibit his work in museums and festivals all over the world.
Through live-action music films, installations, dance, game engine environments, and mythology, Henry’s work invites new ways of seeing humans, folklore, mysticism, pop culture, post-genre music, labor, and creation stories as tools to explore the radical imagination. Most recently, Henry has worked with Sundance New Frontier Lab and ONX Studio to reconstruct a real-time performance exploring the past, present, and future of the Black body through ceremony. He is currently Visual Studies faculty at SCI-Arc.
Babatunde-Majadi Adejare
Babatunde-Majadi Adejare is a Southern California native and Nigerian American designer. After transferring from South Florida to SCI-Arc’s undergraduate program in 2020, he's become a part of multiple projects with the institute, including assisting the development of workshops through Pop-Arc, one of SCI-Arc's high school programs, and informing decisions through the Committee for Equity and Inclusion.
Outside of his experience in architecture and design firms such as Tom Wiscombe Architecture, he has worked on television production, product design, and special event coordination. He has aspirations of establishing an architectural practice alongside fashion, film, and interior design after his expected graduation in 2023. Raised by Black activists, historians, and academics, he’s established his intention of bettering Black people and our communities through his design work and scope of influence.
Allyn Viault
Allyn Viault initiated the campaign for the annual Black Lives Matter Week of Action at SCI-Arc and now serves as the co-organizer for its inaugural event. A Los Angeles native, Allyn actively participates in her local community by also serving as the creative director for Feed the Streets LA and co-director of Design Students for Action.
Allyn is currently an Undergraduate Thesis student at SCI-Arc. During her academic career she has worked closely with faculty and alumni including Mira Henry, John Cooper, Marrikka Trotter, and Talbot McLanahan.