Sheffield School of Architecture Race Equality Statement

Firstly, thank you to our current students and recent graduates for the brilliant work they have done in putting together a critical and constructive provocation for the school.  This contributes to the ongoing discourse on the changes that need to be made within architecture as a profession and an education, which we wholeheartedly support. 

We are listening and we acknowledge that we have much work to do.

Recent violent events in the US and at home have brought the Black Lives Matter movement sharply into focus and concentrated our minds on the task we have ahead of us. It is not enough for us to just champion equality, diversity and inclusion. We must strive to be actively anti-racist in our thinking and in our actions as a school of architecture in order to create a properly equitable community. We want to ensure that you gain any support from us you may need in light of these recent events. We also require all of our students to advocate for equality and support each other. 

It is critically important that we all engage with these important issues and seek to make changes and become wholly anti-racist. As a School we are listening to the concerns raised and we acknowledge the inequalities that exist within society and within architecture as a profession and educational setting. We also proactively support the University's Race Equality Strategy and Action plan. Staff are required and committed to supporting our students and ensuring that we engender an inclusive and equal learning community. 

We are proud of our increasingly diverse student body, but we need to be continuously working to embed anti-racist values at both a structural and individual level. Our aims include: educating ourselves in anti-rascism; making sure Black and BAME students feel safe and valued and creating an inclusive culture in which they thrive and are celebrated as successfully as white students; communicating ways to access specific support and make complaints; closing the student attainment gap; addressing the under-representation and progression of BAME students and staff; decolonising the curricula; creating an architectural anti-racist resource list; making sure our aims are accountable and fully actioned in a reasonable timeframe and maintained in the long term; and collaborating with students, staff and alumni about our planned actions and next steps.

Using the action plan published by our students/graduates as a starting point and in line with our aims above, we will form a new departmental advisory group on race equality in September 2020, inviting participation from students, staff and alumni.