This full day intensive train-the-trainer session was planed to foster leadership and improve communications in an in-person meet-up for AIGA’s Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) Task Force and the D&I Officers that serve in their chapter boards. The program was designed based on the structure of the D&I chapter guidebook a tool created to guide Chapter leaders on how to engage their chapter and ensure they are following best practices.

Role:  Event planning and logistics, communications, workshop and program outlining, on-site facilitation and creating branded documents/tools for the event.

Fun Fact! While we were in Bentonville, we took a field trip to the Crystal Bridges museum of American Art which had the special exhibit Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power which was very much in line with the themes that were explored throughout the weekend.

Project executed as Strategic initiatives program assistant at AIGA the professional association for design

Training the Trainers 

To organize a productive day full of learning, we began the day by meeting with the Task force and the Chapter representatives separately. The task force used this time to discuss their strategic goals and priorities for the year while I led a short presentation on the resources AIGA national had to offer chapters and a focus group in which chapter representatives were encouraged to share their experience at a local level.

The rest of the day consisted in educational presentations/workshops that were developed in collaboration with the National office and followed the themes outlined in the chapter guidebook. These included the value of knowing the demographics of your chapter and advocating for community surveying to your local AIGA board, best practices to keep your chapter’s internal and external communications inclusive, designing targeted programming for under-represented groups, and encouraging chapters to partner with local schools and organizations by teaching them how to sell the value of design.

Emotional exercises like the privilege walk and the graffiti wall allowed participants to engage in deep, empathetic conversations about their motivations to join the organization, this initiative and what their hopes for the future were.

You can view the program for the event here.

The Future of D&I

“What does the future of diversity, inclusion and equity practices look like?“

A graffiti wall was deployed throughout the day to capture the participants response to the prompt, you can see insightful responses bellow.

The Chapter Tools

The purpose for this meet-up was not only to allow task force members to make meaningful connections with other members and Chapter representatives but also to understand where AIGA National’s support was needed most to ensure the success of this initiative and it’s adoption in it’s 72+ chapters.

Since the 20+ D&I chapter representatives were not able to join us for the event, we decided it was necessary to provide in depth resources about the content covered that day. Due to the nature of the presentations the day of, the material had to be revised and built on to be effective to chapter officers.

You can preview the inclusive communications toolkit bellow: