C Harvey

"I’m reframing how I want to take on my fellowship role. Race and equity is a big piece of what we do so it’s important to be reasonable about how much you can impact. For me it’s just about making the community stakeholders a part of the decision making process, I’m not their decision maker, they are. As the Open Works Mobile Maker Manager, I visit Baltimore City Schools and ask them, 'how can Open Works serve you and your community?' I ask students, teachers and principals what it is they want to learn in STEM focused education. Where do you feel your learning and instructional gaps are? How can we serve you and enrich your lesson plans? You have to involve the the people you are serving in matters that affect them. Institutions won’t change overnight, but in intimate community settings give me a real chance to be bring equity into the space in real time through empowerment.

"Baltimore Corps is really good about making race and equity a major piece of the solution. The support I’m receiving through my Salzburg Global fellowship and Baltimore Social Innovation fellowship cohort has been amazing. It’s inspired innovative thinking on how to approach this thing we call the system and be more human.

"The arts and makerspaces are like any other predominantly white space, they’re white. Whether it's the art community, or maker space, or a creative hub; black people must always strive for ownership. We have to be careful about sub-systems like ‘inclusion’ and ‘access,’ we only need to be included and given access to resources and capital we don’t own. ‘Access’ and ‘inclusion’ are not remedies to structural racism, but symptoms. Access can always be revoked. A seat at 'the' table is a stop in the journey. A seat at our own tables is the destination."