Advocacy Symposium: Impacting Spacemaking

Mar 27, 2023 By Jessica Jones and Laura Botham

IIDA Advocacy leaders gather to strategize how to break boundaries and build a better world

By Jessica Jones and Laura Botham Mar 27, 2023

The 2023 CLC Advocacy Symposium brought together chapter leaders, including presidents, presidents-elect, and VPs of Advocacy, from all over the country to discuss how to further the role of advocacy and legislation at the chapter level. What does advocacy look like? How does it improve the profession? And how can we break boundaries to work together to build a better world? The two-day event took place February 18 and 19, 2023, at IIDA headquarters in Chicago.

An underlying theme was the importance of advocacy, whether a chapter is interested in educating members, expanding its network, and establishing or expanding legislation. With a number of states achieving landmark legislation last year there's no better time than now to start working towards professional recognition in your state.

Saturday’s highlights included a panel discussion on the “Lifecycle of Advocacy,” and how advocacy is an ongoing effort for both practitioners and the profession as a whole. Panelists were Valerie Jardon, IIDA, Fitwel ambassador, IA Interior Architects; Erin Jennings, educational market leader, licensed architect, registered interior designer, Luminaut; and Stacey Crumbaker, Assoc. IIDA, AIA, associate principal, Mahlum Architects Inc.

In this industry, you have to take the time to recognize that conversations like this are important and you have to be your own biggest advocate for what you are providing to the public, your clients and to your team.

Erin Jennings, Luminaut

Other Saturday highlights included afternoon breakout sessions focusing on relationship building and strategic communications. Attendees explored the way they speak about advocacy by discussing the barriers that they run into when advocating for the professional acknowledgement of the interior design field and new ways to speak about the profession. In the first session, advocates discussed framing the conversation for different audiences, and having different elevator pitches on hand to speak about why professional recognition is important both for commercial interior designers, and those who use the spaces we design.

Interior designers are responsible for, and educated in, the health and safety codes needed in the built environment to protect inhabitants—something the general public is often not aware of. By educating legislators and the general public with the knowledge that we are responsible for ADA compliance, fire code standards, exit pathways, occupancy loads, and more.

Next up was a frank discussion on the opposition—both the internal and external—and identifying why they are opposed. On working with opposition: what works and doesn't work well, and how to successfully engage, how to transform adversaries into advocates, and finally, what would we aspire to on a national and state level. Identifying barriers like lack of awareness, and pushback on scope within our field while recognizing that opposition is often rooted in a lack of understanding, or a fear of the diminished status of their professions or perceived status, allows us to ask “what if we stopped labeling the opposition as the opposition and build trust with other practitioners and the broader community?"

As we continue to build these conversations, I think it is a great way to actually start to build relationships with those that we often see across the table.

Stacey Crumbaker, Assoc. IIDA, IIDA Northern Pacific Chapter

Saturday concluded with a session on defining our future, and asked “if you were 10 times bolder, what big idea would you recommend to collectively move our profession forward into the future towards our shared purpose?” Participants discussed ideas ranging from collaborating with other states to create a national plan to a national “Got Milk?” style PSA commercial for our industry to provide awareness about why our roles in the built environment are important.

Sunday’s highlights included a chapter planning session with IIDA Executive Vice President Cheryl S. Durst, Hon. FIIDA) designed to assist members in managing an advocacy budget, increase their understanding of title acts vs. practice acts, tips for hiring a lobbyist, and more. In “Everyone Needs a Plan,” IIDA Director of Advocacy Marci Merola walked attendees through core elements of a strategic plan for advocacy.

By coming together, and hearing from each other, IIDA Advocates from across the country were able to share struggles and successes unique to their state, and collaborate on everything from how different states re-energize city centers that have become less active, to ways chapters with more than one state, or states with more than one chapter work together to achieve wins, and how practitioners can collectively share our knowledge to elevate the profession of commercial interior designers.