>>> Columbus landmarks was established in 1977 to protect our places of cultural heritage and architectural significance.

And it plays a role in the discussions we had today for a greater understanding of how places are still with us and their meaning to communities and who has access to those places.

Our partnership with Red Oak really came about with their social justice series that they have every year, and it was wonderful to partner with the school, given their focus on these issues and concerns and their dedication to making sure that students of all ages have an opportunity to engage with this.

And it's important in terms of our development of a society that we have these conversations early.

>>> Our mission here at Red Oak is really to create kind of a unique alternative educational experience for kids.

We do value things like social justice learning even in elementary school.

It's sort of boiled down to its basics of kindness, empathy, respect, understanding, celebration of our differences.

>>> So up at the board is a kind of a made up city block.

Communities would have these maps.

Banks would have these maps, so there would be a drawing of a district.

If there were communities that were African-American.

So our Black and Brown communities would be then designated with a red color.

Redlining was the process of which banks and an affiliated real estate group identified places based on race and ethnicity of where lending should happen and not happen.

And this was not based on any lending histories data that would in any way be objective.

It was simply based on race and ethnicity.

It was highly unjust and it led to a lack of intergenerational wealth-building within our Black and Brown communities.

So our first activity is that when we hear a word, we often oftentimes have images that come into our mind of what that word means to us, what it looks like.

So when you hear the word house, what comes to mind to you?

What we do is we have elementary school students and we walk them through different activities so that they are aware of how do we come to a concept of a single-family home.

How did we come up with this concept of how who has access to those spaces and how our homes make us feel and how does that intersect with our own identities and who might have access to opportunity intergenerationally versus others that do not?

And so we go through a series of steps where students are able to reflect through drawings, their feelings about how home makes them feel and what a typical house looks like.

>>> We drew what we thought of when somebody said the word a house.

We just drew a little house and we got to share it with other people.

>>> Who would like to share out of this group.

>>> So I just drew me in my cat and my cousin and my mom and my dad because other people that live in my home.

>>> So it's the people that make you make it home for you and make you feel comfortable.

And so that first part of the workshop is really these reflective moments about yourself, your understanding of housing and your identity.

We use that as a way to engage with bigger adult topics around public policy and how that's really shaped our understanding of what a suburban home is and who has access to those spaces.

And most importantly, it provides the basis for understanding how we have had policies in our recent past that have led to an inequitable present that needs to be rectified.

>>> I think that all people, no matter their race or class, should be able to get a house.

I feel like that should be a law or something.

>>> Basically everyone should raise awareness to people who, even though they should be able to get a house, like if they have are just refused a house for no reason.

That should just be something that people are aware of.

>>> What this is called is a ball passing game where at each round you can pass the ball only to people with certain traits.

And then we conclude the workshop with a moment where students have the opportunity to pass a ball up between each other.

This is what's called in social psychology, social exclusion, experiment, ball experiment where individuals can choose characteristics to move a ball back and forth.

>>> It's where somebody says a trait, and only the people with that trait can get the ball passed to them and pass the ball each other people with that trait.

>>> And an example would be you can only have the ball if you are wearing red on your shirt and then you could only pass the ball to people who are wearing red on their shirt.

>>> Right.

Clara, I want you to choose the next one.

>>> Okay.

So you could only pass somebody wearing head or neck accessories.

>>> Okay.

[ Indistinguishable ] >>> It just kind of felt like people were being excluded.

And I feel like everybody should have gotten the ball.

It taught us about like, an example of redlining, which is where certain communities were unfairly cut off from resources because of race and ethnicity.

>>> Students and individuals of participants that engage then actually get to experience what it's like to make the rules and also what it means to have those rules reflect where they cannot have access to resources.

It's a microcosm of what we see with the freezing of our economic system when we don't make an equitable space.

The ball is not able to travel freely if those restrictions are too narrow and unjust.

And the same way we see individuals adapting to the rules to try to get access to the ball.

So it becomes a moment where students can engage directly in what it means to be excluded and to have the rules be unjust and unfair against you.

[ Laughter ] >>> I think the ball game is always the big draw where they're like getting to pick something to almost include or exclude someone from receiving the ball.

They are really making the connections of how like drawing in from redlining and how that can exclude people from resources and then how it can include people into those resources.

And then it kind of digressed a little bit.

But also you could like draw that into like what happens to communities when they're excluded from resources.

>>> They really understood what it must have felt like to be excluded from something for a reason that they had no control over, because they had because they were blue or green or whatever, whatever it was.

But that really hit home with them easily and quickly when they play games in the field, group games, you know, whatever, whatever it is, soccer, tag choosing their teams equitably is something they have to figure out, like playground rules.

And I think the ball game resonated with them in that way too, that now they're like, okay, we can't exclude the kindergartners because they're small.

They have to be included too, in order for this to work as a community.

So there's a lot of like day-to-day applications of that lesson, I think, for them.

>>> And they can teach more people about this and ability to match people's enough to bring something.

Some of them will care enough to make a difference.

>>> I think maybe it'll just probably always be in the back of my mind, just like so like when I'm laying in bed and I'm just could be like that exists and I don't like it, but it exists.

>>> The really meaningful is their adoption and understanding of how things can become very unfair and that that needs to be fixed.

We also see how individuals begin to understand what it means to have an identity that is socially ascribed to them and what that means in terms of how they can interact with others or what opportunities might be denied to them.

We also just see moments where individuals are really becoming grounded in their understanding of where they live and what access do they have to resources or not.

You start to see young students really grasping key concepts to what we need to do from a policy standpoint to make our city better.