2026_McGill_Revisioning Quality through Kinship

Event Report: Re-visioning Quality through Kinship_McGill_#15

Of all of society's institutions, education has brought us to the current state of poor relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples; but if it is education that created this mess, it will be education that will get us out of it." — The Honourable Murray Sinclair These words from the late Honourable Murray Sinclair offer a way of thinking through the themes of the 2026 Quality in Canada's Built Environment Convention. Members of our McGill research team attended the convention as part of our Night-time Design with/for Marginalized Communities project, joining researchers, architects, planners, students, Elders, Knowledge Keepers, and community leaders from across Canada in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Hosted by the University of Manitoba under the theme Re-Visioning Quality Through Kinship, the gathering centered Indigenous approaches to place and relationality in conversations about the future of the built environment. At the heart of the convention was an invitation to reconsider how quality itself is understood. Bringing together attendees from architecture, planning, and design, the convention explored how different ways of knowing might reshape the values, relationships, and responsibilities that guide the making of our communities. This, in turn, opened up questions about kinship and the possibilities that emerge when relationships become a guiding principle for community life. Written by Shayne Turner.

Sonia Blank