View profile

Happy Black History Month

Design With
Happy Black History Month
By Design With • Issue #20 • View online
It’s pretty wild that there are over 200 of us sitting here on this little corner of the internet. If you’re new (or old) to this newsletter, I’d love to hear more about you. My inbox is always open for a chat.

Text: This Week
Text: This Week
It’s Black History Month in the United States and Canada, so I’m hoping like to spend this month’s issue celebrating the contributions of Black people within participatory design.
To start, many of the resources featured in past issues of Design With are initiatives started, led or championed by Black people. From the HairStory initiative, to Creative Reaction Lab, over to NOW at Hunter’s Point and the Kibera Public Space project, plus so many more… It’s clear there is no shortage of incredible Black-led initiatives and Black designers, researchers, architects, urbanists, and so on.
What’s also clear is how important it is to that we make efforts to find, share, support, listen and learn from this incredible work – through all 12 months of the year. Which is to say, this is by no means an exhaustive list.
Okay, that’s plenty from me! Here are a few gems to start with.
Sloan Leo is the founder and CEO of FLOX Studio, “a community design and strategy studio that works with curious optimists to build a more brave, creative, and resilient social impact ecosystem.” In this post, they share FLOX Studio’s principles of community design. I find these principles particularly insightful for the way they state both what they are and what they are not.
www.linkedin.com  •  Share
Did you feel encouraged to bring your culture and identity to your design projects?
As part of the 100 Day Studio, a series of online discussions about architecture, Neba Sere and Umi Baden-Powell of Black Females in Architecture facilitate a discussion on the importance of decolonising the architecture curriculum, and, how doing so will shape the future of this discipline.
www.youtube.com  •  Share
As part of Deem Journal’s designing for dignity series, the first of hopefully many, this discussion is centered around building a sustainable and just food system. Deem editor-in-chief Alice Grandiot is in conversation with Yemi Amu from Oko Farms and Naima Penniman from Soul Fire Farms, and it’s inspiring listening to them describe and imagine new ways of growing, supporting and connecting with nature and food.
vimeo.com  •  Share
Dr. Pierce Gordon describes himself as an “innovation catalyst, researcher, facilitator, and evaluator, impassioned by the space between transformation and liberation.” When I’ve had the chance to hear him speak he’s explained his love for working with people to bring forth the change they want to see in the world, facilitating that process of seeing and creating new futures. In this upcoming event, he’s speaking about how equity and design should remake the world.
www.eventbrite.com  •  Share
I actually push that we go beyond participatory design, and consider how we can equip people to design in our absence…
Dr. Christina Harrington believes in community-based participatory design, which, if you’re interested in this newsletter, I imagine you’ll be excited about too. Christina is the director of Equity and Health Innovations Design Research Lab and her work focuses on supporting marginalized communities to find solutions to their own needs. In this piece, she unpacks her participatory process and what it means to actually do this work.
dscout.com  •  Share
Text: "When we think about the way that we can re-democratize that process to re-center the people who live in these communities... I think that participatory design is really the only way we can think about it." Dr. Christina Harrington
Text: "When we think about the way that we can re-democratize that process to re-center the people who live in these communities... I think that participatory design is really the only way we can think about it." Dr. Christina Harrington
Thanks
Please do feel free to share additional materials, inspiring people and their work, or maybe your own work as a Black person in this field. I would love nothing more than to hear about and share your work. Already looking forward to seeing you back here in March, ta!
Did you enjoy this issue?
Design With

A monthly newsletter curated by Tyler Gindraux, a researcher and service designer based in London.

Design With is for people who practice or are interested in participatory approaches to service design, research, innovation and urban planning.

In order to unsubscribe, click here.
If you were forwarded this newsletter and you like it, you can subscribe here.
Powered by Revue