Design as Activism Symposium
I served as project lead for the Design as Activism Symposium, a two-day event funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art in connection with the Chicago History Museum’s Designing for Change: Chicago Protest Art in the 1960s-70s. We convened Chicago design leaders and community organizers to explore community-led design approaches that have a positive impact and consider the evolving partnership between design and activism.
The first day of the symposium featured activations across the city, including a healing session, a workshop on craftivism, a tour of the exhibit at the Chicago History Museum, a tour of the Voices Embodied exhibit at the Design Museum of Chicago, the debut of Red Line Service’s large-scale 12-foot puppet of care, and a community reading and workshop focused on environmental justice in everyday life.
The second day featured 35 speakers through keynote presentations, panel discussions, workshops, conversations, and drop-in activities. Speakers focused on a range of issues, contexts, and methods across sub-fields of design, including design justice, participatory design, design pedagogy, non-Western design, multi-contextual design, trauma-responsive design, and anti-racist design. These approaches span different applications and forms: built environments, visual communication, placemaking and activating space, building community, connecting to/with/for community, commercial client work, civic efforts, and protests.
Several themes emerged from the event, including:
the importance of community and collaboration
the need for designers to decenter themselves, share power, and co-design with the community
the limits of power-sharing when working with clients and corporations
the need for joy and connection to engage people in this work and make it sustainable
Our goal was to unite designers who practice activism in diverse and innovative ways, all driven by the common purpose of creating a more just and equitable world. We envision this as a platform for mutual learning and a catalyst for ongoing dialogue and collaboration.
Print proceedings of the event will be available June 2025.
Event photographs by Dan Chichester and Robbie King. Sketchnote by Abby Auwaerter.