Our Beginnings

AMC 2014 Future Design Lab Practice Space

Before the Design Justice Network existed, collaborations at the Allied Media Conference, created space for and helped build design justice! In 2014, the Future Design Lab was a practice space at the Allied Media conference - the callout description is here:

Join the Future Design Lab as we explore alternative visions of the future and begin making them into reality. We will use tools including speculative design, technology, mapping, and data that shows with clarity and elegance how we get from where we are to where we want to be. We will prove that alternative futures are desirable, crucial, and within reach. "What should the future look like?" Join us to answer! Brainstorm. Sketch. Prototype ideas using analog and digital tools to begin building the future. Drop by our Open Studio at anytime during the conference! This practice space was coordinated by:
Nina Bianchi, Una Lee, Andy Gunn, Victoria Barnett, Ben Leon

2015: Generating Shared Principles

On June 21, 2015, 30 people gathered in a session called “Generating Shared Principles for Design Justice” at the Allied Media Conference in Detroit. The participants identified as designers, artists, technologists, and community organizers.

The hope was to start shaping a shared definition of “design justice” — as distinguished from “design for social impact” or “design for good”, which are well-intentioned but because they are not driven by principles of justice can be harmful, exclusionary, and can perpetuate the systems and structures that give rise to the need for design interventions in the first place. How could we redesign design so that those who are normally marginalized by it, those who are characterized as passive beneficiaries of design thinking, become co-creators of solutions, of futures?

This session was just the beginning of what has been a long and rich conversation on how design can better support communities facing injustice.

Read more: Generating Shared Principles

AMC 2015 Future Design Lab Practice Space

In 2015, the Future Design Lab was a practice space at the Allied Media Conference (and the above workshop on Generating Shared Principles took place in this practice space) - the callout description is here:

The Future Design Lab will open up the design process and explore how future-making can be more accessible to people and communities who are conventionally excluded from it. Everyone who enters the lab should consider themselves a designer, and together we’ll collaborate on creative solutions and alternative visions for our communities. We’ll actively draw connections between decolonization, design, and healing. We will also explore how our design work can be a process of time travel that connects our past with our future. Drawing from both ancient wisdom and new technology, we will brainstorm, contemplate, hack, and build practical and fantastical prototypes and systems for better futures. We will host skillshares, creation stations, hands-on experiential learning and unlearning exchanges, sessions, and experiments. Through these collaborative and intentional processes, we will co-create futures that are self-determined, crucial, beautiful, and within reach. This practice space was coordinated by: Victoria Barnett, Ben Leon, Una Lee, Tings Chak, Wesley Taylor, Carlos Garcia, and Melissa Moore. More info can be seen at the following link: https://www.alliedmedia.org/amc/future-design-lab-practice-space

2016: The Network is established

The principles were iterated and shared and reimagined the following year during the 2016 Design Justice Network Gathering, held at the Allied Media Conference in Detroit. It brought together 30 design practitioners and community organizers who work in social justice and who wanted to connect around and collectively define the concept of Design Justice. And just as no one individual should define Design Justice, it was also critical for the network principles to be created and edited by the community that would promote and apply them. The network gathering collaboratively edited the principles to help shape them as they are today.

Read more: Network Gathering

2018: Principles are finalized

Following the network gathering, other amazing individuals took rounds of editing, and transforming the principles into what they are today, and they were shared officially with the network in 2018 at the Design Justice Track at the Allied Media Conference. They live here today under a creative commons license, and for those to sign-on to.

Read more: Design Justice Network Principles

2019: A formalized structure

With the growth of the network, the core organizing team created a formalized structure for the Network. The Design Justice Network is now organized according to how people and organizations engage with the network — as signatories, members, working group participants, and local nodes.

Read more: Structure

2019: Design Justice Membership Established

At the end of 2019, the Design Justice Network opened a call for folx to join as DJN members. The network has grown immensely since this open call - and has over 300 paid members (as of the beginning of 2021).

Read more: Structure

2020: Local Nodes and Working Groups

After establishing a network structure, we opened the callout for local nodes and working groups to form. They have been forming relationships and groups since early 2019 and had a more formal structure in 2020.

Read more: Local Nodes, Working Groups

2021: Design Justice Mission, Vision, and Intentions Launch

After almost two years of dedicated time, the Design Justice Network Steering Committee and Staff, with support and input from many DJN members, launched the official statement of Mission, Vision, and Intentions (M/V/I) for the network! DJN Member contributions were critical to the Mission, Vision, and Intentions, and we hope that our members are able to see the impact of their participation reflected in the statements, and in the future of DJN.

Read more: About Us