Join or Start a Working Group
Working Groups are subnetworks that center around specific topics, goals, ideas, and/or research, as related to Design Justice Principles. Our working groups (and local nodes) form the basis of getting involved with our network. Read more below to find a group you’d like to join. Want to propose a new Working Group? Get in touch!
Getting started: step by step
Get together and set your intention
Start by scanning your own networks: find a friend (or two) and gather your folx. We recommend having at least three people start a new working group. Before hosting a public meetup, your initial small organizing group should meet up informally. A working group should be founded by at least two people, and working group founders need to be signatories to the DJN principles and members of the DJN. (Once your working group is established, you are welcome to invite DJN members and non-members.)Get in touch with the steering committee
Get in touch with the DJN steering committee and inform us of your intention to start a new working group. The steering committee and DJN staff can help you think through some ideas about how to organize your new working group, and share useful resources and tips. Please email us at designjusticenetwork@gmail.com to get started!Host your first meeting
Get together with your core group to organize your first meeting. Generally, a first meeting could include a discussion of the Design Justice principles - what resonates with folks or how you came across them, and perhaps discussing areas of connection for future collaborations. (While we have yet to build a Working Group resources guide, the DJN Local nodes zine has some useful tips!)Register your Working Group and access DJN resources
Reconnect with us to let us know how your first public meeting went! Once you have confirmed your intention to start a new working group, you can register it as a part of DJN and access resources shared within the network (see the Next Steps section). We can strategize together about the next steps.*Note
There is a chance that at any one of the check-in stages the steering committee may ask you to reconsider your process of starting your working group. There is also the likelihood that the steering committee will refer you to some of the established working groups or local nodes for support and guidance. In some instances, there may be scenarios where a working group submission is asked not to proceed if there is an issue of alignment.
Currently - we’re open to proposals for NEW working groups! If you have an idea or concept you’d like to develop using the Design Justice principles, we’d love to help support you through support and promotion! Get in touch! Otherwise, apply below to become a working group of the Design Justice Network!
Principles at Work Working Group
This working group is for sharing stories and strategies to help designers actually apply design justice principles in professionalized and other workplaces.
Our work ahead involves tackling "ethics" distractions, packaging our workshop with a zine to help our peers facilitate a similar workshop. We’re doing this to build our community of practice in industry, a tricky matter of ensuring principles and applications don't get co-opted or worse, like we’ve seen in many cases with participatory co-design.
Instructional Design Working Group
Members of the Instructional/Learning Design Working Group are interested in using design justice approaches to move toward critical instructional design centered around co-designing teaching and learning that is equitable, accessible, and just. Currently, we envision that our work will include:
hosting design events for instructional/learning design practitioners to share advice and support for putting the principles into action
creating resources such as sample design activities and design outcomes to help designers understand how to apply the principles in practice
We are a newly forming working group and we anticipate that more areas of work will emerge as we grow! You can follow what we're currently up to, and connect with us, on our LinkTree page. The LinkTree can be found here.
Communications Working Group
Zines Working Group
The Zine Working Group will be responsible for gathering content, editing, designing, and printing a Design Justice Network zine. Currently, the Zine Working Group has not officially been started. If you would like to join this group or have any ideas for the zine, please get in touch!
Thank you to all of you who have expressed interest in this position / in joining this group and for sharing your ideas!
Want to propose a new Working Group? Get in touch!
Past Working Groups
Website Redesign Working Group
The Website Redesign Working Group is responsible for this iteration of designjustice.org.
Participants
Grant Chinn: wireframing, IA, user testing
Erika Harano: UX design
Boaz Sender: project management
Nechari Riley: Squarespace development
Victoria Barnett: Steering Committee representative
Una Lee: Steering Committee representative, visual design
This Working Group is not currently accepting new participants.
Allied Media Conference 2020 Network Gathering Coordinators
Participants
Rigoberto Lara Guzmán (they/he)
Christina N. Harrington, Ph.D. (she/her)
L05 / Carlos Garcia
Em Lane (she/her)
This Working Group is not currently accepting new participants, but keep an eye out for an invitation to join the AMC2020 Design Justice Network Gathering! You must be a DJN member to participate in the network gathering.
Previous Allied Media Conference coordinators below.
AMC2018 Design Justice Track coordinators
Design justice is a long term vision of liberatory design practice that centers and uplifts communities facing injustice. To move this work forward, the Design Justice Network organizes people from a variety of design backgrounds including graphic, architecture, planning, visual art, and people who are impacted by design, to create work and processes according to a set of shared principles. We will come together to build, reflect on, and share more just and collaborative ways of practicing design — ways that will support communities who are often harmed by or excluded from design processes. We will explore the traditional barriers between the different actors in the design process, and deconstruct the barriers by sharing and increasing access to skills, resources, and connections/support. Participants, both designers and people who are affected by design, will learn how to mobilize the design justice principles in their own work.
Ebony Dumas
Photo by Shoog Mcdaniel | http://shoogmcdaniel.com/
As an urban planner, Ebony Dumas works to create spaces, outlets, and infrastructure to support creative expression through economic development. Before graduate school, she spent ten years in Washington DC working in art non-profits and collectives. Always beginning with a framework of honoring existing culture and communities, Ebony's intersectional analysis is applied to quantitative and qualitative data. Additionally, her experience as a self-taught graphic designer with a contemporary aesthetic, enhances the overall quality of her work.
Ebony's planning experience includes regional, national, and international projects. From mapping to creating activities for public meetings, her work has been included in a variety of public and private sector client, stakeholder, and community presentations.
Currently based in New Orleans, Ebony spins music that ranges from Tropical Bass, International Pop, House and Hip-Hop. Natty Boom has also played at diverse venues such as The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington DC’s 9:30 Club, The Howard Theatre, and across the Mid-Atlantic Region, New Orleans, and Lima, Peru. Natty Boom is also 1/5 of the all-lady DJ Crew, Anthology of Booty, which creates unique and welcoming social spaces and dancefloors.
Victor Moore
Victor X Moore [Two X], is a visual artist and graphic designer and a retired collegiate basketball player. He was born in Paterson, NJ and raised in Charlotte, NC. He graduated with a BFA in Graphic Design from Appalachian State University in May of 2016. He is passionate about utilizing his design skill-set for social justice/ causes and giving a visual voice to his research, societal views, and beliefs. He loves designing for print, as he is able to offer tangible deliverables. He also has experience in web design and coding; He enjoys problem-solving for the web (digital space) as well.
Danielle Aubert
Danielle Aubert is a graphic designer interested in the intersection of graphic design, labor, materials, and software. She is currently researching the output of Fredy Perlman and the Detroit Printing Co-op (1969-1980). She participated in the Design Justice Network Gathering in 2016 and organized a session with Bianca Ibarlucea and Kikko Paradela at the 2017 AMC. She teaches at Wayne State University.
Victoria Barnett
VICTORIA BARNETT is a freelance graphic & web designer and trainer. She spends her time designing, sharing and supporting various social movements with their communication and web presence, centered in community based social and environmental justice. She is interested in web design, education and has a background in print design. Victoria is active in JFAAP. You can find her at www.victoriabarnett.com.
AMC2017 Design Justice Track coordinators
How can design better support communities facing injustice? How can we foster design processes, and not just products, that uplift our movements’ values? The Design Justice Track builds on principles that have been shaped by the AMC community and is a place where we can put these principles into action. Through storytelling, idea generation, and reflection, we will identify and uplift strategies to make design more just for those who are marginalized by it. Participants will be welcomed into the Design Justice Network, a community of design practitioners and organizers who are applying the design justice principles to their work. Participants will also gain methods and models they can bring to their own community-based design practices.
Victoria Barnett, Wesley Taylor, Carlos Garcia (L05), Sasha Costanza-Chock, and Taylor Stewart.
WESLEY TAYLOR is a graphic designer, fne artist, musician, and curator. He started out as both an emcee and graphic designer in the hip-hop group, Athletic Mic League. He got into making music partly as an excuse to make album covers.
He became a co-founding partner of Emergence as an excuse to make art and conceptualize creative projects. Wesley is also a co-founder and co-owner of Talking Dolls design studio. He is a professor at Lawrence Tech University in Detroit, and has taught at Eastern Michigan University, and Wayne State University.
Apr 24, 2018
TAYLOR STEWART is a graphic artist currently residing in Metro Detroit. As a creative, Stewart seeks to find and guide others into sustainable understandings of self. Using creative expression as a tool of research, she continues to analysis, critique and educate on the complexities of social systems through art.
In 2015, Stewart received her Bachelors of Fine Art from Eastern Michigan University with a concentration in graphic design. Stewart gained skills in executing fine art exhibitions while working under Eastern Michigan University’s Gallery Director, from December 2013 through December 2014. Today she continues striving to learn, cultivate and encourage systems thinking through visual creation, community building and design justice.
May 8, 2017
VICTORIA BARNETT is a freelance graphic & web designer and trainer. She spends her time designing, sharing and supporting various social movements with their communication and web presence, centered in community based social and environmental justice. She is interested in web design, education and has a background in print design. Victoria is active in JFAAP. You can find her at www.victoriabarnett.com.
May 8, 2017
SASHA COSTANZA-CHOCK is a scholar, activist, and media-maker, and is currently Associate Professor of Civic Media at MIT. They are a Faculty Associate at the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, Faculty Affiliate with the MIT Open Documentary Lab and the MIT Center for Civic Media, and creator of the MIT Codesign Studio (codesign.mit.edu). Their work focuses on social movements, media justice, and community-led design. Sasha’s book Out of the Shadows, Into the Streets: Transmedia Organizing and the Immigrant Rights Movementwas published by the MIT Press in 2014. They are a board member of Allied Media Projects (alliedmedia.org), and a worker/owner at Research Action Design (RAD.cat), a worker-owned cooperative that uses community-led research, transformative media organizing, technology development, and collaborative design to build the power of grassroots social movements.
May 8, 2017
CARLOS GARCIA, L05 is an artist, performer, designer, and engineer. He has performed and exhibited work as part of Detroit-based artist collective Complex Movements. L05 is also a vocalist and producer in hip hop/electronic duo Celsius Electronics and a co-founder of the Branch Out Collective. L05 leads creative research and design as a member of the University of Michigan's Emerging Technologies Group, where he manages the GroundWorks Media Lab. //L05.is
AMC2016 Design Justice Network Gathering coordinators
How can design better support communities facing injustice? How can we foster design processes, and not just products, that reflect our movements’ values? The Design Justice Network Gathering will explore these questions, build on a set of shared principles, and foster a growing network of designers, organizers, and advocates who are committed to critical engagement with design for a social purpose. Through storytelling, dialogue, and sketching, we will uplift a variety of design and organizing processes and identify strategies to facilitate stronger integration between design and organizing. Participants will leave with strategies and methods they can incorporate into their design processes, and a commitment to continue building together. This network gathering is invite only.
Wesley Taylor
WESLEY TAYLOR is a graphic designer, fne artist, musician, and curator. He started out as both an emcee and graphic designer in the hip-hop group, Athletic Mic League. He got into making music partly as an excuse to make album covers.
He became a co-founding partner of Emergence as an excuse to make art and conceptualize creative projects. Wesley is also a co-founder and co-owner of Talking Dolls design studio. He is a professor at Lawrence Tech University in Detroit, and has taught at Eastern Michigan University, and Wayne State University.
Una Lee
UNA LEE is a graphic designer and collaborative design facilitator. Using participatory creative methods, she works with and within communities towards a more just and beautiful world. Una is a fellow with the Center for Society, Policy and Society at UC Berkeley and a member of the Allied Media Conference advisory board. You can fnd her at www.andalsotoo.net.
Nontsikelelo Mutiti
NONTSIKELELO MUTITi is a Zimbabwean-born artist and educator working across disciplines to produce work that occupies the forms of fne art, design, and social practice. Mutiti received a diploma in multimedia from the Zimbabwe Institute of Digital Arts in 2007 and an MFA with a concentration in graphic design from the Yale School of Art in 2012. She is co-founder of the Zimbabwe Cultural Centre in Detroit which facilitated collaborative projects between artists living and working in Detroit. Michigan and the cities of Harare and Mutare in Zimbabwe. ZCCD mounted an exhibition of these works in sister exhibitions under the title Kumusha (Home). Mutiti is currently Assistant Professor in the New Media Department at State University of New York, Purchase College.
L05
CARLOS GARCIA, L05 is an artist, performer, designer, and engineer. He has performed and exhibited work as part of Detroit-based artist collective Complex Movements. L05 is also a vocalist and producer in hip hop/electronic duo Celsius Electronics and a co-founder of the Branch Out Collective. L05 leads creative research and design as a member of the University of Michigan's Emerging Technologies Group, where he manages the GroundWorks Media Lab. //L05.is
AMC2015 Future Design Lab Practice Space coordinators
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.
https://www.alliedmedia.org/amc/future-design-lab-practice-space
AMC2014 Future Design Lab Practice Space coordinators
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