Greetings everyone,

We hope that you are finding ways to be well in the midst of such a difficult time. We wanted to send love at a moment that is challenging, and also share a bit about what has been going on with the Design Justice Network over the last couple of months.

Quick summary: The Design Justice Network Steering Committee had a retreat in early April. We welcomed new Steering Committee member Denise Shanté Brown, built community and shared intentions, and explored some of the challenges and opportunities of the rapid recent growth of the network (we now have over 600 signatories and over 125 members!) We shared stories of our own journeys through design and community organizing, and we hope to organize a structured way for all of the members to share those kinds of stories soon. We realized we need a mission and vision, and we are bringing in a facilitator to help us with that process; more about that will be shared at the upcoming Design Justice Network Gathering at Allied Media Conference in July. There are now regular online events taking place throughout the network, and you can learn about them on the events page at designjustice.org/events. Denise gathered a beautiful resource, with an illustration by Anushka Jajodia, to help make all of these remote meetings feel more human, and we leave you with a link to that: Check-ins for Connection & Care: bit.ly/checkins-connection-care.

Read on for the full update!

The Design Justice Network Steering Committee had its third retreat in two years on April 3rd and 4th, 2020, attended by Denise Shanté Brown, Victoria Barnett, Sasha Costanza-Chock, Una Lee, and Wesley Taylor. It was originally slated to take place in Richmond, Virginia in Wes' home over 4 days, but as the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic became more apparent, we decided to cancel the trip and convene remotely. This retreat followed our November retreat in Vermont, hosted by Steering Committee member Una Lee.

We were excited to welcome the newest Steering Committee member, Denise Shanté Brown. Denise and Victoria were generous enough to take the time to design the event, reimagine what would have been an in-person experience, and adapt our plans for a virtual convening. The steering committee retreats have been essential in giving shape to the network, and have been very fruitful in generating ideas and strategies for the future. We wanted this experience to hold that same intention while giving ourselves the opportunity to make space for more care, team-building, deep reflection, and visioning activities. To support that intention, we balanced dialogue via our favorite video platform, Jitsi, did some journaling and drawing on our own, and utilized the virtual collaborative whiteboarding platform, Miro.

Our Miro collaborative whiteboard after the retreat.

As in previous retreats, we were able to check-in with each other throughout the process, but this time we shared the challenges of the pandemic by responding to questions like, How are you nourishing yourself today? How are you sleeping? What’s making you bloom or wilt? We were able to reflect on our individual roles as Steering Committee members, what gives us pleasure in the work that we do, and our aspirations for deepening the network. We also explored the challenges of the rapid growth we’ve experienced in the last 6 months - we now have over 600 Signatories to the Design Justice Network Principles, and over 125 Members of the network!

Many exciting opportunities are presenting themselves because of all the hard work and enthusiasm of you, the DJN members. One of the retreat’s main goals was to see how we, as a Steering Committee, can address the network’s biggest challenges. These include building capacity to welcome new members and provide them with resources to get them started in the network, while at the same time supporting the many amazing projects that have already emerged from established members, nodes, and working groups.

One of the retreat’s highlights included a storytelling session, where we shared personal stories of our connections with activism, movement building and social movements and how they led us to be the designers we are today. Even though the majority of us have been working together for several years, this was the first opportunity for us to really know each other's paths in life and how they influence how and why we practice design justice today. After sharing our unique perspectives and influences from over the years, we discussed: How can we better reflect this in the work we are doing together collectively? How will this meaning of activism/organizing affect the lives of DJN, members, the world? We are exploring ways to extend this type of storytelling engagement with the broader network in the near future.

Our responses to the prompt "What does activism, organizing, and movement building mean to you?" — Our responses to the prompt "What does activism, organizing, and movement building mean to you?”

Other highlights include conversations about how to bring more joy and pleasure into the work we do for and with the network, designing experiences for DJN story sharing, and conversations about what it would mean to create and practice rituals that can bring deeper meaning into our community experiences as design practitioners. In really considering how these ideas could take shape, we spent time ideating in response to the questions: When we think about the future of DJN, what do we see, hear, touch, taste, smell? Who’s there? What tools, assets and resources do we need to make this possible?

Our responses to the prompt "When we think the future of DJN, what do we see, hear, touch, taste, smell?" — Our responses to the prompt "When we think the future of DJN, what do we see, hear, touch, taste, smell?”

The network is growing in exciting and unexpected ways, which gives us a lot of hope as we look forward to our next steps. The retreat clarified the deep need for a mission and vision statement, and enabled our decision to bring in a facilitator who will help with that process. We are looking forward to sharing and further developing the mission and vision of the network during the upcoming Design Justice Network Gathering at the 2020 Allied Media Conference (AMC).

In the month since our retreat, we have made a lot of progress. We have many upcoming events, including local nodes meetings, book talks and workshops, and the DJN Network Gathering. You can always find out about upcoming events at designjustice.org/events. Also, be on the lookout for an upcoming announcement with more information about the Network Gathering!

We are looking forward to building community with many of you at the AMC, via our ongoing communication channels (on slack, instagram, facebook, and twitter), at our regular #NodesConnect meetings, and at other events that are bubbling up from all around the network. We're genuinely committed to helping DJN emerge and grow into a strong ongoing community of practice, and we look forward to figuring that out together.

Image by Anushka Jajodia for "Check-ins for Connection and Care,” gathered by Denise Shanté Brown

Finally, Denise gathered a beautiful resource, with an illustration by Anushka Jajodia, to help make all of these remote meetings feel more human, and we leave you with a link to that: Check-ins for Connection & Care: A Growing, Collaborative List of Questions and Prompts to Help Hold Space.

Take care, and see you soon in virtual spaces,

Una, Wes, Victoria, Denise, and Sasha