You’re invited: Hold the Dates (April 30 & May 3rd) for the Design Justice Network Spring Strategy Share-Out
Hello to all Signatories of the Design Justice Network Principles,
After a long pause, we are reaching out to share updates about shifts and transformations at DJN, as well as to invite you all to move together with us towards a deepening of transnational, localized, movement-rooted design justice practices.
This email is lengthy, because we want to provide some context about DJN’s past, present, and next stage of transformation. If you don’t have time to read all that, please:
Save the Dates for the 2025 DJN Spring Strategy Share-Out! This is an event open to all Signatories of the Design Justice Network Principles, where we will share more information about how DJN is evolving in 2025, along with a Q&A. There are two options to join this event in real-time (it will also be recorded):
Wednesday, April 30th (8:30am Pacific, 11:30am EST, 5.30pm CET) and
Saturday, May 3rd (11am Pacific, 2pm EST, 8pm CET)
Notes:
On April 30th, we will have ASL and simultaneous interpretation to Spanish
This event is structured as a presentation of updates followed by a Q&A
This event is free and open to all Signatories of the DJN Principles.
It will be recorded, and made available to all Signatories.
To register, and to let us know about your access needs, please click here.
Context: Where we came from, where we are now, where we are going.
In 2015, Una Lee, creative director of the design practice And Also Too, instigated the creation of the Design Justice Network Principles. In 2016, DJN was established at the Allied Media Conference (AMC).
From 2016-2020, DJN gathered in person every year at the AMC, and grew from a workshop, to a Track, and then to a Network Gathering. AMC provided regular moments of connection, community building, and depth of relationship that comes with being together in person.
In 2020, as COVID-19 swept the world and the AMC sunset, DJN began to grow at the same time as we became entirely remote. Local nodes formed in many places, our experiment in paid membership launched and expanded, and network members, contractors, local node and working group facilitators, and Steering Committee members worked together to organize many virtual workshops, gatherings, and events. In 2021, after a multi-year participatory process, we launched the DJN Mission, Vision, and Intentions.
In 2023 and 2024, we received our first-ever grants from philanthropies, and that allowed us to scale up contracts to provide a higher level of network support services, launch the Care Pods, activate our intention to share resources by re-distributing $5,000 microgrants to 10 organizations, and so much more. The grants allowed DJN to evolve in powerful ways, but also brought new challenges. Following the Shape your nodes experience at the end of 2023, DJN experienced a lot of internal organizational shifts. We took time to move through a series of facilitated processes and in person gatherings to land a vision for how DJN can continue to evolve from here. Our process included a deep review of all the feedback we’ve received over the past few years from local nodes, workshop participants, exchanges, surveys, and conversations with active members and contractors, with support from external facilitators. Thank you for all of your contributions, time, and efforts to support us to get to this moment together.
In early 2025, the DJN Steering Committee and invited practitioners convened at a strategy gathering in Puerto Rico. There, we met with local organizations who are already practicing Diseño Justo (Design Justice) in the context of resistance to U.S. colonialism, militarism, climate crisis, and displacement: La Maraña, Capicú Adentro, Barrioización, and Camp Tabonuco. These organizations, our time together, and our review of the current political moment, together with all of the synthesized learnings of the last few years, deeply inspired our strategy for how DJN is moving in 2025.
2025 Strategy
We realized that we are proud of what we have all accomplished together as DJN over the past few years, but many of us as Design Justice practitioners are feeling the need to reconnect to our bodies, to the places we inhabit, and with one another. We also feel the need to reconnect to the organized social movements that are so essential to transforming our world in a time of rising, open fascism. Inspired by legendary Detroit organizer Grace Lee Boggs’ invitation to reflect on the question “What Time Is It On the Clock of the World?,” we developed a shared analysis that is reflected in the image and summary below:
A picture of concept map from February 2025, hand-drawn by Teresa Maisano with markers on a large piece of butcher paper, responding to Grace Lee Boggs’ question "What Time is it on the Clock of the World?" It includes many concepts and small sketches representing interlocking political challenges and possible solutions, summarized in the text below.
What we are fighting against: Militarization and weaponization of territories and communities, criminalization, cooptation, digital surveillance, fascism, genocide, rationalization of violence, settler colonialism in its many forms, gentrification, financial insecurities, inequalities, mass displacement, housing crisis, fragmentation, loss of memory and loss of tools, paramilitarization, ecosystem grabbing, climate chaos and crisis, consumerism, erasure, assimilation, Zionist culture and narrative, the role of academia in the institutional extraction of community resources, codification of neoliberalism, ‘longtermism,’ big tech, police states, cop cities, normalization of authoritarianism, attacks to queer and trans lives and self-determination, gender-based violence.
Movements we are based in and what we are building towards: Radical care, community connectedness, autonomy, sovereignty, land trusts, redistribution, solidarity economy, mutual aid networks, participatory budgeting, community-based resistance and accountability, sanctuary cities, decentralization, popular education, community facilitation, intersectional and ancestral movement struggles, health, common defense against attacks on marginalized folks, know your rights, cooking revolutions, accessibility of technology, creativity, climate justice, self-determination, collective subjectivities, worldwide protests, accessible technologies, queer and trans struggles, Black liberation, Palestinian liberation, transfeminist movements, food, water, and housing security, transnational and trans-local solidarity against settler colonialism everywhere from Anishinaabe land (Detroit) to Palestine to Borinquén (Puerto Rico).
With all this in mind, in 2025, we are moving forward with the following strategy. DJN this year will:
Localize by deepening our commitment to share resources with place-based practitioners. Over the past few years, many DJN activities have been remote (via Zoom). In 2025, we are encouraging design justice practitioners to focus energy on building local connections when possible. Specifically, in 2025 we are providing support and microgrants of $5,000-10,000 (up to $50k total) to currently active Local Nodes. In March and April, we have been meeting with the facilitators of all active Local Nodes, and many are excited to work together to organize a series of skill-share sessions rooted in place, inspired by and based in the DiscoTech event format developed by Diana Nucera, Nina Bianchi, and the Detroit Digital Justice Coalition. We will organize regular virtual meetings where Local Node Facilitators who want to participate will plan and organize these events. (Those active Local Nodes who want to use the microgrants in some other way are of course also free to do so).
Ground in organized social movements. Additionally, a lot of DJN Node activities over the past few years have become focused on reading groups and workshops for professional design practitioners. These are valuable, but moving forward we are encouraging design justice practitioners to really explore what it means to ground your work in community-based organizations and social movement groups (whether collectives, cooperatives, movement organizations, alliances, networks, or otherwise). We’re living through a time when the forces of fascism are openly mobilizing and coordinating around the world, and if we want to design and build other possible worlds, we need to truly be rooted in organized social movements. We encourage local DJN nodes to shift activities from centering professional design practitioners towards connecting with active, local social movements, and figuring out how to become fully part of those movements.
Decouple from the ‘paid professional membership’ paradigm. We will be sunsetting paid membership ‘benefits.’ Although everyone is welcome, DJN was never meant to be an association focused primarily on professional designers, nor a mostly academic space. We will continue to provide key infrastructure for Design Justice practitioners to be in communication and community with one another (for example, mailing lists and a chat space). However, we will open these spaces to anyone who signs on to the DJN Principles and adheres to community agreements, rather than gatekeeping via a paid membership model that privileges those with disposable income. We will open a new ‘Sustainer’ program so that those who would like to continue to support DJN activities with monthly contributions can continue to do so, but monthly contributions will not come with any special access or privileges.
Clarify the DJN Structure, evolve the Steering Committee, and develop more leadership roles. This includes:
Expand and evolve the body currently known as the Steering Committee, as well as other leadership roles across the network;
Organize seasonal Facilitator meetups;
Produce a quarterly newsletter that will be sent out to all Signatories;
We will also be setting up a more sustainable pathway for Local Nodes to form, re-activate, receive and provide mutual support, and/or pause.
Thank you for all of your contributions so far to DJN. We’re deeply inspired by everyone who has signed on to the DJN Principles over the years, and we are ready to work together to evolve design justice practices as we build the words we need.
The DJN Steering Committee
Nour Arafat, Wes Taylor, Elena Silvestrini, Sasha Costanza-Chock, and Boaz Sender