DJN Spotlight February: Valérie Lechêne & Lindsay Miller - Critical Utopian Action Research Article & Drawings

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This month, we are featuring the work of Valérie Lechêne & Lindsay Miller, who are DJN members who both attended Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel’s DJN Member Stories Share session.

Valérie Lechêne wrote the article below, and Lindsay Miller drew the illustrations and supported with documentation.

Valérie Lechêne - Val practices design, research, and organizing at the nexus of climate action, housing justice, and information architecture. Among other activities, she is an active member of The-Architecture-Lobby where she co-organizes the Architects Beyond Capitalism school and the campaign for an internationalist just transition (Green New Deal). She loves the poetry of Stella Nyanzi.

Lindsay Miller - Lindsay Miller is an applied technology and video game design researcher and artist/illustrator working out of San Diego, CA in the USA. She loves finding spaces where her design research and illustration skills can intersect, especially to support the creation of more accessible and inclusive futures. You can learn more about her applied design research work here or her illustration here.

If you are a DJN member doing interesting work, and would like to be featured in a future newsletter or blog post, please email us at designjusticenetwork@gmail.com.

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DJN Spotlight January: The Consentful Tech Project

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This month, we are featuring the Consentful Tech Project, https://www.consentfultech.io. Directly quoting from their website, “A lot of us have heard about consent with regard to our physical bodies, like in the context of medical decisions or sexual activities. But what does consent mean when it comes to our data and our digital lives?

Consentful technologies are digital applications and spaces that are built with consent at their core, and that support the self-determination of people who use and are affected by these technologies.

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Member Spotlight: Sarah Fathallah (December 2020)

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This month, we are featuring the work of Sarah Fathallah, a designer, researcher, and educator who specializes in applying design to the social sector, with impact-driven clients like the International Rescue Committee and Open Society Foundations, to name a few. Sarah also co-founded Design Gigs for Good, a free community-driven resource to help more people use the tools of design to create positive social change.

You can connect with Sarah Fathallah directly at: https://sarahfathallah.com

If you are a DJN member doing interesting work, and would like to be featured in a future newsletter or blog post, please email us at designjusticenetwork@gmail.com.

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Member Spotlight: Pierce Gordon, Ph.D. (December 2020)

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This month, we are featuring the work of Dr. Pierce Gordon, an interdisciplinary researcher, facilitator, evaluator, and change catalyst impassioned by the intersection between transformation and liberation. His research and consultation work has tracked and supported design+international development's spread, complexity, and emergence: by developing reviews of human-centered design for international development, by conducting ethnographic analyses and facilitation projects in the Botswana innovation ecosystem, and by developing mixed-methods analyses of educational design spaces like OpenIDEO and UC Berkeley's DevENG Minor that unpack the efficacy of their platforms….

You can connect with Pierce Gordon directly at: piercegordon1.medium.com/about

Below is one article (of many), featuring Peirce’s work: A Hundred Racist Designs, and as well, a Podcast (Oct. 22, 2020): Racist designs, Design Justice and Mycelium.

If you are a DJN member doing interesting work, and would like to be featured in a future newsletter or blog post, please email us at designjusticenetwork@gmail.com.

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Self care Break: December 22, 2020 to January 5, 2021

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For two weeks the Design Justice Network (Steering Committee & staff) will be taking time off for self care, between December 22, 2020 and January 5, 2021.

We appreciate this time, in a major year of growth, maturity, and resilience, and wish you all care and ease into 2021.

Thank you for all that you are doing to learn and to advance design justice!

During this time - we will not be replying to incoming emails, and will not be posting on our social media channels. Please continue to contact us by emailing designjusticenetwork@gmail.com - and we will get back to you in the new year! If you are a Design Justice Member, you can continue to communicate with each other over the DJN Slack!

Wishing you all care and ease during this season, and through the transition into 2021, and we look forward to continuing our work in the new year!

For two weeks the DJN Steering Committee and staff will be taking time off for self care between December 22 and January 5. This time is very necessary and we appreciate it in a major year of growth, maturity, and re (1).png

Member Spotlight: Lesley-Ann Noel (November 2020)

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This month, we are featuring the work of Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, a Design Justice Member. Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel is Associate Director for Design Thinking for Social Impact and Professor of Practice at the Phyllis M. Taylor Center for Social Innovation and Design Thinking at Tulane University. She is also the co-chair of the Pluriversal Design Special Interest Group with the Design Research Society. Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel designed a deck of cards (A Designer's Critical Alphabet) [available for purchase!] to introduce designers and design students to critical theory and to help them reflect on their design process. Each card introduces theory under that letter.

(This originally appeared on Hyperallergic, on November 17, 2020)

You can connect with Lesley-Ann directly at: https://lesleyannnoel.wixsite.com/website or on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesleyannnoel/) or Twitter (@mamaazure)

If you are a DJN member doing interesting work, and would like to be featured in a future newsletter or blog post, please email us at designjusticenetwork@gmail.com.

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Member Spotlight: Leila Sidi (October 2020)

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This month, we are featuring the work of Leila Sidi, of TuneTone Instruments. For the past 10 years, Leila Sidi has been studying woodworking and luthiery. Building mid-century inspired, high fidelity electric guitars, she focuses on environmental and design justice as it applies to her work. You can read more about her work below - Leila will take us through her journey into craft and discuss design priorities throughout her process!

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Professionalized workplaces and design justice

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What does design justice look like in a mid-size auto insurance company?

On September 13th, our emerging Principles at Work working group hosted a scenario-based workshop with 64 participants on how to apply design justice principles in professionalized workplaces. In hour-long breakout groups, we reflected on scenarios about struggling with power and equity to generate ideas, strategies, and tools for the job based on past experience.

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#DesignJustice #BlackLivesMatter

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Hello Design Justice Network family,

We just wanted to let you all know that we are organizing, mobilizing, donating, listening, gathering information, and trying to hold space for reflection. We're focused on long term transformation and lifting up movements that can build the worlds we need, worlds without antiblackness.

We're building towards our Network Gathering at the Allied Media Conference in July to help channel the energy and spirit of today's movements into the future.

We're sharing links to resources, calls to action, and reflections that we've been reading, internally on slack and publicly via our social media channels. 

We'd also love to hear and amplify DJN members' and signatories’ reflections, writings, actions, and creative work.  Please share within the network via slack in channel #inspiration, and if you are comfortable doing so publicly, share using the #designjustice hashtag on instagram, twitter, and other social media. Tag us, and we will amplify.

Stay safe. We love you. 

#BlackLivesMatter

#DesignJustice

Pictured above: A visual representation of the above intentions, by the Design Justice Network - 4 square images, outlined with various imagery and icons surrounding the text. Ends with Stay safe. We love you. #BlackLivesMatter #DesignJustice (visual assistance to the text).

Update from the Design Justice Network Steering Committee April 2020 retreat

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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. Check out this post to learn more!

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Hello & Updates from the Design Justice Network

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Like all of you, we are doing our best to stay calm, support our families, friends, and communities, #StayHome as much as possible, and wash our hands. It's a difficult time, and many in our network are exploring how to take care of ourselves and one another from a distance.

We have a few updates that we've been meaning to share for a while, so here they are (please read!).

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Welcome to our beautiful new site, designjustice.org! 

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The redesign was a coordinated effort between the DJN Steering Committee and the Website Working Group, along with feedback from Design Justice Network Principles Signatories and Members (that means you!) The site has a fresh new look, and contains additional information and functionality. The new designjusticenetwork.org will help communicate our vision and activities as the network continues to grow. 

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Design Justice Mediterranea Meeting - October 2019!

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We were so excited about the existence of the Design Justice Network! We want to build on the incredible work carried out by the original Northern American group to set up a Mediterranean network of people that resonate with similar intersectional feminist values and work so that we can exchange and reshape design practices together. Our focus on the Mediterranean is to reclaim an identity around this geography….

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