This is day 4 of our special week-long series on The Grove, an immersive experience on designing for meaningful change.
There’s no roadmap for this work
No one teaches you how to navigate the tensions of designing for equity, justice, and change inside systems built for profit and control.
I’ve had to learn it through trial and error. And error can mean real harm, especially for communities that already carry the weight of systemic violence.
Without a critical lens and measures to keep us in check, we remain agents of oppressive systems, despite our intentions to "do good". You'll find many stories of "good intentions gone wrong" in The Grove.
Where design changemaking comes in
This is why The Grove is anchored in the ethos and practice of design changemaking.
This methodology helps us examine and break down oppressive norms, reduce and repair harm, and design in ways that uplift living beings who have been historically and systemically harmed.
Design changemaking is one of many paths toward liberatory futures — not the path. It equips you with ways to do this work with greater care, accountability, and intention. And it distills the collective wisdom of generations of changemakers and justice-led practitioners.
How you'll engage with its foundations
At the core of design changemaking are three foundations that guide us not only in our design work but also in how we show up inside institutions, movements, and systems.
In The Grove, you'll engage with these foundations at a slow, deep level through:
- Stories and real-world cases that hold hard truths and rich learnings
- Reflection prompts and somatic exercises that challenge your oppressive conditioning and help you start detaching from it
- Interactive tools and activities that help you examine and renew your values, beliefs, and design practices
- A community container for navigating complexity and experimenting with care
Slowness here isn't a flaw but an intentional design decision. Because moving at a “snail’s pace” can sometime be the most radical thing we can do.
Let's review each of the foundations:
Design Changemaking Ecosystem
These are values-in-action that help you resist oppressive norms and design in alignment with justice and liberation. They draw from liberatory practice and lived experience and offer anchors when the work gets murky.
Design Changemaking Ecosystem
There are many ways to design for change. This ecosystem helps you make sense of that complexity. It surfaces how approaches relate, where tensions reside, and how to move more intentionally across movements and methods.
The Reflexive Compass
This is a wayfinding tool attuned to your values and to the guiding stars of liberatory futures. It helps you trace harm back to its roots, connect patterns across systems, and move with more clarity toward repair and systemic change.
If you’re ready to walk this path — and be better equipped to make change in the world — come join us inside The Grove, which opens on Wednesday, July 9th.
For now, I invite to reflect: What’s a moment from your design practice that you wish you could revisit?
