PROJECT OVERVIEW 

A national university consortium and forum that creates a platform for a design education rooted in equity and racial + spatial justice.

PROJECT INFORMATION

TIMELINE: 2013 - Present
LOCATION: National
Client: n/a
Partners: VARIOUS
Role: Board Member, Faculty

Additional Project Collateral

Project Website

STORY

The Design Futures Student Leadership Forum is a university consortium that brings together student leaders from across the country with practitioners and university-faculty to learn and discuss best practices in social equity and community impact.

The program is rooted in the belief that in order to decolonize design education and create a profession that addresses the ways the built environment can cause harm, design education must include training the next generation of practitioners to not only understand the traditional skills around shaping the built environment and undertaking community engagement, but also what are the components of the systems of oppression that continue to conditions of harm, the ways in which we engage in the system through our own power and privilege, and the skills needed to understand what community engaged design leadership looks like in an intentional landscape defined by actors, allies, and accomplices.

The Forum consists of an annual student and faculty forums as well as companion programs in fostering DEI conversations and efforts in participating universities.