Changing Design from Margins to Centre

This project suggests a transformative learning journey moving from the safe space, where we feel too comfortable to speak up to a brave space, which is essential for having norm-critical conversations on social justice. My research insights as well as my personal experience translated into several artifacts that materialized into an activist toolkit. The artifacts of the toolkit are meant to encourage designers to incorporate design ethics and critical reflection in their daily design work.

With a transformative learning journey and the feminist activist toolkit this project suggests one way of “staying with the trouble” and how to challenge binary regimes from within the design discipline. The activist toolkit is proposing a form of practice to create connections which increase critical thinking on a reflective empowering journey to equity. It is one idea of how we can change design from margins to centre and develop feminist tactics for a more just design discipline.

It assists dialogues to unfold concepts of how design embodies binaries in visuals, spatial, and other material practices and proposes a strengthening of allyship, to step by step bridging the gap between academia and industry, and between circular and linear thinkers.