This September 21-25th, amidst the dual crises highlighting generational and systemic injustices: a global health pandemic, and the national uprisings advocating for racial justice, the Association for Community Design will host its first-ever online conference.
Exploring how we can address both these historical moments with renewed commitment to advancing equity and justice in our communities, we will hold space for healing, reflection, and reconnection with ourselves and others. ACD43 will gather organizers, advocates, and designers who have become leaders in immediate response and taking direct action to end racial injustice. RECENTER will be a unique opportunity to pause, refocus on why, how, and with whom we work, and take action to co-create change in our communities. Your attendance also supports the work of our conference partners NextCity and Spaces & Places.
We have an incredible schedule of featured speakers, presentations, three trainings offered by Creative Reaction Lab, and opportunities to connect with other attendees outside of sessions throughout the week! Registration is live on the ACD Website! RSVP not required for sessions other than Creative Reaction Lab Trainings. We hope to see you next week!
About the Design As Protest Keynote
Design as Protest is a coalition of designers mobilizing strategy to dismantle the privilege and powers structures that use architecture and design as tools of oppression. Co-organized by BIPOC designers, DAP exists to reverse the violence and injustices that architecture, design, and urban planning practices have inflicted upon Black people and communities. During this ACD session, DAP organizers will share how they have launched a completely virtual national organizing network and harnessed design as a tool for advocacy and activism. They will also provide guidance and insight on how ACD43 participants can organize and build communities of trust and collaboration to effectively confront injustices in our professions and across our communities.
Speakers
De Nichols is a design activist, social worker, and global lecturer who mobilizes creative changemakers to address issues within the built environment through the production of interactive experiences, digital media, and social initiatives. She serves as the Principal of Design and Social Impact at the Civic Creatives consultancy in St. Louis, MO, and she is a current Transnational Fellow with Monument Lab and the Goethe Institut.
Taylor Holloway: Designer, architect, and educator, Taylor Holloway uses design-driven approaches to promote equity in the built environment. As a biracial woman, first generation college graduate, and individual who has experienced the U.S. foster care system, issues of creative voice, belonging, and healing are personal to her. Her organization, Public Design Agency, utilizes design-thinking, public art, and architecture, to train future generations of designers, builders, & change-makers.
Bryan C. Lee: Bryan is an Architect, educator, writer, and Design Justice Advocate. He is the founder/Design Director of Colloqate Design a nonprofit multidisciplinary design practice, in New Orleans, Louisiana, dedicated to expanding community access to design and creating spaces of racial, social, and cultural equity. He has led two award-winning youth design programs nationwide and is the founding co-organizer of the DAP (Design As Protest) Collective. He was most recently noted as one of the 2018 Fast Company Most Creative People in Business, a USC Annenberg MacArthur Civic Media Fellow, and the youngest design firm to win the Architectural League’s Emerging Voices award in 2019.