The Black in Design Conference, organized by the Harvard University Graduate School of Design African American Student Union (GSD AASU) recognizes the contributions of the African diaspora to the design fields and promotes discourse around the agency of the design profession to address and dismantle the institutional barriers faced by our communities.
Building upon the Black in Design Conference in 2015, we are framing the upcoming conference across the forms of design, to unearth our agency as designers to envision more radical and equitable futures. We revealed the boundless capacity and power of a network of black and brown designers that we intend to grow through the 2017 Black in Design Conference: Designing Resistance, Building Coalitions. While the political climate we face today is tenuous, the forces of systemic injustice are not new.
We will explore design as resistance and show how designers are advocates and activists. We will highlight the contributions made by leaders across nontraditional fields in creating spaces for actions and representations of resistance. Through this exploration, we will broaden the definition of design, understanding it through the lens of these visionaries in their work. Design is activism Design is coalition building.
