An experiential, practice-based cohort for composting the dominant design practices we’ve inherited and seeding new possibilities
September 17 - October 29, 2026. Weekly on Thursdays from 5 to 7 pm CET.
Designing Otherwise is an invitation to practice design differently — not as a tool for control or extraction but a pathway for returning to ourselves, each other, and the worlds around us.
Something about the way we engage in design is shifting. The frameworks that once seemed meaningful feel hollow. The metrics designed to measure impact no longer capture what truly matters. The urgency demanded of us leaves no room for the relationships that need to be held and nurtured.
And yet, within this rupture, something else is stirring. A growing recognition that the systems we navigate — rooted in extraction, limitless growth, and optimization — are increasingly reaching their limits and need to be composted. If the realities we live under are changing, the ways we design must evolve too.
The dominant system is rupturing, and a new one is not yet born. In that uncomfortable in-between space, we meet to explore what it means to leverage design as a pathway to navigate our present realities while moving toward different futures.
Designing Otherwise together
Over the course of seven weeks, we explore what it means to design otherwise; shifting away from extractive models towards practices that feel more alive and rooted.
Together, we’ll move across multiple scales: within ourselves, in relationship with others, alongside the more-than-human world, and within the larger systems that shape our lives.
We’ll hold space for the pausing, the unravelling, the sitting with complexity, the grieving of systems we’re implicated in, and the tender practice of learning to design from within the web of relationships and responsibilities that were always present around us.
We’ve felt a growing need for a space to experiment and play with what becomes possible when we recognize that the design shifts needed in this moment are not just intellectual, but also embodied and relational.
Have you felt it, too?
What to expect
Learn together, in community
Gather with a diverse group of practitioners to explore, question, and reimagine design through live conversations, reflective practices, and shared inquiry.
Grow through practice and exploration
Experiment with new ideas, perspectives, and practices that connect to your own context and lived experience, held together through a shared community space that lives between our weekly gatherings and beyond.
Shift your perspective across scales
Explore design from the individual to the collective, from our inner worlds and relationships with others to the larger systems and living ecosystems we are part of.
The journey, week by week
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This opening session invites us to slow down and examine the assumptions, habits, and worldviews we carry into our design practices. Through dialogue and reflection, we will begin cultivating a more conscious and grounded awareness of who we are as designers, our relationship to technology, the people and places we've been shaped by, what expectations are asked to hold,, and what narratives are we ready to let go of and release.
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We've been trained to treat uncertainty as a problem to solve. But what if it's actually where the most alive and rooted work begins? This week, we explore what it means to practice design in precarious conditions, to move with change rather than against it. We will sit with complexity, rehearse letting go of the need for fixed answers, and begin building comfort with emergence as a creative force.
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Design often converges toward a single possibility or solution. This session widens the aperture. We will explore how to hold multiple perspectives, stories, timelines, and ways of knowing together — weaving between threads that dominant design culture tends to cut loose and separate. How do we design with plurality rather than collapse it?
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This week, we pause and slow down. We create space for whatever's stirring to settle into the body, the practice, and the spaces between us, and notice what seeds of possibility are sprouting.
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Design doesn't happen in isolation, yet so much of modern practice treats the designer as separate from the communities, ecosystems, and relationships that make us whole. This week, we turn toward relationship. We will explore what it means to design from a place of kinship rather than hierarchy, reconnecting with the worlds around us that our work touches. What shifts when we understand ourselves as part of what and whom we're designing for?
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This session explores the collective dimensions of designing otherwise: how we hold space for one another, share power, navigate conflict, and build the kind of trust that transformative work requires. We will move from ideas into shared practice, exploring what it looks like to tend the conditions from which better and more responsible design pathways can emerge.
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We close by turning toward what's ahead with an expanded imagination and renewed commitments. Drawing on everything we've practiced together, we'll explore what futures become possible when we design with care instead of control, in reciprocity rather than extraction. This threshold holds what we've composted here and what we choose to carry forward, together.
Join us in September…
We’ll gather every Thursday from 5 to 7 pm CET between September 17 and October 29, 2026 — a space to slow down, practice together, and explore what design makes possible when engaged responsibly and with care. We invite you to step into this space with us to compost what’s no longer serving and plant seeds for something different to take root.
Who’s holding the space
sahibzada mayed
sahibzada mayed is a decolonial designer and researcher working at the edges of cultural and systemic transformation. mayed is the founder of Naqsh-o-Qadam, an upcoming creative studio composting extractive norms of business and marketing, and a steward of What Grows Between Us, an intergenerational collective tending the in-between spaces where imagination, meaning, and solidarity take root.
Ida Persson is a systems designer and creative strategist working across social impact, climate, and systems change. She is the founder of DesignShifts, where she explores how design can move beyond extractive models and become a practice for care, regeneration, and collective wellbeing.
Ida Persson
Ready to join us?
In order to make this cohort more accessible to our community, we offer three tiers on a sliding-scale. All three options afford the same access — we trust you to choose the one that reflects your financial capacity. We also recognise that these options may still feel out of reach for some folks. If that is the case, please reach out to discuss potential options for reduced pricing or scholarships.
Seeding (€ 400)
For students, early-career practitioners, those in a period of pause or transition, or anyone with limited financial means.
Sustaining (€ 600)
For those with a steady income or access to savings who can comfortably meet their basic needs and invest in their own learning and development.
Nourishing (€ 800)
For those with higher financial means or access to professional development funding through their employer or organisation.