Applied experiments & real-world projects.
Designing Otherwise:
A cohort learning journey exploring a better future for and through design
Designing Otherwise is the first DesignShifts learning cohort, a seven-week learning journey that gives designers, researchers, culture-builders, and practitioners the space, community, and resources to explore what it means to advance a non-extractive design practice in response to today’s social, ecological, and systemic challenges.
Together, we explore what it means to unlearn design as a tool for productivity, extraction, and profit, and begin practicing design as a way to cultivate healing, liberation, and reconnection with ourselves, each other, and the living world.
Nature Dates
Simple practices for re-membering our relationship with nature
Nature Dates is an experiment for re-membering our relationship with nature. It features simple prompts, reflections, and activities that can be done alone or together, inviting people to slow down, pay attention, and cultivate a deeper relationship with the living world. Whether it's spending thirty minutes watching an ant, going on a weekly nature date, listening to the soundscape of a forest, or noticing flowers growing through cracks in the pavement, each practice offers a small way to reconnect with nature in everyday life.
DesignShifters Archetypes: new roles responses in a shifting world
The DesignShifter archetypes invites designers and change makers to embrace new roles responses in as we face climate change, inequality, and technological disruption. They move the role of designers from just making to a place of meaning—creating a world that is
Shifting Together:
A practice space to co-create the future we all want.
Once a month, we host virtual or in-person events to explore small steps we can take to shift towards a better future. These session focus on exploration and are created in partnership with various organizations, companies, and individuals.
In these community sessions, we explore thinking about, being with, and shaping the Shifts as a collective force.
ABOUT
The Making Lab is the space where we partner with individuals, organizations, and communities to create regenerative solutions and test our frameworks in practice.
Through collaborative projects, we develop tools, systems, and experiences that demonstrate what post-extractive design can look like in action.