Shifting Beyond

​The dominant system is rupturing, and a new one is not yet born. In that uncomfortable in-between space, we will meet to explore what it means to leverage design as a pathway to navigate our present realities while moving toward different futures.

​Join us for a 1.5 hour practice session where we’ll meet each other and the world in this messy middle through reflection, co-creation, and a shared presence. The session is fluid but some of the things we’d love to do together is:

• ​Reflect on the current system and realities we face and feel

• ​Imagine future possibilities that are just, caring, and liberated

• ​Co-create the shifts needed to move within and beyond the current system

​We will hold the contradictions that many of us carry quietly: grief and hope, exhaustion and care, uncertainty and the stubborn belief that things can be different. And we will dream, together, of futures that feel worth building.

​Good to know:

​This is an interactive session and the session will not be recorded. We’ll work in breakout groups and co-create using digital tools. It’s an experimental space for exploring the topic together.

​This is not a session about solving problems. Instead, it is about noticing and sensing. About becoming more honest with ourselves and each other. About learning to design in ways that make room for the complexity of the world as it is. Rather than rushing to fix or clean up, we will intentionally slow down and sit with ambiguity and discomfort, resisting the urge for completion or perfection.

​About DesignShifts

​DesignShifts is a movement, experimental lab, and learning platform exploring non-extractive design methods for times of systemic transition. Through theory, practice, and community, we challenge the status quo, imagine better futures, and co-create the shifts needed to move toward a more just, caring, and connected world.

​Learn more at designshifts.org

​This Design Shift is prepared in collaboration with sahibzada mayed, a decolonial designer and researcher working at the edges of cultural and systemic transformation. Mayed is the founder of Naqsh-o-Qadam, a creative studio composting extractive norms of business and marketing, and a collaborator at Pause and Effect, a decolonial collective of practitioners shaping liberatory futures by design.