Take Action

Ongoing Interviews 

The Emergent Grounds Archive has grown organically from the earliest months of our collective, in which organizers across institutions and geographies came together to share our strategies as design students and practitioners demanding racial justice before, during and after the summer of 2020. The archive will collect narratives from student organizers past and present.

Have you participated in a letter writing campaign or other organizing effort to decolonize design education?

Interested in being a part of this project?

Use this form to share your contact information.

From Penitentiary Philosophies to Abolitionist Alternatives [PPAA] Teach-Ins

In the summer of 2021, we found ourselves returning often to conversations about the abolition of policing and prisons. Inspired by engagements with organizers we met through networks of Design as Protest (DAP), and driven by carceral work we found ourselves tasked with in our day jobs, we worked with members of TAL’s Racial Justice Working Group to adapt an existing workshop on carceral design into ‘From Penitentiary Philosophies to Abolitionist Alternatives’ (PPAA), a 1.5 hour interactive teach-in designed to bring students, alumni, educators, practitioners and activists into conversation with each other around questions of carceral design, abolitionist advocacy, student and emergent practitioner agency.

We have hosted three PPAA teach-ins:

• October 2021: The Design School at ASU, NOMA Arizona, TAL Phoenix
• February 2022: UC Berkeley NOMAS, SFNOMA, TAL Bay Area
• April 2022: Tulane School of Architecture, members of Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson’s Transition Teams

We are immensely grateful to the educators, students and practitioners who participated, and especially to those who took part in organizing these teach-ins with us - especially the late Prescott Reavis, whose support was instrumental in shaping the series, and to whom our February workshop is dedicated.