Queering Design: Moving Towards Emergent Practices

A series of queer provocations to shift away from human-centered design practices towards frameworks rooted in mutuality.

Through queering design, this lecture seeks new orientations of deliberately resisting normativity and forging alternative pathways and ways of practicing and being that attempt to disrupt prescriptive design methods. Queering design presents an opportunity to move away from the paternalistic approach of “designing for” past collaboration-oriented but not capacity-building ways of “designing with” to “designing by”—building the confidence and fluency of others to benefit and build collective power. It also aims to evolve the dialogue about design in a more divergent and unusual direction.

Sloan Leo Cowan (they/he) is a community designer, facilitator, and educator whose work is decidedly queer, unambiguously Black, and compassionately collective. Their practice embeds them in the dynamics, evolution, and beautifully fraught realities of finding, nurturing, and navigating community. Through facilitation, dialogic pedagogy, digital video, photography, and printing, Leo’s work both subtly and explicitly challenges binary understandings of race and gender, inviting the audience to confront and grapple with their own sense of belonging, values, and commitments. By manipulating and excavating layers of material and meaning, it creates a public exhibition of an intimate and profoundly personal, revelatory journey. Leo is the founder, CEO, and Lead Facilitator at FLOX Studio Inc., a community design and strategy studio that supports mission-driven organizations to animate the practice of their values.

This lecture is part of Design Educators* Unite!—a lecture series for design teachers, researchers, and students that shares feminist practices from within.

The lecture series is accessible through a sliding-scale price structure:

• Solidarity: CHF 280
• Standard: CHF 140
• Student: CHF 70
• BIPoC+Student: CHF 35

If you can afford it, please consider paying the solidarity price to support Futuress’ free learning and publishing program. For students with limited finances, particularly those self-identifying as BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and majority world, we offer a BIPOC+ student price. We trust your honesty and do not require proof of self-identification for enrollment.

For institutions keen on facilitating their students’ and staff’s participation, we provide discounted passes. Should your institution express interest please contact admin@futuress.org. We are more than happy to tailor an offer to your specific needs.

By registering for this lecture series, you not only enter a transnational community centered around design politics, but you also support the work of commissioning, editing, and publishing original counter-narratives, and help to finance our free online learning program.

Feb 22 | 6 pm CET – special free event
Roundtable Discussion
Navigating the Past, Envisioning the Future: Unearthing Feminist and Decolonial Threads in Design Education
with Cherrypye (she/her) Creator, Educator & Researcher
Clara Meliande (she/her) Designer, Researcher & Educator
and Josefina Vidal (she/her) Designer & Researcher

Mar 21 | 6 pm CET
Lecture
Otherwise Realities: Communal Care, Decolonization, and The Design School
with Layla Gharib (she/her)
Designer, Researcher & Educator

Apr 11 | 6 pm CEST
Lecture
Queering Design: Moving Towards Emergent Practices
with Sloan Leo Cowan (they/he)
Community Designer, Facilitator & Educator

May 2 | 6 pm CEST
Lecture
Social Design Practices: From the Popular Neighborhoods to the Faculty of Design
with Giuliana Córdoba (she/none)
and Emilia Odriozola (she/her)
from the Student Movement Auge FADU

May 23 | 6 pm CEST
Lecture
Crip Spacetime and Utopias of Care
with Nina Mühlemann (they/none)
Artist & Disability Scholar

June 6 | 6 pm CEST
Lecture
Feminist Killjoy Design Pedagogy: On Emphasizing Joy
with Elizabeth Chin (she/her)
Anthropologist & Ethnographer

June 13 | 6 pm CEST
Lecture
Design and Other Ways of Knowing
Ramia Mazé (she/her)
Design Researcher

June 27 | 6 pm CEST
Lecture
Mocha Celis: We Dare to Build the World We Want to Live In
with Francisco Quiñones Cuartas (she/he)
and Virginia Silveira (she/her)
from Travesti-Trans Non-binary Popular High School Mocha Celis