2025 DESIGN FUTURES STUDENT FORUM REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS (RFP): Core Workshop
Design Futures is seeking workshop proposals from practitioners and educators in community-based design and design justice for our Core curriculum at the Design Futures Forum. Tulane University will host the 13th annual Forum from Monday June 2nd - Friday June 6th 2025 in New Orleans, LA. If you’ve never submitted a proposal or have been unsuccessful in the past, we encourage you to consider applying. And whether you’ve attended Design Futures for many years or have never attended, we welcome your proposal!
Proposal Submission is available via https://forms.gle/siKUCaP1KXvwqujb7
RFP Schedule
- Wednesday Jan 8th: RFP released
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Monday, February 17th: Deadline for proposals
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Monday, March 10th: Successful applicant notified
WHAT IS THE DESIGN FUTURES STUDENT LEADERSHIP FORUM?
The Design Futures Forum is a 5-day convening for students to reimagine the role of the designer in dismantling and redesigning systems of oppression. Each year, approximately 70 students from 14 different universities come together with faculty and leading practitioners in the field to dive deep on design justice and community-based design. Our aim is to provide a space for rigorous learning, radical imagination, and caring relationships in a space that models the world we seek to build together.
For more detailed information about the event and its evolution, please look over our website and the annual yearbooks produced from prior Forums: www.designfuturesforum.org. Yearbooks are found when clicking on each year’s Forum.
CONTEXT: THE DESIGN FUTURES CURRICULUM
Every Forum includes three Core Workshops, which all students are required to take, and provide the foundational knowledge on power, systems of oppression and community-driven design. The Core Workshops often remain the same year over year. In contrast, the Elective Workshops change each year and explore more specific topics: 2024’s Electives explored topics such as the role of speculative and Afrofuturist fiction in designing for joy, and technical training on GIS for spatial justice.
This year, Design Futures seeks a new Core workshop to join the two pre-existing Core below:
The new Core Workshop we are soliciting proposals on will round out these two workshops by focusing on the practice of community-based design.
WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR
The session should provide students with foundational knowledge about the principles and skills of community-driven design, including what it means to be accountable to community members.
Design Futures defines community-based design as an approach to creating spaces and experiences in partnership with the communities that will be impacted by the design, and is done so for the purpose of furthering equity and justice. The approach also follows the below principles:
- We do this to center the agency of those most impacted by systems of oppression.
- We do this to facilitate liberatory, anti-oppressive, and anti-racist outcomes.
- We build community partnerships that are reciprocal rather than extractive—community members have decision-making power and are recognized and compensated for their time and expertise.
We welcome the overlap with a wide range of different practices, including participatory design, community-based design, equity-centered design, and liberatory design. This Core session may draw from one or several practices to build a foundation.
- A clear understanding of what “community-driven design” means and involves that is inclusive to different disciplines of design (architecture, city planning, visual design, etc.)
- A point of view centered in justice and power-shifts on what it means to be a responsible practitioner of this work
- A working framework on what it looks like to be accountable to the communities we partner with.
- Clarity around fundamental values and lessons already learned from the field and social movements, and
- Ample space for students to develop their own perspectives based on their lived experience in an understanding that the field should be transformed by the next generation of designers.
- We strongly prefer sessions designed to be 2 hours long, but are open to proposals that request up to 3 hours if need be.
- The workshop will be offered twice over the week, and will bring in 30-35 students in each session.
- It can be exclusive to students or open to faculty and other practitioners. This is up to you.
- Be a highly interactive experience for all participants. While it may be necessary to have a lecture style introduction to the workshop, it should be brief and prepare the students for some kind of hands-on, interactive learning experience. Any lecture-style portions should not exceed 20 minutes on a 2 hour session.
- Be appropriate for a multi-disciplinary group. While the majority of participants are attending schools of design and/or planning, we also have participants coming to this work from different fields such as urban ecology, art, engineering, public health, business, and others.
- Provide a “takeaway for practice” handout or resource (e.g. best practices, case studies, community engagement workshop planning, etc.)
- Be accessible to folks with different access needs (e.g. visual, mobility, sensory). Design Futures will be collecting access needs requests during registration and will share any relevant needs with facilitators.
- Be informed by the practitioners demonstrated experience in community-based design/design justice
When thinking about your session, it may be helpful to keep in mind that current undergraduate and graduate students generally have slightly more access to coursework on community design than students 10 years ago. In addition, the students attending the Forum have been generally more informed on systemic oppression than students 5-10 years ago.
WHAT TO EXPECT IF YOU ARE SELECTED
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April-May: Provide a draft of the workshop materials for feedback to the Executive Director. This can be done over video call(s) or email.
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Late May: Send any materials that require printing to the ED
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June 2nd: Opening circle and Day 1 of the Forum at Tulane University in New Orleans
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June 3rd & 4th: Likely dates for the Core workshop to be facilitated
- After the 2025 Design Futures Forum: If the Core session is well received by students, we intend to re-invite the facilitators to bring their workshop to the 2026 Forum and potentially future years to come. Some Core sessions have been given for over 5 years!
Design Futures will provide a $2100 honorarium (covers both the stipend and travel) for each non-local facilitator, for up to two facilitators for a total of $4200 available for each workshop. Facilitators coming from the New Orleans area will be paid $1500 each. Any workshops that include additional faculty beyond two members, will be expected to fundraise any additional monies. Honoraria will be issued at the time of workshop delivery. Alternative payment schedule is possible and can be discussed individually, as required.
All workshop proposals submitted are reviewed in full by the selection committee. The committee is composed of at least 3 members; the Design Futures Executive Director and at least two Board members.
In addition to assessing the quality of the workshop proposed, the selection committee has a mission to foster a diverse faculty cohort and will take into consideration the backgrounds of the workshop presenters (in terms of gender, race, age, professional affiliation, geographic location, and career advancement) when making its final decisions.
Please note that priority will be given to workshop facilitators that are available to attend the first day Opening Circle and Framing of the Forum (Monday, June 2nd). We will be creating shared agreements and laying the foundation for relationships and building a community of practice during the week. Design Futures faculty are also expected to commit at least a day and a half of their time to participating in Forum events—most of our colleagues find that attending other sessions is quite beneficial to their own professional development, and they find engaging deeply with students to be energizing and enriching as well!
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS