Impact Report Support Design Futures

15th Annual Design Futures Forum





















Design Futures is a 5-day convening to reimagine the role of the designer as centering community power in the built environment.

University of Minnesota 
Minneapolis, Minnesota 
June 7-11th, 2027

SPATIAL JUSTICE         COMMUNITY POWER        DESIGN            SPATIAL JUSTICE           COMMUNITY POWER         DESIGN            

Example sessions from past years include:> Make People FEEL: Speculative Fiction as a Tool for Healing and Joy.
Inspired by Octavia Butler’s work, this session invited designers into an immersion on how to navigate compounding crises with collective action and imagination as the medicine for overwhelm and isolation.

> Data for Civic Action: Accessible Tech Tools for Spatial Justice & Community Design.
Hands-on and pragmatic, this session  explored how spatial data can expose injustice—and fuel community power. Designers learned foundational GIS skills while practicing how tell stories with data that shift power.

> Toppling Statues: Memorials, Monuments and Designing a New Commemorative Landscape.
Designers unpacked the responsibility they hold to reimagine memorials and monuments as a tool for uplifting stories that have been buried in collective memory. Through case studies, designers learned innovative approaches in commemorative landscape design that center co-creation, truth-telling and healing.