Design Justice North

On Tuesday 26th July 2022, the first meeting was held of the newly formed Design Justice Node North. This is the third UK node (after London and Scotland) of the Design Justice Network, an international collective looking at creating a safer, more just and more sustainable world through justice oriented design approaches. The organisation provides support those who are committed to embodying and practicing the Design Justice Principles 

Design Justice North 

Initial discussions which set the groundwork for the local node began in May 2022, initiated by a small group including Julian Tait and Sam Milson at Open Data Manchester, and Kira Allmann of the Ada Lovelace Institute. Naomi Jacobs joined the first pre-planning meeting due to an interest in the Design Justice and its relevance her to work on ethics in digital technology. After those at the meeting discussed what a local node does and our interests, it quickly became clear that setting up a Node locally would be of interest to many people in the North of England (including many at Imagination Lancaster) and support networking and collaboration through sharing updates on work and best practices. The official application to form a Node was submitted in July, and the first official meeting followed shortly afterwards. 

First meeting 

Eleven people from a variety of different organisations in the North of England joined to the first meeting of the Design Justice Node North, which was hosted on Zoom by Open Data Manchester. Five members of Imagination (Naomi Jacobs, Aisa Sabagh, Kim Snooks, Rosendy Galabo and David Perez) joined to the meeting. After a round of introductions of the attendees, Naomi Jacobs introduced research work she is currently undertaking related to ethics of using technology in the food industry. In the session, participants gave feedback on her research and its relation to the Design Justice Principles. Feedback included that a show and tell presentation is very enjoyable as an open and informal space to hear what people are working on and to discuss how to embed the principles of the network.  

After this successful first meeting, we hope that the Node will grow and recruit more people from a range of organisations and locations in the North of England, in order to create a thriving network. In the future, the team from Imagination Lancaster intend to host one of the sessions.  

A website for the Node is in development, but for now if you would like more information or to join, please get in touch with Naomi or David. 

The next meeting us due to be held on 30th August 2022.