Introduction to Liberatory Design| Jan 28, 2025

We are all living in challenging times that our past experience and training has not sufficiently prepared us for. Too often, well intentioned equity efforts do not succeed—and even produce unintended consequences. This can lead to frustration, hopelessness and cynicism. This workshop offers an introduction to our Liberatory Design approach.

Liberatory Design is an approach to addressing equity challenges and change efforts in complex systems. It is a process and practice to:

• Create designs that help interrupt inequity and increase opportunity for those most impacted by oppression
• Transform power by shifting the relationships between those who hold power to design and those impacted by these designs
• Generate critical learning and increased agency for those involved in the design work

At the core of Liberatory Design are a set of beliefs: racism and inequity have been designed into systems and thus can be designed out of systems; designing for equity requires the meaningful participation of those impacted by inequity; and equity-driven designs require equity and complexity informed processes.

The Liberatory Design approach and card deck was originally created as part of a collaboration between the National Equity Project (Victor Cary and Tom Malarkey) and the Stanford d.school's K12 Lab (Tania Anaissie, David Clifford, and Susie Wise) in 2016. Our approach to Liberatory Design is grounded in our Leading for Equity Framework and integrates human-centered design (aka design thinking) with complex systems theory and deep equity practice.

We are excited to offer Center for Equity Leadership Virtual Workshops – 3-hour interactive sessions where participants will engage with a single focused topic, connect with other educators centering equity in thier work, and gain new tools to add to their equity practice. Workshops are bite-sized nuggets of knowledge, frameworks and tools that are delivered in a highly engaging way. Who should attend:

• Educators of any experience level committed to creating more just and equitable learning environments
• Any adult working to serve school-aged youth or adult learners
• Coaches, administrators, or other professionals that support the development of educators to create conditions for increased engagement and deeper learning in classrooms

We are intensely focused on humanizing our virtual spaces. We focus on interactivity and connection (these workshops are not webinars), frequent screen and body breaks, and attending to learning, practice, and healing in community with people around the world.

We provide an advance draft of our slide deck 24 hours before the session and enable live transcription and closed captions during the live Zoom session. Our sessions are recorded (absent any technical difficulties) and can be accessed for up to 30 days after the course concludes.

Schedule: Tuesday, January 8, 2025 | 9:30am-12:30pm Pacific

Workshop fee: $250 per person

Limited tickets for this event are offered on a Sliding Scale / Pay What You Can Model. For more information about how NEP's Sliding Scale Model works and guidance on how to determine what to pay please visit bit.ly/NEPSlidingScale

You will receive a password-protected Zoom link and any other pre-reads and resources prior to the event via email.

Registration by credit card on Eventbrite is our preferred method. We are a small (but mighty) organization and processing and collecting check payments for our events has a high administrative impact.

Please visit our registration page on our website for information on paying by check or purchase order and our cancellation and registration transfer policy.

Event Venue

Online