Design Activism as Repetition, Reconstruction and Reinvention

This panel examines the ways in which forms, methods and narratives recur in design activism. Design activism, defined here as the practice of using images, objects and type as tools in support of political action, is a distinctly referential process, through which historical citation can situate one struggle’s alignment, or misalignment, with another (Sholette, 2021; Huyssen, 2003). In this mediating role, design activism’s forms and methods move across temporal, spatial, and political boundaries and thus provide ideas, models, and symbols that energise new or existing political movements and activists (Atkinson, 2024; Maasri, 2015; Demos, 2013).

This panel addresses the adaptations, continuities, and slippages that occur in design activism across times, spaces, and cultures. How is the act of history-making politicised in these contexts, and how are its narratives represented? How are histories repeated, reconstructed, and reinvented to serve different political objectives? What methods can historians, archivists, and activists develop to facilitate the activation and reactivation of historical ideas for contemporary struggles, as well as those of the future? Papers may address, but are not limited to the following subject areas:

• Histories of design activism as providing patterning for the present and inspiring hope for the future.
• Craftivism as historically-informed political practice.
• Archiving visual, craft, graphic and material cultures as radical practice.
• Pedagogical tools and methods for teaching histories of design activism.
• Case studies of design activism as tools for decolonising and queering histories.
• Curatorial strategies for staging design activism.
• Limitations and tensions in methodologies of histories of design activism.