Urgency Lab

This is a series of work and reflections developed when a group of artists and designers create a space to answer the question “What is urgent?” Urgency shows up in many ways, particularly amongst communities systematically oppressed and marginalized. How do we foster communities and spaces in our practice that allow us to address what lives to us as urgent? This shift in framework led us to place a greater value on nurturing relationships with one another built in equity, respect, listening, and truth-telling. That groundwork gave us permission to create work with and for each other that I have not felt the ability to make in any other setting. The experience has shifted my thinking about what a design practice could and should be. Publishing became the medium that allowed us to collect the lessons we learned and put them in a format we could take with us long after our time together. These publications were made urgently and collectively, but the foundation that allowed for their creation took a considerable amount of time and labor.