How will we queer design education without compromise?

As educators, the design canon is often the foundation of our practices, but it is inherently reliant on impenetrable binaries. What would a queering of design education look like? What would a pedagogical approach that emphasizes asking questions instead of problem solving consist of? How can we understand designers as bodies in space, with agency, instead of simply “creatives”? And how can we understand bodies of text as living things that produce difficult conversations, instead of simply “content”? In the age of capitalist innovation and professionalization, our focus cannot only be about best practices, creativity, and collaboration. A queering of design education is an opening, an unclosable gap. We must critique our own critiques. We must embrace a multiplicity of perspectives. We must reimagine the past in service of the future. We must cannibalize the canon. We don’t know what these structures might look like and they too will change, but we must go into the unknown, together.

Soundboard features an array of perspectives on pressing issues of our time by figures inside the arts and out—in one interface:

We Can Listen and Push Back at the Same Time, by Kristina Ketola Bore

Let's Talk About Body Reproduction, by Nate Pyper

We Must Make Queer Praxis Accessible, by Ginger Brooks Takahashi

We Must Topple the Tropes, Cripple the Canon, by Ramon Tejada