Breathing Room
Leading a volunteer effort to create a design-forward resource that supports community activism against police violence.
Background
In response to the heart wrenching killing of George Floyd, I founded a creative coalition of volunteers that designs space for Black people to live without limits called Breathing Room. We focus on developing unexpected and equitable solutions through art, design, and activism.
Our first challenge
Our research during the Floyd protests demonstrated that newly informed burgeoning advocates and allies who want to activate against police violence but don’t know the most impactful and sustainable steps to take at an individual level to change the status quo. Simultaneously, organizers and activists didn’t have the tools or time to conduct mass education for the millions of people around the world that were becoming activated in record numbers. In response, we created The Necessary Trouble Toolkit, an actionable learning resource that decodes the process for new advocates who want to self-educate and take an active stand against police brutality. Here’s a deeper dive into the process and the problem.
This resource uses art, design, and storytelling to walk people through the history of police brutality and educates them on how they can play a role in ending it. It also provides a directory of local officials and organizers in the 15+ largest metropolitan US cities with high police brutality rates and killings.
Creative direction
We were inspired by a Shishi Rose tweet our Brand Design lead Jason Mamaril found when developing the visual system: “Black death is trending, but why isn’t Black life?” In response, I developed a creative brief for our creative team with this prompt: "The toolkit should magnify what's on the other side of Black struggle and trauma: Black limitlessness and life.” This was a significant challenge for a resource that was addressing difficult and sensitive subject matter like racism and violence. However, I wanted the toolkit to communicate the end goal (Black freedom, living without racial constraints) to inspire collective action rather than motivate people by the current trauma the Black community currently experiences. We knew the data and historical context would articulate the painful side of the experience and wanted to balance that because it’s hard for people to learn when they are traumatized.
Before we launched we went through a three month review period to incorporate feedback from activists, organizers, the Black community, and allies to ensure the information was accurate, helpful, and tonally appropriate. The project is a result of the contributions of 50+ brilliant volunteer creatives, researchers, policy managers, lawyers, learning coaches, coders etc. coming together and centering Black creativity. The core team is listed below and the full team is here.
I was the lead creative strategist, content strategist, curriculum writer, and marketing lead on the project. One day we’ll release a proper case study detailing the complexity of the challenges that went into developing this toolkit.
Follow up
Impact snapshot: We're still in the early days of our release but here's some qualitative launch milestones from the release in the meantime from our scrappy launch. In the first two weeks of launch 27,000+ people viewed the campaign launch video, the tool was covered by creative publications that range from It's Nice That to Communications Arts, and upvoted on platforms like Product Hunt.
Our coalition has also been invited to speak and teach workshops on designing for justice at a variety of companies and schools.
Core Team /
Jason Mamaril (Brand Design Lead), Kemi Lawore ( Policy and Curriculum Research Lead), Jing Jian (Product Design Lead), Ashley Truxon (Communications Lead) Sarah Goerzen (Creative producer), Joshua Kissi, (Photographer and Film Director), Salih Adul Karim (Animation Lead), Sena Cadmus (Social Media Coordinator ), Jeduan Cornejo (Engineering Lead), Jai Mankoo (Engineer) and so many more people.
My Role /
Project lead, creative strategist, content strategist, curriculum writer and marketing lead.