Futures of Public Safety

Working with activists and residents of St. Louis and Ferguson, MO to imagine futures where we keep communities safe without policing.

When 18-year old Michael Brown was killed by a white police officer in 2014, St. Louis and Ferguson became the site of a national conversation around policing reform.

This discussion is usually framed either in protest against police (as in the protestors’ ultimate demand: ”Stop killing us”) or in pursuit of incremental change (e.g. reforming police training, hiring, etc.) It is less often that we are able to creatively envision an alternative future – a way to keep communities safe without policing. To address this, I worked with activists and members of the Neighborhood Policing Steering Committee in Ferguson to spark this conversation. Based on what Ferguson residents shared about their values and beliefs about morality, community and the role of government, I visualized three futures based in very different ideologies. These visions were then used to provoke continued conversation at exhibits and workshops.

The three futures exist on a scale from government-led to community-led, and each is displayed as a scene that explores a utopian dream along with its potential negative implications.

Read more at www.designradicalfutures.com.

Three photos– one large one on the left and two smaller squares to the right of it. The large photo shows two people facing each other at a desk, in front of a printed backdrop showing an office environment. The top right photo shows someone pulling on a medical glove with four fingerprints embroidered on the palm. The bottom right photo looks over a person's shoulder to see a computer screen showing a bureaucratic profile of someone named "Mary Rivers", with three bar graphs under the heading "Risk Profile".

 

Writing & Speaking

“Participatory Speculation: Futures of Public Safety”, Participatory Design Conference, Hasselt, Belgium, August 2018

“Radical Futures: Designing for Fundamental Change”, Touchpoint, the Journal of Service Design, October 2018

“Speculative Design + Designing for Justice + Design Research with Alix Gerber” [podcast] Hosted by Dawan Stanford, Design Thinking 101, June 2019

“Designing Radical Futures” [presentation & panel discussion] Dwelling in the Future: Imagining Tomorrow’s City, Museum of the City of New York, New York, June 2019

“Futures of Public Safety”, Dwell in Other Futures, .ZACK, April 2018

“Participatory Speculation” [presentation & exhibition] Louis D. Beaumont lecture, Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, Washington University, St. Louis, November 2017

“Futures of Public Safety” [workshop] Center for Social Empowerment, Ferguson, November 2017

“Listening & Framing: Designing Civic Experiences” [presentation] Louis D. Beaumont lecture, Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, Washington University, St. Louis, March 2017