Crisis, Community, and Design with Debbie Millman
“Crisis, Community, and Design”
Going beyond its aesthetic value, design can also be an agent of sustainable change in our communities. On this episode of the Mic, guests Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator at The Museum of Modern Art in the Department of Architecture & Design, and Sloan Leo, Founder and CEO of FLOX Studio Inc., explore how we can use design to respond to the critical issues around us, with host, Debbie Millman. Through their projects and practices, Antonelli and Leo discuss the ways in which their work is spurring dialogue, centering community-first solutions, and modeling a more equitable vision of Our Future City for all New Yorkers.
Tune in to the podcast episode at the 15-minute mark on Apple, Spotify or Google Podcasts
Transcript Excerpt - Sloan and Debbie’s Interview
Debbie Millman 14:48
Thank you, Pamela. If you could stick around for a little bit. I'd love to have you rejoin our conversation after I chat with slowly. I am so honored to welcome Our next guest, Sloan Leo an impactful artist, writer and the founder and CEO of FLOX Studio Inc, a community design and strategy studio that emphasizes equity and inclusivity in each of its projects, FLOX Studios works with clients such as the Wikimedia Foundation, The New York Women's Foundation, and the donors of color network among many, many others. They were formerly the board of directors governance chair for the MS foundation for women, and now serves on the boards of Queer Archive Work, and the Institute for Afro Futurist ecology. Welcome, Sloan.
Sloan Leo 15:39
So happy to be here, Debbie. Thanks for having me.
Debbie Millman 15:42
Absolutely. So in the mission statement on the FLOX Studio website says FLOX Studio seeks to manifest a near future where power is shared, misfits feel they belong, and work is more human. Tell us a little bit more about how your mission at FLOX and the studio was conceived. Particularly interested in the Misfits part.
Sloan Leo 16:07
You know, I think that the gift of being the odd one out is that the older you get, the more you're like, well, this is really helpful. I grew up in a small predominantly white suburban upstate New York and I was one of the only black students in high school and and K through 12. And that continued to kind of follow me along my life, the sense of being the only or the non belonging person, whether because of my blackness, my queerness, my political orientation, or my approach to how I live it, I always was on the outside. And growing up as someone who went to college at 16, in graduate school at 19. By the time I got to work, I already had a pretty clear critical analysis. And I worked in social impact my entire career. And FLOX started with I think, like Paula, a little bit of a thorn in my side or a chip on my shoulder, because we come to nonprofit work after reading these beautiful websites with these powerful statements of conviction and intention around equity and sustainability and justice. And then we're thrust into a sector that is modeled after mostly designed from the corporate space. And so FLOX really started to say, how do we create space for people who are either in design and are like, there's something about social justice and community that I want to put in my practice, but they're isolated, working at a big company, or they work in the social sector, and they're like, this is not designed well. I don't even understand design. But I know this needs to be redesigned. So FLOX exist to be a beacon. For those folks who do feel this lack of belonging, because of their commitment to both design and justice and community.
Debbie Millman 17:44
Your work emphasizes the engagement of design in an authentic manner rather than the purely aesthetic. And I was really fascinated by this. How do you differentiate between the authentic and the aesthetic within the context of design? And how does this play out when it comes to addressing social issues?
Sloan Leo 18:06
Yeah, you know, so much of what it means to address a social issue is about the response or the responsibility of power to address that which is urgent. So inherent in that is a political sentiment about whose urgency matters. And what I have found in our work is that authenticity really comes down to are you moving from that place of survival? Are you informed by the urgent need for housing, for food, for justice? Or are you performing justice? Are you performing and signaling that like, yes, this is important, but the materiality of your life is not impacted by the design decision.
Debbie Millman 18:44
It's more performative.
Sloan Leo 18:45
Yeah. And so we really see the need for non performative design for design that comes from community and is done by community. There's the adage right now, we should move from design for to design with. And in our studio, we actually want to take it a step further and say, designed by so it's really moving a step beyond even human centered design, to be talking about community design, which is more authentic, and is rooted in lived experiences and building new capacities for folks who understand the urgency in a very felt and embodied way.
Debbie Millman 19:18
I'm really struck by what you said about whose urgency matters. Are you finding that we're beginning to take into account a broader sense of urgencies? Or are you feeling that we're still fighting the same old fights?
Sloan Leo 19:37
Well, I think it partly depends on what you mean by we. I as a designer would definitely say like the people that I identify that are a part of the FLOXiverse. As we know ourselves, we are acting with the urgency of a need for justice and to move towards abolition. I would say that the kind of larger design ecosystem is trying and appropriately grappling. Right, like IDEO, for example, was really taken aback by feedback they received around how they've handled race and equity. And they're also thinking about their response to that urgent call for equity. So I don't look at things in a black and white way we, at our studio, and in my practice, really been resisting the binaries, we have a non binary and a nonlinear understanding of how change happens. And so I think that designers and design institutions are learning how to find that more organic rhythm and response, after having a lot of design education and design practices that are actually quite static and stiff. And we want to find more ways to be in flow in the design community.
Debbie Millman 20:41
Can you talk a little bit about how design can be used? Or is meeting the needs of communities that are in crisis? Are any examples from your own body of work, or others that you feel are doing important work?
Sloan Leo 20:58
Oh, yeah, I think one of the outcomes of the pandemic has been a shared understanding of like, oh, community. Right. And people always ask me like, well, what is community and I always say, I don't think community is a noun. Community is a verb, community is about the shared stewardship of our resources. And we're seeing that in abundance in New York post or mid pandemic, wherever we find ourselves. You look at the early pandemic, and the mobilization of the Corona Couriers, which was a self organized bike messenger group that delivered food to people who are unable to get out of their homes, or I look at the mutual aid that has cropped up all over the country as a way of actually like a reparative intervention, to redistribute wealth and make sure that those resources get to the people who have an urgent material need. But then you also see it in projects that we have with groups like the Brooklyn Economic Justice Project, which is a coalition of seven nonprofits working in economic justice, who we've been using a community design approach to help them co design a community grant making program. So this small pool of seven nonprofits who are working on food justice, gender justice, job training and skills, we use design, we use illustrations, we use the design process to support them as they decided, you know what we want to do, we want to give away $40,000, to everyday people in Bushwick and Flatbush and East New York and Brooklyn to do work that's going to advance economic justice, because they know they are closer to the understanding than the foundation that funds them.
Debbie Millman 22:32
It seems like you're approaching design as a civic duty.
Sloan Leo 22:36
Yeah, I would say design is a civic duty. And it's also it's an orientation and in a lot of ways right now, it functions as a faith, as a way to feel hopeful at a time where we need tragic optimism more than ever.
Debbie Millman 22:49
Have you always had your approach to design centered around community, the needs of the community, community development? Or was that something that you evolve to?
Sloan Leo 23:02
I never had the benefit of thinking that I was independent of community. I think that there is a danger inherent in class privilege, which I did grow up with, where you can accidentally say, like, Oh, I got here on my own. I'm a self made person. And I, as a queer person, as a black person, as a trans person, know that those are false beliefs. There's a false I false idols of westernized racialized capitalism that says you got there on your own. So I've always been in community. I joined my first Community Foundation Board when I was 17. And we gave away money to women doing feminist social change in upstate New York. So for me, it's not even a, it's not even a question. It is the answer. And it is the reason
Debbie Millman 23:47
Where is design best promoting equity, both in the communities that are being served by design, or in the industry as a whole.
Sloan Leo 23:58
I love the work that Dr. Kristina Harrington has done. Originally, she was at DePaul University. And now I believe she's in Pittsburgh. And her work is actually a project called the Denizen Designer Project, where she interviewed over 120 self identified community designers to say, how is the field serving you? How are you serving the field? How are you serving your communities, and pull together this amazing zine and report that actually helps people who work in community to better understand that like, what they're doing is a type of design, and that there are other tools and frameworks and materials that they can be using in their work to support and evolve and ideally, liberate community.
Debbie Millman 24:38
So my last question is about a piece of your own work. Can you talk a bit about The Watermelon Project?
Sloan Leo 24:46
Oh, sure. I think much like pauwela during the pandemic, I found myself after traveling a million miles and eight years and never being at my house home for the first time in a decade and alone after the end of a long relationship. And I was like what do I do with myself here in this apartment and there are a variety of objects that I fell in love with from my grandparents. So my grandfather's brass knuckles, mind you, he was a minister, a black Baptist minister. My grandmother's recipe box address from when she used to host church dinners, and some other ephemera from my life. And so I started making videos and I made a video of myself eating a huge piece of watermelon without any shame in the sun. And I overlaid the short, I think it was two or three minute video with a story about how much my grandfather and I loved watermelon, love the fruit, but I never wanted to eat it in public. Because the history of how watermelon became a black fruit is actually a history of how designers in the marketing field said, oh, you see those black folks over there? We don't want them to be citizens. Because look at them eating watermelon in the sun, they are lazy. They are feckless. And so it was this horrific decision to steal joy from black folks. And so my piece was really about a private moment of reclamation of the simple joy that is, has been sullied by the way racism operates in this country. So the show was a multi piece mixed media installation at a gallery at Pen and Brush gallery in Chelsea, so is 1,200 square feet of those objects in dialogue with one another with an invitation to say, how are you relating to your Blackness, to faith, and to ideas of tradition, and routine and expectation.
Debbie Millman 26:31
Two things that I want to mention about about that I was sharing it with my wife who's a woman of color. And we recall that her nephew, much younger nephew, 25 years old, would not eat watermelon in public for that very reason. And it was just so heartbreaking that that still exists in today's society.
Sloan Leo 26:55
The trauma runs deep, as the trauma runs deep in our society for all of us. And whether your material harm day to day because of the way racism and anti blackness plays out. Or whether you're a white person who doesn't have any sense of culture, or identity, these systems, be it gender or race, do enact violence upon the body. And so the goal of my work is to actually acknowledge that violence, and then to find a moment for myself of deep personal healing that I'm able to share externally, and we've turned that piece into a 13 minute documentary that really allows it to travel. Because again, as the pandemic wears on, we've had to get creative about how do we intervene and create space for these more dynamic and heartfelt and, and complex conversations.
Debbie Millman 27:40
I find it so interesting, what you both have been able, you and Paola have been able to do in times of crisis by taking the crisis, turning it a bit on its head and offering new opportunities to see what could be done in that space. The last thing I wanted to ask you Sloane about the watermelon project was it seems when I looked at the materials that are for sale that even the percentage that goes to artists is being challenged and with more money going to the artists than than ever before, really.
Sloan Leo 28:15
And that's I will give a shout out to Don delic hat at Pen and Brush gallery. They're a gallery has been around for 100 years that prioritizes and only shows the work of women, gender nonconforming and trans artists. So they really did a wonderful job by me as a new and emerging artist that the sales of the work predominantly came to me and for my own financial sustainability. And that is not always the case, as I'm sure the three of us know about how the corporate and commercial art market really works.
Debbie Millman 28:44
Thank you so much, Sloane.