people of design

People of Design (POD), the project guide for this resource, is a co-design company founded by Queer and Trans people with disabilities to innovate inclusive practices of community co-design and to share research findings publicly and transparently. POD specializes in co-designing equity and accessibility centred arts and culture projects, community based co-research, inclusive strategic and emergent planning and in sharing lessons learned in plain language for all to use. POD works to centre the lived and learned experience of historically marginalized communities with special attention paid to the care of all participants. POD strives to follow the 10 principles of Disability Justice as written by Sins Invalid, and the three tenets of Inclusive Design outlined below.

1. Nothing about us without us. The nothing-about-us-without-us principle expresses the idea that people know what is best for them and their communities. People must be valued as integral and essential contributors to every sector, industry and community worldwide. For POD, this means asking who we need to centre and care for in any project we do.
2. One size fits one. This principle means that everyone is unique. While systems and ways of working may work fine for some folx, we listen deeply and try to include from the very beginnings of a project people who are not familiar with the way systems have always done things. We pay particular attention to the prioritizing of Western Civilization and challenge its inherent preferences in culture, academia and research, participation, ways of making and ideas of excellence. One size fits one means co-designing processes from the beginning for everyone involved. This principle also acknowledges that each project defines its scope by what is doable at this time, with the people involved and with the resources available. Co-design sessions strive to include transparent conversations about what is possible.
3. Virtuous cycles, not vicious cycles. In a vicious cycle, knowledge is extracted from historically marginalized people and used however the extractor wishes to use it. In a virtuous cycle, processes are co-designed with learnings and challenges shared widely to benefit as many people as possible, not just the researchers or project guides. This includes participants having options about how to participate, paid participation, usually more than one session, participant access to the methods used, results accumulated, and free use of the final report and ways of doing in their own communities. It also means a commitment to recognize and work to reduce harm to participants, allowing time for conversation around feelings that come up with difficult questions, an opt in/opt out rule for any question asked, and the time to have conversations around why certain questions are being asked. The project guides also gather questions participants might have for funders, arts organizations or other artist community members to challenge the power dynamics in ask and answer situations.