Jan 30

Michal Osterweil

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Feb 27

Lesely-Ann Noel

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Mar 27

Haley Fitzpatrick

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Apr 24

Rafe Steinhauer

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May 29

Wayne Li

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Welcome Forging Fridays

In 2026, join us for Forging Fridays! A once-a-month opportunity to meet and learn directly from the creators of emerging design strategies, methods, and ideas.Together, we’ll adapt, implement, and test strategies that make a real impact on our professional, personal, and civic lives. Come away with practical, actionable strategies for implementing these strategies in our professional, personal, and civic lives.
The series features 5 sessions from January to May.

Last Friday of the month
14:00 EST
Free Access

Michal Osterweil

January 30

Co-author of Relationality: An Emergent Politics of Life Beyond the Human with Arturo Escobar and Kriti Sharma. Associate Professor, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

In this session called “Slippages to Portals: A Laboratory for practicing and implementing relationally,” Michal Osterweil will delve deeper into the possibilities and limitations of applying the framework and principles of relationally introduced in the book. Attendees will explore how to implement the five principles of relational politics (contingency, emergence, radical uncertainty, non-normativity, and heart-based epistemol­ogy) and delve into the concept of slippages to recognize how“slippages” can become portals.

Lesley-Ann Noel

February 27

Dean of Design at OCAD University

In this session called “Designing the worlds that we need right now! Our collective responsibility to create social change,” Lesley-Ann Noel will share key ideas and frameworks from the book “Design Social Change: Take Action, Work Toward Equity, and Challenge the Status Quo.” Attendees will learn and discuss practical strategies to integrate social impact into their creative practice and leadership.

Haley Fitzpatrick

March 27

 

A Design Associate at the MonViso Institute, a Senior Advisor at COBALT (Collaborative for Bioregional Action Learning and Transformation) in Portland, Maine, and Research Initiatives Manager at the Transformations Community.

We are living in a time of existential crises and immense change, which calls for (re)discovering capacities to engage creatively with uncertainty and complexity. This session invites participants to build a pluralistic awareness of their own relational field, or how the systems, places, ideas, and multi-species communities interact and shape their daily lives.
We will explore this by creating a simple experimental prototype: a personal practice that helps you interact with your relational field with intention and notice what emerges when you listen in pluralistic ways. The hope is to spark imagination around how you can strengthen trust in emergence by attending to what arises through relationship rather than planning, and to strengthen confidence in your own capacity to act in “unknown unknowns.” This session is inspired by what Hawaiian scholar Dr. Manulani Aluli Meyer (2025) describes as “mutual emergence,” as a way of living in relationality that supports collective growth and flourishing.

Rafe Steinhauer

April 24

 

Professor Steinhauer is primarily interested in how design methods (including design thinking and human-centered design) can be used to improve education. He works on projects ranging from enhancing curriculum & instruction to effecting change at the school- and systems-levels.

In this session called ” Metacognition as a First-Responder: Design thinking, Learning, & GenAI,” Professor Rafe Steinhauer will introduce activities he uses to prompt metacognitive awareness and collective ideation for practical and ethical GenAI. Attendees will explore both how GenAI can benefit and threaten transformative learning opportunities through two design thinking methods: Journey Maps and Janusian Thinking. This Forging Fridays session also includes the latest science on transformative learning and a collective discussion about ways to leverage design mindsets to enhance learning in the era of AI.

Wayne Li

May 29

The James L. Oliver Professor, holding a joint position between the Colleges of Design and Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, while also serving as a principal design consultant at Wayne Li Design.

What are the mindsets and design behaviors that produce the most meaningful and transformative outcomes for designers, practitioners, and learners? Building upon the teachings of his recent publication, Design Empathy and Contextual Awareness: Frames of Reference for the 21st Century Creative, in this session, Prof. Li takes you through how to identify when and what mindsets to use in your design thinking process. By being cognizant of and switching between the mindsets you use when designing in relationship, you can more fully leverage collective social impact.