Another Everyday Life is Possible.
Intervening in the Moment.
Imagining New Futures.
Another Everyday Life is Possible.
Intervening in the Moment.
Imagining New Futures.
Another Everyday Life is Possible.
Intervening in the Moment.
Another Everyday Life is Possible. Intervening in the Moment. Imagining New Futures. Another Everyday Life is Possible. Intervening in the Moment. Imagining New Futures. Another Everyday Life is Possible. Intervening in the Moment.
We are an artistic research and development outfit for the improvement of civil society and everyday life.
The Design Studio for Social Intervention (DS4SI) applies design thinking principles and design tools to partner with and equip neighbors, communities, artists, academics, and social justice practitioners to imagine, prototype, and collectively build more just and vibrant spaces.
We believe that another everyday life is possible.
Here are just some of the ways we are imagining & creating new futures…
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We believe in keeping things simple, smart, and human. Every project starts with listening and ends with something we're proud to share.
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The Design Gym is a community infrastructure, a mashup, a place to work out new ideas, stretch the muscles of imagination, meet neighborhood artists and organizers, imagine and prototype new solutions, learn design techniques, and collectively rebuild our communities to be more just and vibrant.
We opened the first-ever Design Gym in 2022 to engage people in worldbuilding that begins at the scale of their neighborhood. The Design Gym creates the conditions for BIPOC neighbors, artists, youth, organizers, merchants, and more, to imagine the physical, social, and aesthetic arrangements of their lives.
When we started, we asked questions like:
“What would you like to design or re-imagine in your neighborhood?”
“What new infrastructure will you imagine with your community?”
We have a community of folks who have been re-imagining and redesigning their realities ever since.
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In the Design Gym, artists, activists and neighbors come together to imagine, rehearse and perform new ideas for everyday life. Everything is free, including classes, talks, performances, and pop-up events. In 2025, we focused on Design Teams as a way to engage in more collective design.
Our first cohort consists of Community members who lead design teams that work together to prototype new ideas that they have imagined seeing in their community. We provide a Design in Practice course, as well as Open Gym time and tailored prototyping support. This approach has led to really active open gyms and lots of cross-fertilization amongst the teams. Ten community interventions are being prototyped through the Design Gym this year, including:
Design Teams 2025:
-Sunday Social News
-Mama’s Sauna
-Love Notes
-Department of Public Imagination
-School of Hard Feelings
-Roxbury Sunflower Project
-Public Kitchen
-Dance Court
-The Lot Next Door
-Gardener in a War/Theatre of the Oppressed
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We design social interventions that engage populations in imagining and designing new solutions to social problems.
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The Prototype Lab is a ds4si testing space dedicated to the practice of experimenting with new ways of being together in public life. It holds early-stage ideas, questions, and possibilities that aren’t fully formed and challenges participants to understand the functions of prototyping—to try out new ideas and to normalize them. The Prototype Lab exists to make experimentation visible, to lower the barrier to participation, and to support the ongoing practice of collectively designing, imagining and testing new futures.
Interested in proposing and rehearsing new futures?
Contact us @ MomentumLab@ds4si.org.
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Item description
Our Work
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In the Design Gym, artists, activists and neighbors come together to imagine, rehearse and perform new ideas for everyday life. Everything is free, including classes, talks, performances, and pop-up events. In 2025, we focused on Design Teams as a way to engage in more collective design.
Our first cohort consists of Community members who lead design teams that work together to prototype new ideas that they have imagined seeing in their community. We provide a Design in Practice course, as well as Open Gym time and tailored prototyping support. This approach has led to really active open gyms and lots of cross-fertilization amongst the teams. Ten community interventions are being prototyped through the Design Gym this year, including:
Design Teams 2025
Sunday Social News
Mama’s Sauna
Love Notes
Department of Public Imagination
School of Hard Feelings
Roxbury Sunflower Project
Public Kitchen
Dance Court
The Lot Next Door
Gardener in a War/Theatre of the Oppressed
-
The Prototype Lab is a ds4si testing space dedicated to the practice of experimenting with new ways of being together in public life. It holds early-stage ideas, questions, and possibilities that aren’t fully formed and challenges participants to understand the functions of prototyping—to try out new ideas and to normalize them. The Prototype Lab exists to make experimentation visible, to lower the barrier to participation, and to support the ongoing practice of collectively designing, imagining and testing new futures.
Interested in proposing and rehearsing new futures?
Contact us @ MomentumLab@ds4si.org.
-
The Design Gym is a community infrastructure, a mashup, a place to work out new ideas, stretch the muscles of imagination, meet neighborhood artists and organizers, imagine and prototype new solutions, learn design techniques, and collectively rebuild our communities to be more just and vibrant.
We opened the first-ever Design Gym in 2022 to engage people in worldbuilding that begins at the scale of their neighborhood. The Design Gym creates the conditions for BIPOC neighbors, artists, youth, organizers, merchants, and more, to imagine the physical, social, and aesthetic arrangements of their lives.
When we started, we asked questions like:
“What would you like to design or re-imagine in your neighborhood?”
“What new infrastructure will you imagine with your community?”
We have a community of folks who have been re-imagining and redesigning their realities ever since.
500+
People who participated in conversations, explored ideas, and imaginative interventions
Photography by Marvin G (shotxmarv) and The Corner 345 (@thecorner345)
Stitching Dreams, Building Worlds: Mending and Repair as a Collaborative World Building Practice: Materializing Tiago Gualberto’s The Dream as a Public Infrastructure Facilitated by Tanya Nixon-Silberg and Crystal Bi
Everyday Materials, Everyday Exchanges: Natural Hand-Dyeing & Binding Community: Materializing Amy Franceschini/ Futurefarmers’ Shoelace Exchange Facilitated by Francesca Santiago
From Hard Lines to Soft Fabrics: Connection, Collectivity, and Belonging: Materializing Mariángeles Soto-Díaz’s ME/WE Facilitated by Tanya Nixon-Silberg
20Q Social Making
Social Making Thursdays was a Design Gym prototype, curated by Anulfo Baez, that invited participants to create together as a way of practicing new ways of being. It asked: How can crafting together change the vibe of how we show up? What can collaboration and cross-pollination teach us about ourselves and each other?
Social Making Thursdays wasn’t just about learning a new craft for yourself; it was about rehearsing ways of being in relationship—with the materials we worked with and with one another—exploring how creation could shape connection.”
BOSTON ART REVIEW
DS4SI on Twenty Years of Social Practice for Civic Engagement
Kenneth Bailey, Lori Lobenstine, and Judith Leeman discuss the studio’s early days on occasion of their 20 Questions for 20 Years program, a month-long anniversary celebration in Roxbury that invites the public to use imagination and creativity to strengthen community ties in Boston.
Interview by Kim Córdova
THE HUB
The Hub was, in many ways, a pop-up version of DS4SI designed to welcome old and new friends of the Studio as we celebrated our 20th anniversary. Curated by Ayako Maruyama and Judith Leemann, it was a creative space where participants had a hands-on chance to learn about the Design Studio’s work from the past 20 years through the lens of 20 Questions, inviting new ways of thinking together.
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Visitors witnessed DS4SI’s work across the past 20 years through exploring the Timeline, the Archive, and other interactive installations, and learned about DS4SI’s methodology and tools for designing powerful social interventions.
They experienced curatorial talks, conversations, performances, and workshops. They studied with us as we reflected back and thought forward. Just like at our Design Gym, participants brought their own ideas to work out and stretch the muscles of our collective imagination. They met one another—the community of artists, activists, and academics—whether long-time collaborators or part of the growing merry band of misfits.
The Hub was an energetic and reflective space that held room for inquiry and witness alongside the curated programming led by our invited curators, co-conspirators, and the four themes they activated: Sense and Nonsense led by Anthony Romero, Affect and Aesthetics of Space and Place led by Tiago Gualberto, Intervening in the Moment led by Nato Thompson, and Rehearsing and Performing the Everyday led by Grisha Coleman. DS4SI Thought Ecology Lead, Judith Leemann, served as the Witness Curator, tending to our shared thinking.
The Hub’s curation, design, and fabrication were led by the Hub Design Team, including Hub Curator Ayako Maruyama, DS4SI Prototype Lead Maria Gerdyman, and Hub Design Consultant Senjuti Sangia.
At DS4SI, we often begin with a question.
Questions help us challenge assumptions about everyday life and open portals into new imaginaries. Our 20 Questions series builds on this practice: each question acts as an intervention, a small provocation placed in public space or inside our work to spark curiosity.
Whether someone seeks them out or stumbles upon them, these questions invite reflection on how we are as a public, what we share, and what might be possible. Each question becomes an opening into the themes that have shaped DS4SI’s 20 years of practice.
