Pilot Program — 2026

A working group for artists and designers who want their practice to matter.

Unsettle is a collaborative program for artists, designers, and cultural workers building creative practice in service of communities, movements, and decolonization. Not theorizing it. Actually doing it.

Four months. A small, committed group. Real projects, real stakes, real world.

Pilot cohort forming now — 2026

01 What it is

Making and being otherwise.

Colonialism is ongoing. Its logic lives inside our institutions, our aesthetics, our workflows, and our imaginations. Most of us who work in design and art are well-aware — and yet we find ourselves building things that reinforce the very systems we want to dismantle.

"The shift we're trying to create is from making and being in a way that accepts and contributes to colonization, to making and being in a way that disrupts it — and frees us to venture toward a compelling alternative."

Unsettle is a structured space where that shift can actually happen. Over four months, a small group of artists, designers, and community organizers works through the bottlenecks in their practice — building a shared vocabulary, developing real projects embedded in communities and movements, and learning to make in ways that are both critical and generative.

This isn't a lecture series or an academic symposium. We believe that realizing decolonial futures is ultimately a creative act — and that artists and designers are among the few people left who are practiced at bringing something into the world from nothing. That is the revolutionary power we want to lean into.

02 Why it matters

Speculation isn't enough.

There is no shortage of critical theory. There is a shortage of artists and designers who have the support, the methodology, and the community to actually apply it — to move from a state of proposal to a state of application in reality.

Too many of us are working in isolation: brilliant practitioners who feel their work has limited real-world impact despite strong intentions, who are burning out from balancing activism with survival, or who can't translate decolonial thinking into concrete practice.

Unsettle exists to change that. Not by giving you answers, but by giving you a process, a peer group, and a pathway from idea to action. We want to get as close to achieving decolonial outcomes as possible — together.

"Art is the space in which you behave as if conditions existed for making things you want to happen, happen — art is living the future in the present."
— Tania Bruguera

03 What to expect

Four months. Pilot program launching 2026.

The program is structured but participant-driven. Commitments, agenda, and direction are built collectively — with enough scaffolding to keep things moving, and enough openness to let real work emerge.

01.
Orientation & community building Shared vocabulary, group agreements, and a lexicon for decolonization grounded in practice. Getting to know each other well enough to be honest.
02.
Theory, made usable Seminar-style sessions exploring key texts and methodologies — not gatekept by academia. Resources are curated to what participants actually need.
03.
Project incubation Real, ongoing work embedded in communities, movements, or investigations. Peer critique, co-working, and problem-solving structures. Help showing, distributing, pitching, and sustaining the work beyond the gallery.
04.
Skills sharing & workshops Participant-led sessions from crit structure to prototyping to deployment. External contributors with specific knowledge brought in as needed.
05.
Documentation & open source outputs What we learn is shared. Methodologies are documented and made replicable. The work is built to have a life beyond this program.
06.
A showcase & living archive End-of-program presentation of participant projects and a digital platform for ongoing documentation.

04 Who it's for

People who are already in it.

Unsettle is for people who are engaged in decolonial thinking or practice but experiencing bottlenecks — in deepening their work, sustaining it, finding collaborators, or connecting to real movements and communities.

It's also for people transitioning from more traditional professional backgrounds toward work that is values-aligned. You don't need to have all the answers. You need a practice and a commitment to growing it.

Artists

Designers

Community organizers

Creative technologists

Cultural workers

Design researchers

Writers & researchers

Educators

One doesn't need to be a designer or artist to envision alternatives to colonialism — but Unsettle is oriented around creative practice as a core methodology.

05 Who's behind it

Initiated by two practitioners, built with many.

Unsettle is a practitioner-initiated working group. We don't have all the answers and shouldn't position ourselves as if we do. We're a scrappy and committed team creating the conditions for this type of work to happen and grow.

Bobby Joe Smith III

Co-initiator

Designer, educator, and facilitator whose practice is grounded in decolonial methodologies. Experienced in curriculum design, research, participatory workshop facilitation, and guiding project critique across communities and institutions.

Amy Xiaofan Jiang