Designing for Liberation: Tools, Methods, and Pathways for Just Futures
Liberation begins within. This course explores the link between inner awareness and relational responsibility, interrogating our relationships with each other, our work, and the environment. Learn to envision and build futures that serve everyone.
Course Overview
This course is an invitation to imagine and build equitable, liberatory futures – starting with ourselves. Rooted in decolonial, feminist, and community-based knowledge systems, learners will examine their positionality, power, and purpose in today’s world, exploring how personal transformation can lead to systemic change.
Unlike traditional leadership or social change programs, this course blends deep self-inquiry with real-world application, integrating inner-led transformation, trauma-informed practices, and the power of storytelling, imagination, and joy as tools for liberation. Together, we move beyond critique and into visionary practice – grounded in care, hope, and solidarity.
Who Is This Course For?
--> Designers, researchers, educators, and entrepreneurs who want to create work that supports justice, care, and community;
--> Activists, organizers, and social impact leaders seeking tools and frameworks for equitable, decolonial, and participatory worldbuilding;
--> Those ready to examine their positionality and power within systems of oppression, and lead with integrity, imagination, and accountability;
--> People seeking clarity and purpose in how they live, work, and contribute to more sustainable and liberated futures for people and the planet.
What You'll Learn
- A grounded understanding of their positionality, values, and role in systems of power, and how to cultivate more intentional and integrity-driven leadership;
- Practical tools and frameworks for building equitable, community-rooted futures, including participatory, trauma-informed, and systems-thinking approaches;
- A deep grasp of how stories, imagination, and ancestral wisdom shape our world – and the ability to reclaim these as methods for liberation and resistance;
- A personal framework for action – a tangible project that reflects their vision for justice and transformation;
- A supportive network of like-minded peers dedicated to sustaining resilience, hope, and collective care in times of crisis and change.
What's Included
Live Sessions
Interactive classes with your instructor
Session Recordings
Lifetime access to all recordings
Community Access
Connect with fellow learners
Certificate
Proof of course completion
Course Modules
Orientation & Course Foundations
Introduces the course's vision, learning outcomes, themes, and frameworks for equitable worldbuilding and liberatory futures, establishing a shared language.
Inner-Led Change for Collective Liberation
Explores the intimate connection between inner transformation and collective liberation, examining how our values, power, and patterns shape our impact on the world around us.
Interdependence for Collective Survival
Examines how our lives are intricately woven within webs of relationship and responsibility, exploring interdependence as the foundation for collective solidarity, wellbeing, and action.
Care as Resistance, Hope as Liberation
Centers care as a radical political practice and strategy for survival, examining how communities sustain themselves in times of crisis and uncertainty.
Disrupting Power: Workplaces as Sites of Resistance
Explores the idea of workplaces as sites of disruption, challenging whose knowledge, experience, and expertise gets centered and whose gets erased in maintaining oppressive systems.
Reimagining Work: Tools and Methods for the Futures We Desire
Explores work as a site of radical possibility, introducing tools and methods for collective liberation. We will brainstorm skills needed for times of crisis, exploring pathways towards more justice-centred careers.
Confronting Systems of Extraction and Protecting the Our Planet
Examines how colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism have fundamentally damaged our relationships with land and each other, revealing extractive systems that drive ecological collapse and human exploitation.
Closing: Sustaining Ourselves in Times of Crisis
Culminates our collective journey through project presentations and feedback. We end by exploring self-care as resistance, examining how we preserve ourselves and build networks of resilience to sustain our movements in times of ongoing crisis and uncertainty.
Real-World Project
Throughout the course, learners will design their own Liberatory Framework – a personal map of values, practices, and methods that guide how they live, work, and create change. This living document challenges conventional ideas of work and worldbuilding, offering a regenerative path for showing up with integrity and purpose. Learners will have greater clarity on their calling, impact, and how to sustain liberatory action over time.
About the Instructor
Hanieh Khosroshahi
Independent Design Consultant
Hanieh (she/her), is an independent design consultant, researcher, educator, and community organizer working in pursuit of people and the planet. Born in Iran and raised in Tkaronto on Turtle Island, her work is grounded in a commitment to gender equality, social justice, and collective liberation. She is co-founder of Thousand&One, a global feminist community supporting Women of Colour to thrive personally and professionally, and holds an MSc in Human-Computer Interaction from the University of York, UK.
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Live Online
25 students max
8 sessions
90 min each