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Design Against Racism: From Harm to Repair

With Omari Souza

Date: Thursday 8 October 2026
Location: St Bride Foundation

In-person times (BST):
Doors/bar: 6.15pm
Talk starts: 7pm
Talk ends: 9.15pm
In-person tickets: £7

Please note: Ticket sales end at 4pm on the day of the talk. If available, tickets purchased in-person on the door will cost £7 per person. Please do call or email us to check if an event has any tickets left as you may not be admitted if we have sold out.

PLEASE NOTE, there is no live-stream of this event.  This is in person ONLY.

Design is never neutral. The objects, systems, spaces, and messages designers create can reinforce existing inequities – or help communities imagine and build more just futures.

Drawing from his book Design Against Racism: Creating Work That Transforms Communities, Omari Souza examines the historical relationship between design and systemic racism, including the ways professional practices have excluded, misrepresented, and harmed marginalized communities. He will introduce restorative design as an alternative approach grounded in encounter, repair, and restoration. Through historical examples, contemporary case studies, and reflections from his own practice, Souza will ask what it means for designers to move beyond representation and good intentions toward accountability, community partnership, and meaningful structural change.

Following Omari’s talk, we will create time and space to reflect one year on from our 2025 conference, ‘Doing the Work’.

The conference celebrated the creative brilliance of marginalised designers, confronted the realities of racism and exclusion in the design industry and explored pathways to build an inclusive, equitable future for all. The day culminated in a collective act of creation where the conference speakers and participants workshopped ideas into a shared manifesto. Printed at St Bride Foundation’s letterpress workshop, this manifesto stands as a permanent record of our conversations and commitments – a tool for creatives and organisations to adopt, promote, and live by.

Following the talk, participants will have the opportunity to purchase copies of Omari’s book, network with like-minded creatives and receive a copy of our manifesto (numbers are limited).

Omari Souza is a designer, researcher, educator, and author whose work examines the intersections of design, culture, identity, and social justice. He is the author of Design Against Racism: Creating Work That Transforms Communities and co-editor of An Anthology of Blackness: The State of Black Design, recognized by the Financial Times as one of the best design books of 2023.

Souza is the founder of The State of Black Design, a national platform dedicated to increasing opportunities for Black designers through conferences, research, education, mentorship, and professional development. His research explores restorative design, cultural intelligence, institutional inequity, and the responsibilities designers carry when working with historically excluded communities.

A first-generation American of Jamaican descent, Souza was raised in the Bronx, New York. He holds a BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art and an MFA from Kent State University. His professional background spans design research, strategy, media, and higher education, including previous work with Capital One, VIBE, CBS Radio, and The Buffalo News.

Here are links to articles to find out more about Omari and his work: 
Forbes
Fast Company
Daily Heller

If you have any access requirements, please contact events@sbf.org.uk ahead of the event.