We build tools, spaces, and experiences that help people connect, reflect, and act together.
We don't bring solutions. We bring the conditions for people to find their own.
Civic Designers emerged from a simple observation: the tools we use to engage communities often fail the communities they claim to serve.
We saw town halls that extracted opinions without building relationships. Surveys that reduced complex lives to checkboxes. Technology platforms optimizing for engagement metrics while eroding conditions for genuine connection.
So we started building differently. With community, not for community. Designing tools that amplify wisdom rather than harvest data. Creating spaces where people can reflect together on questions that matter most.
We invite people to articulate questions that matter most and trace how lived experience shapes understanding. Local gatherings connect nationally through shared networks, with technology revealing relationships across thousands of community voices and bodies of knowledge.
We activate archives and build connections between historical voices and contemporary questions. Interactive exploration tools help communities discover resonances between then and now, creating temporal bridges that inform present action.
Through immersive storytelling, being present changes understanding. From 360° video environments to extended reality spaces, communities become shareable experiences you step inside as witness, not observer.
We facilitate practices that help groups surface pivotal experiences and learn from moments that shaped their understanding. Reflective tools create shared awareness, helping organizations recognize patterns and develop deeper insight into collective impact.
"We are researchers, technologists, artists, and organizers who built this together because we believe civic imagination matters."
— The Civic Designers TeamThis work requires more than your donation (but it helps). It needs your voice, your questions, your presence.
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