Folks arrive, check in at the front desk, grab light morning snacks, and find their seats for the beginning of the day.

Kick off the day with Sara Cantor and George Aye as they welcome you to Livid Con!

Designers committed to social impact are working in an era defined by political instability, shrinking resources, and rising community needs. This panel brings together practitioners who apply design to social causes, asking how they sustain their practice, hold onto values, and create meaningful change when the landscape is shifting beneath their feet. Together, they’ll reflect on what’s working, where design is falling short, and how we can continue to design for justice even in difficult times.

What happens when a civic designer runs for elected office? Bronwyn Clarke shares lessons from her campaign for Tacoma’s parks board and makes the case for why designers belong in political spaces. Through stories of setbacks and breakthroughs, she reveals how design thinking can translate complex policy into language communities understand—and how running for office can itself be a form of civic design.

What if male contraception were the next frontier in reproductive justice? James Estrada connects emerging innovations in male birth control with shifting ideas about fatherhood, masculinity, and bodily autonomy. Drawing on his work with reproductive health leaders and innovators, he explores what social readiness looks like for this change—and how expanding the conversation to include men could reshape the politics of family planning.

Government innovation depends on care. Mariama N’Diaye introduces “Systems Caring Design,” a framework rooted in care ethics—attentiveness, responsiveness, competence, and responsibility—applied across all levels of government. Through insights from her research and podcast The Civic Design Room, she highlights how relationships, trust, and responsiveness—not just methodologies—shape effective civic design and help public teams truly serve their communities.

Impact reporting often misses the full story. Elodie Edjang invites audiences to rethink how organizations measure success by replacing rigid metrics with care-centered, participant-driven feedback. Drawing from her experience in film, non-profit leadership, and design research, she explores what could happen if communities co-created the systems that define impact—and how doing so could spark a new standard for accountability and equity.

Designers often focus on what’s broken—but what if they began with what’s beautiful? Ami Mehta challenges design’s obsession with failure and argues for “desire-based design,” a practice that centers hope, creativity, and community wisdom. Through stories from her work in public policy, education, and international development, she shows how celebrating resilience and longing can uncover new possibilities for systemic change.

As political and social conditions grow increasingly volatile, nonprofit and public sector leaders are finding new ways to protect their missions and adapt their approaches. This panel brings together social sector leaders to explore how they’ve integrated creative and human-centered practices to navigate uncertainty, engage communities, and push forward systemic change. This is a chance to hear directly from decision-makers about how to design for not only immediate impact, but for long-term resistance and resilience.

Time travel with us to experience a future where state government has fully embraced co-design, and individuals providing critical community services are respected and celebrated for their work. In this participatory experiential future, all programs and policies are co-designed with "living experts" - people with lived experience of the problems being solved. We will step into a moment from that ‘ridiculously hopeful future’ together, reflect on what we want and do not want from this future vision, and then work through futures activities in small groups to map the path from the pain of today to the possibility of an abundant future.

This one’s for designers who want to take their skills from the studio to the streets. In this workshop, you'll learn how to translate your human-centered design methods into powerful tools for community organizing. We'll explore how to engage local stakeholders, facilitate inclusive conversations, and co-create solutions that matter. By the end, you'll be ready to apply your design mindset to real-world social change initiatives in your own backyard.

In this workshop, aimed at people with grant or proposal writing responsibilities within your organization, we will talk about how we are navigating the search for funding within the challenges of the current political landscape. How do we change the words we use to describe our work without losing the very things that make our work important and special? What boundaries should we push and which should we live within? How do we change our assumptions about funders? This workshop will be an interactive conversation where participants can learn from one another and grapple with how changes in the funding landscape are impacting our work and how we can respond.

Join for an insightful, interactive workshop where you’ll surface lingering themes based on your own past projects. These themes will be used to create future-facing questions that can pre-emptively evaluate upcoming projects. Whether you’re a social impact designer or not, these Gut Check questions become the start of a Personal Code of Ethics, reducing the risk of harm to you and others in your work.

Learn to design delightful community engagement using Duo’s free In.Field Planning Placemat, a tool based on Elevated Chicago’s Community Engagement Principles. Intended for all experience levels, this workshop helps participants translate engagement theory into practice across projects of any scale. You’ll explore principles of respect and equity, map timelines that move at the speed of trust, define aspirations, and plan fieldwork. Attendees will leave with their own placemat and an overview of the full In.Field Toolkit, which offers over 35 accessible, joyful tactics for meaningful engagement.

Join us for the Angry Hour™ after LividCon from 6:30 - 9:00 pm at Time Out Market.