The Black Design Guild is a funded programme of support to help accelerate the growth, learning and progression of Black researchers and designers in a racist sector.

It’s an early investment in Black junior to mid-level researchers and designers through a 3-day retreat, 10 hours of dedicated coaching and ongoing meetups over 6 months.

It’s designed to nurture and nourish your research and design foundations, setting you up to become the type of design leader you want to be.

No. The Black Design Guild is currently in prototype mode. Meaning we’re testing a few risky assumptions and getting things in place to launch.

Before we launch officially, however, we will be running a pilot of our 3-day retreat.

If you’re interested in joining this retreat, please register your interest here.

The Black Design Guild is for Black researchers and designers who are currently in junior or mid-level roles.

It’s focused on people who are hoping to progress into more senior roles. It’s open only to people working in the UK and who are currently employed or have recently occupied a paid junior or mid-level role. We think this is important in order for you to be able to make the most of the investment of training and coaching over the 6 months - as a lot of the work will require you to apply your learnings on the job.

If you don’t fit this description or are not sure if this describes you, but are interested in this programme, please do get in touch.

We are using researcher as a catchall term for people working in roles where they use the principles of human-centred research.

There’s no perfect way to define this but it’s any role where you’re being paid to define and run processes that help you understand problems or identify opportunities by gathering data and insight or working directly with the people who are most impacted.

This can include roles that involve ethnography, observation, focus groups, interviews, co-design, workshops, brainstorming, concept development, concept testing, prototype testing, product testing and more.

You might be in a role called a user researcher, design researcher, or market researcher. You might also do research for product design, service design, programme design or as part of an innovation team.

If you’re not sure you fit into this description but are interested in this programme, please do get in touch.

We are using designer as a loose, messy, catchall term for people working in roles where they use the principles of human-centred design, design thinking, user-centred design, co-design and other design disciplines that involve people in the design process.

There’s no easy way to define this but it’s any role where you’re being paid to design and run processes that help you tackle problems or identify opportunities by involving humans (i.e. the people most impacted). This can include roles that involve ethnography, observation, focus groups, interviews, co-design, workshops, brainstorming, concept development, concept testing, service blueprinting, prototyping, prototype testing and more.

You might be in a role called a designer, a design strategist, a user-centred designer, a UX designer, a product designer, a service designer or do design work in an innovation team.

For some people, the role will include the use of visual or technical skills. For other people, it will be a generalist, non-visual and non-technical role.

If you’re not sure you fit into this description but are interested in this programme, please do get in touch.

When designing the Black Design Guild, we’ve been mindful that it’s important to address both sides of the coin.

There must be an investment made in the Black people working in the sector today. There must also be a reckoning to address the structural racism, bias and oppression that exists in the sector and often hold talented Black people back.

As part of the teams’ commitment to the following principles (“play our best role, not every role” and “balancing care for ourselves and others”)* we will focus our work on ensuring Black people in the sector have access to the training, coaching and community we deserve.

We will, however, continue to support, collaborate with and champion those who are working to support employers and to transform and reimagine the sector.

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*please see this blog for more details:

The Black Design Retreat is a three-day all-expense paid retreat in the UK.

The Retreat is a space for up to ten Black researchers and designers to come together in order to rest, heal and prepare for their learning and leadership journey.

On the first evening, the group will come together to meet, build relationships and set intentions for the weekend.

Over the next few days, the group will attend a series of sessions (optional and fixed) focused on nurturing the capacities and capabilities that will support you as you progress in your career.

Facilitated by leaders in the field, the session will be interactive, and impactful and offer space to experiment and explore. In between these moments, we’ll take time to rest, laugh, reflect, and play.

If you’re interested in signing up for our pilot retreat, please register your interest here.

As a member of a Black Design Guild cohort, you will get access to 10 hours of coaching.

This optional coaching is the ideal way to support yourself during your journey of growth, learning and leadership.

It’s well documented that beyond models, methods and processes, a leader is built through internal dialogue with yourself. Working towards understanding who you are, where you are, and where you want to be and building a sense of confidence, agency and belief that you can get there.

As part of the Guild, you’ll tell us a little about yourself and we’ll help match you with three coaches that will be a great fit for a chemistry chat. Once you’ve had those chats, you can select which coach will work best for you.

Your coach will then be with you for your first six months as a Guild member, supporting you through the retreat, as you use your healing and learning budget and as you start to implement the things you’ve learned.

It’s worth noting that coaching on the programme is encouraged but totally optional. That’s because while we think everyone deserves a great coach, we know that it’ll only work if it’s something you choose.

Every member of the Black Design Guild will receive a £1,000 budget pre-loaded card. You can use this card on anything you want that will aid healing, readiness to grow and learning. You’ll receive this in your welcome pack.

We think that one crucial part of a growing, learning and leadership journey is the people you surround yourself with.

They provide a listening ear and wise counsel. They champion you and help you foster deeper and wider connections across the sector.

As part of the Guild, you’ll enter your first six months as part of a cohort of up to 10 other Black researchers and designers in this space. You’ll meet each other during onboarding, at the retreat and at monthly meets where we commune over music, mischief or food.

After your six months as part of an active cohort, you’ll also be part of the Black Design Guild alumni for life. You’ll be invited to join meetups, reunions and events over the years, keeping you connected, and supporting your network to grow.

We aim for the Black Design Guild to provide an investment of around £5,000 - £8,000 worth of training, coaching and community support per person.

We aim to fully cover the cost of this for 100 people over 5 years.

When it launches, the process for the Guild will be three parts.

Step One. First, your employer needs to be pre-approved. This means they’re happy to provide this as an employee benefit.

In the first iteration of the Guild, while we expect to invest our time and attention into Black researchers and designers, we will also expect their employers to have acknowledged the structural issues in place and be committed to reducing systemic and structural racism in the workplace.

If you’re interested in joining the Guild but are worried that your employer will not sign up, please get in touch.

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Step Two. Second, you’ll submit an application to take part in the Guild. You’ll have options for how to submit the application, but we’ll do our best on this end to keep the requirements short and sweet.

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Step Three. You’ll meet the team through a mix of informal and more structured conversations to assess your fit and readiness for the programme. The investment from us is £5,000 - £8,000. The investment from you is 6 months of time including a 3-day retreat, 10 hours of optional coaching and ongoing rituals and rhythms to support you to connect with your cohort.

As this is such a significant investment of time on both sides, we want to make sure it’s the right fit.

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Step Four. If you’re successful, you’ll be invited to join the Guild. You’ll be sent your membership pack, containing information about the programme, details of the retreat, a pre-loaded charge card for you to spend on additional learning and healing, and information about how to get matched with your coach. You’ll then join us on the retreat to kick start your 6 months (well lifelong) journey with the Guild. When the 6 months are up, you’ll be invited back as an alumni to events and to offer support to the Black researchers and designers that come next.

This work is funded by Impact on Urban Health and originated and hosted by Hello Brave. The work is also supported by a team of advisors. You can find out more about us all below in the section called, meet the team.

We’ve been documenting the journey of this project since the start in this blog series. Here you can read about the origin story of the Guild, the design process we’ve used to refine the concept and follow along as we prototype and pilot elements of the Guild over the next year.

If you’re interested in joining the Black Design Guild when it launches, please register your interest here. This will also help with our first prototype - which is this website - testing appetite for this programme amongst Black designers.

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If you’re interested in offering the Black Design Guild as a future employee benefit, please contact us here. If you’re interested in collaborating, funding or otherwise supporting, please contact us here.

Unfortunately, we’re not offering direct support right now as one of our core principles is “to play our role, not every role”. Another is to “balance care for ourselves and others”.

So, the only direct support we’ll be offering in 2023 (so far) will be our pilot Black Design Retreat. If you’d like to join us, please register your interest here.