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

It’s an early investment in Black junior-to-mid level researchers and designers through a three-night retreat, an £800 Learning and Healing budget and three workshops, covering a period of five months in total.

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.

Yes. The Black Design Guild is officially out of prototype mode. We’ve received £400k from Impact on Urban Health and JRF to run the Guild for four years (four cohorts).

If you’re interested in joining our first official cohort (2025), please register your interest here.

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

It’s open to people who are Black or from mixed Black heritage working in the UK and who are currently employed, self-employed or have recently occupied a paid junior-to-mid level research or design role.

It’s focused on people who are hoping to progress into more senior roles. We think this is important in order for you to be able to make the most of the investment – 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 catch-all 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 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, catch-all 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 designer, design strategist, user-centred designer, UX designer, product designer or 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.

That’s okay! BDG offers a space for Black people in junior-to-mid level design and research roles to explore what it means to be leaderful, how leadership qualities show up at different phases in your career, and what tools and capacities you can build as you navigate your learning and career journey.

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 holds talented Black people back.

As part of the team’s commitment to our 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 space, care, resource 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, and play our part to share vital insight about the state of the sector year on year.

The retreat is a three-night all-expenses-paid retreat in the UK to kick off each Black Design Guild cohort.

The dates for this year’s retreat are 30 Jun – 3 Jul 2025.

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 week.

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 sessions will be interactive, impactful and offer space to experiment and explore. In between these moments, we’ll take time to rest, laugh, reflect, and play.

You can apply to the 2025 cohort here.

During the Black Design Guild prototype, we explored the idea of offering all cohort members 10 hours of dedicated coaching on top of their Learning and Healing budget.

In the end, as we raised less money than we hoped, we channelled our mantra of “progress, not perfection”, ensuring that the team were delivering what was possible and sustainable with the budget secured.

So we stripped back some things, including the coaching. Cohort members can, however, still use their budgets for coaching if they choose.

Every member of the Black Design Guild will receive an £800 budget (paid to their account as and when they prefer). Cohort members can use this budget on anything they want as long as they believe it will aid healing, readiness to grow and learn.

If you’re invited to join the Guild, you’ll receive details of how to redeem the budget 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 five-month programme as part of a cohort of up to 10 other Black researchers and designers in this space. You’ll meet each other at the retreat and at three monthly workshops focused on craft and support.

At the end of the five months you’ll have a celebration event and, after this, you’ll be part of the Black Design Guild alumni for life.

The Black Design Guild is free to join however it’s important to be mindful that each place represents an investment of £10,000 worth of support per person.

So far, we have the budget to fully cover the cost of this for 40 people over four years.

The application process has three parts.

Step One. First, you’ll submit a short application to take part in the Guild. It won’t take long and we’ll keep the requirements short and sweet. The focus is to understand the mix of people interested so we can build a well-rounded cohort.

—

Step Two. You’ll meet the team for a 15 to 20 minute conversation to meet as humans and assess your fit and readiness for the programme. The investment from us is £10,000. The investment from you is five months of time including a three-night retreat, three workshops with your cohort and a celebration event.

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

—

Step Three. 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, details of your workshops, and details of how to redeem your Learning and Healing budget. You’ll then join us on the retreat to kickstart your five months (well, lifelong) journey with the Guild. When the five 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 Joseph Rowntree Foundation and originated and hosted by Hello Brave.

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, the process of prototyping and ongoing news and views from the Guild.

If you’re interested in joining the Black Design Guild 2025 cohort please register your interest here.

—

If you’re interested in supporting the Black Design Guild as a funder or sponsor please contact us here.

—

If you’re interested in collaborating, connecting or otherwise supporting, please contact us here.

In the spirit of playing our role to centre wellbeing and care for the team, and not every role, we don’t have any current plans to grow the Guild beyond the UK.

If you’d like to explore bringing the Guild to your city or country, please get in touch.