DESIGN THINKING LAB

Our collective future needs bold and wild ideas. Bring them!—we’ll sketch the path to reality! Join us for Drawn Together, an interactive workshop where you’ll learn visual design thinking tools to transform bold visions into tangible community impact. Perfect for changemakers, innovators, and anyone passionate about creative placemaking and social innovation. Let’s draw the future together!

Grounded in real-world examples of community-led development, this session offers practical tools to help participants learn how to:

• Use Visual and collaborative approaches to turning initial, perhaps unconventional ideas into practical projects or initiatives.

• Use design thinking methods—emphasizing empathy, ideation, prototyping, and testing—to address social challenges.

• Explore ways to create tangible, positive impacts in communities, neighborhoods, or public spaces (creative placemaking), leveraging local assets and creativity.

• Focus on interactive, visual methods (such as sketching, mapping, graphic facilitation, or visual storytelling) to bring participants together around shared goals.

• Think big and bold “crazy ideas” and use structured, innovative processes to make those ideas actionable. 
   

Get your markers ready to draw a better future, together! 

 

Led by Coté Soerens, an award-winning social innovator and design strategist who loves to draw ideas and make innovation accessible through visuals. As a design strategist in social innovation and organizational psychologist, she brings decades of experience in place-making, community development, and social entrepreneurship to help you design human-centered strategy.