Uploaded December 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago
Black Roots: Grounded and Growing Toward Collective Futures is a conference at the Harvard Graduate School of Design presented by the Black Student Union (formerly African American Student Union) and Africa GSD. This event investigates the Black praxes of making space, taking space, and creating “tools for living” through three interconnected themes: Black theologies, Black ecologies, and Black geographies. It explores the complex relationships between belief systems, environments, and lands that shape Black communities across the diaspora. Design serves as both terrain and a tool to explore lineage, land, and lore as intertwined forces shaping our communities. Through keynote panels, workshops, performances, and creative exchanges, the conference critically examines histories of migration, displacement, and resilience in the context of ongoing political and environmental crises. Through dialogue and creative expression, Black Roots foregrounds how Black spatial practices shape, and are shaped by, resistance, resilience, and regeneration.
Panel: Blueprints for Liberation: Black Infrastructures of Creation and Care
Moderated by Kiki Cooper
00:00 Morning Address
12:16 Panel Introduction
18:28 Presentation by J. Yolande Daniels
34:06 Presentation by Mia Montrose
40:04 Panel Discussion
01:27:20 Q+A
Black Roots: Grounded and Growing Toward Collective Futures is a conference at the Harvard Graduate School of Design presented by the Black Student Union (formerly African American Student Union) and Africa GSD. This event investigates the Black praxes of making space, taking space, and creating “tools for living” through three interconnected themes: Black theologies, Black ecologies, and Black geographies. It explores the complex relationships between belief systems, environments, and lands that shape Black communities across the diaspora. Design serves as both terrain and a tool to explore lineage, land, and lore as intertwined forces shaping our communities. Through keynote panels, workshops, performances, and creative exchanges, the conference critically examines histories of migration, displacement, and resilience in the context of ongoing political and environmental crises. Through dialogue and creative expression, Black Roots foregrounds how Black spatial practices shape, and are shaped by, resistance, resilience, and regeneration.
Panel: Blueprints for Liberation: Black Infrastructures of Creation and Care
Moderated by Kiki Cooper
00:00 Morning Address
12:16 Panel Introduction
18:28 Presentation by J. Yolande Daniels
34:06 Presentation by Mia Montrose
40:04 Panel Discussion
01:27:20 Q+A
