About Hatch & Flock

Hatch and Flock creates radical spaces of opportunity through transformative education and community collaboration. Our vision for collective liberation is centered on cultural empowerment, transformational restoration, and creative freedom. Our audience centers community members between the ages of 18 – 25, in the Twin Cities metropolitan area, Minnesota, and nationally.

We have worked together for over 10 years and have combined experience of over 40 years. Collaboratively, our work centers on creating design approaches, like Racism Untaught, that addresses racism, anti-Blackness, and other forms of oppression through iterative design processes. We prioritize impact through our two foundational pillars:

Hatch

Education/Collective Learning
Multiple Ways of Knowing
Acknowledging Positionality
Experiential Learning & Methodologies

Flock

Collaboration
Building Relational Trust
Community Organizing
Intentional Action and Accountability

Programming

Hatch

Hatch, the educational pillar objectives focus on transformative education by acknowledging multiple ways of knowing, positionality, and experiential learning & methodologies. The collaboration and community engagement pillar objectives focus on building relational trust, community organizing, and the impact of intentional action and accountability.

The founders collaborated on the development Racism Untaught, a framework that cultivates learning environments to explore racism and oppression. The toolkit was co-developed in the Spring of 2018 to foster conversations and learning environments focused on critically analyzing artifacts, systems, and experiences perpetuating racism and the oppression of historically underinvested communities.

Flock

Flock, the community pillar objectives focus on working with emerging designers on projects focused on community engagement and activism through design. As educators from higher education, we noticed a gap in access for emerging designers who are interested in doing this work and are looking for ways to create sustainable relationships with our communities.

We are currently working as a fiscal sponsor for the organizations:

The Faculty, Librarians, Alumni, Graduate Students, and Staff for Justice in Palestine at the University of Minnesota is a collective at the University of Minnesota (UMN), are responding to the call by the US Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) to form the FLAGS JP group. In solidarity with local and transnational movements that stand with the people of Palestine.

North Star Health Collective is a community health collective focused on providing first aid and emergency care at protests, direct actions, and in moments of general upheaval around the Twin Cities and across so-called Minnesota. We train and support local street medics, as well as partner organizations and the broader community.

Community Aid Network Minnesota (CANMN) is a volunteer-led mutual aid site located in Minneapolis, MN. We work to build mutual aid bonds with our neighbors, organize volunteers and redistribute resources to ensure everyone has the means for dignified survival.

Team

Founders & Directors

We have over 40 years of design and design research experience and have worked together for over 10. Our work includes the co-development of Racism Untaught, which resulted in the co-authored book Racism Untaught, published by The MIT Press in October 2023.

Lisa Elzey Mercer (she/her) is a designer, educator, and researcher. Her interests are in developing and executing design interventions that fuel and sustain responsible design for social impact. The developed frameworks and tools are intended to create a space for conversation and knowledge exchange where participants can collaborate in creating new ideas and solutions.

Terresa Hardaway, PhD (she/her) is a proud Black queer woman dedicated to the liberation of Black and brown people through art and design. She is the Creative Director at Blackbird Revolt and a community-engaged scholar who created Project Naptural and co-created Racism Untaught. She is a core team member of African American Graphic Designers and collaborator with the Black Liberation Lab.

Formation Advisory Collective

This includes H&F board members and the following mentors who help to hold us accountable in our actions and prioritize the impact of our work. The FAC explores how design might be leveraged for cultural empowerment, transformational restoration, and creative freedom in the design industry.