Relational Designer and Artist
What’s possible through radical imagination?
Exploring this question is at the heart of Avery Staton’s (they/them) work at the intersection of design, healing and relational infrastructure. Avery helps people, communities and institutions nurture healthier ways of relating to one another, building the capacity of social ecosystems to operate with greater care. For Avery, radical imagination is not abstract – it’s a practice of designing more just futures, cultivating new ways of being together and expanding what feels possible in our communities and institutions.
Avery brings together equitable design strategy, facilitation, healing-centered coaching and interdisciplinary artistic practice to explore and cultivate healthier relational dynamics across multiple scales. With 11 years of experience in equity design, dual master’s degrees in city planning and public health from UC Berkeley, and certification as a coach through the International Coaching Federation, they help organizations move beyond top-down approaches toward designing with – not for – the communities closest to the issues they seek to address. As founder of Staton Studio, Avery develops processes, tools and spaces that center grassroots leadership, redistribute power, and honor lived expertise.
Their constellation of practice includes:
-
- Designing projects and strategies for co-creating interventions with, not for, communities
- Facilitating shifts in power dynamics between institutions and grassroots groups through more equitable, access-centered engagement
- Providing healing-centered coaching for clients seeking alignment in their work and relationships
- Developing toolkits and curriculum that help others practice equity and imagination in their own work
Across their work, Avery cultivates the relational capacities that make collaboration, collective care and shared power possible. They create spaces for people to imagine beyond existing constraints, build capacity across differences and explore new ways of being in relationship with one another.
Avery’s practice is grounded in the belief that relationships are not simply the context for change; they are part of the connective tissue that makes change possible. Their work asks what becomes possible when we approach the challenges facing our communities and institutions not only as problems to solve, but as opportunities to transform how we relate, create and move forward together.
They cultivate this work through questions such as:
-
- How might radical imagination guide us toward more equitable futures?
- What becomes possible when we share power?
- How can collaboration across differences transform both communities and institutions?
- What does it look like to design for healing?
Selected past work includes:
-
- Co-founding and co-leading Reflex Design Collective, an equity design consultancy that intervened in traditional design thinking field to center the expertise of communities typically kept on the margins
- A founding member of the Equity Design Collaborative, a group of organizations working to grow the field of equity design and expand design justice
- Independent facilitations of community-led design projects, coalitions, and healing work between community and government institutions
See Avery’s full LinkedIn profile here.
To connect or collaborate, reach out here.
