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Antidotes to Toxicity Project Awards Competition
The Ecological Design Collective is a community for radical ecological imagination and collaboration. While our work centers on grounded, in-person gatherings, we also recognize the power of digital platforms for connection and shared learning. Unlike conventional social networks, our platform was intentionally designed and built from the ground up to reflect our values.
In an effort to support opportunities for collaboration among members of the collective and to facilitate engagement with our online platform, we are excited to launch a pilot cycle of EDC Project Awards. Three $2000 awards will be given this spring for this pilot cycle to support work that aligns with our 2025-26 annual theme, Antidotes to Toxicity. For more on this year’s theme, see here:
https://community.ecodesigncollective.org/antidotes-to-toxicity-2025-2026-edc-theme/
Completed projects may assume different forms: artistic or expressive in nature, event-based or media-oriented, physical or infrastructural and so on. Do you have a project in mind that engages this theme, and could use a little support or some community engagement to help refine what you have in mind? This could be a project that you’ve just started, something already in the works. To be eligible for an award, the project must fit the following criteria:
- Take an ecological design approach to our annual theme
- Be led by an EDC member, either as an individual or on behalf of a non-profit organization or a public-minded enterprise or agency
- Be collaborative in nature, bringing together multiple EDC members from different disciplinary backgrounds
- Be capable of completion within four months of initiation
- Take place in or around Baltimore in this pilot year of the initiative
To become a member of the EDC, sign up for an account at:
https://community.ecodesigncollective.org/
The EDC Project Awards competition aims to support collaborative work among the EDC community and encourage engagement with our online community platform, while getting eyes and ears on your ecological efforts. The messaging feature on our platform supports communication between EDC members. Also on our platform, you’ll find a discussion Forum space related to our annual theme of Antidotes to Toxicity, which you can access via the EDC website landing page, the Latest Posts timeline, the Topic Forums menu, or this direct link:
https://community.ecodesigncollective.org/forums/forum/antidotes-to-toxicity-2/
HOW TO APPLY: STAGE 1 – We are asking those interested in applying to introduce their projects on the Antidotes to Toxicity forum and, following the bullet points below, to develop their ideas in a way that encourages dialogue and collaboration with others. The forum space is set up to allow members to write discussion posts, make replies to their own posts, and comment and reply on posts made by others. Please remember that this is a public forum accessible to anyone online, although only logged-in members can write and reply to posts. Here’s what to do to participate in the initial prototyping stage of the competition:
- Please post on the Antidotes to Toxicity forum a brief description of the ecological problem, challenge, or issue that you hope to address with your project, ideally by mid-February. What are the challenges or issues that your work seeks to address? Please click on the “New Discussion” button to write a post of your own, and to give your post a title. Rest assured, you can always go back and edit and revise what you’ve posted before.
- As a series of replies to your original discussion post, ideally by the end of February, please share a few examples of works by others that have tackled this problem or challenge in an interesting way. These might be links to other projects, or images, or descriptions of other work that you have encountered. Please make sure to share these as replies to your original discussion post, so that readers can follow what you’ve shared as a thread.
- As a further reply to your initial discussion post, ideally by mid-March, please share a brief prototype or sketch of what you might like to do yourself to address this problem or issue, inviting feedback and engaging with whatever comments and feedback has been shared by others.
- If you are participating in the award competition, please make sure to read and respond to the ideas and examples shared by other participants, again as replies to their discussion posts. Please do so in a generative and affirmative manner to facilitate collective learning. All EDC members are encouraged to read and respond as well, even if you’re not intending to submit a proposal!
HOW TO APPLY: STAGE 2 – In the second stage of the competition, participants are asked to submit a complete proposal via email, building on the EDC member feedback and commentary they’ve received. Please submit your Stage 2 project proposal to curators@ecodesigncollective.org by April 3rd. Proposals should include the following elements, with everything combined into a single PDF document:
- Project title, contact email, and project team members including their handles on the EDC community platform.
- A two-page project description that describes the goals of the project, its relevance to ecological design and our annual theme, the approach to be used, and intended outcomes.
- Paragraph biographies of each project team member.
- Project budget accounting for planned expenditures
- Any relevant images, sketches, or illustrations
Proposals will be assessed by a team of EDC curators. Participants in the award competition can partner with EDC curators on their projects if they wish, but will not be treated any more favorably for doing so. Any EDC curator taking part in the competition will be recused from judging the proposals. Proposals will be assessed according to the following criteria, which should be followed in writing the proposal:
- Clear articulation of a design problem to be addressed and a strategy to address it
- Relevance to our annual theme
- Effective use of the community platform as a way of sharing ideas and soliciting feedback
- Evidence of interdisciplinary imagination and collaborative design
- Evidence of active engagement with the ideas of others also participating in the project call
- Likelihood that the project can be completed effectively within the stated budget and timeline
Winners will be announced May 1st and will be invited to speak with the EDC curator team about their proposed projects, at which point grants will be distributed. Funded projects should be completed by August 31st, and each award recipient team will be asked to write a post for the EDC that documents what they did by the end of September. Award recipients will also be asked to take part in a public panel on the projects in September. During the project implementation period, they will also be asked to post brief updates to the Antidotes to Toxicity forum.
For more information, and with any questions, please reply to this post, or write to us instead via curators@ecodesigncollective.org.
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