I AM. YOU ARE. WE ARE.
FREE TO SPEAK. PROTEST. DISSENT.
A JOINT EXHIBITION BY DESIGN CONSORTIUM & ACLU OF NEW JERSEY

On Tuesday, November 17, from 6 – 9 p.m., please join us and the Design Consortium at Express Newark to celebrate the opening of “I AM. YOU ARE. WE ARE. FREE TO SPEAK. PROTEST. DISSENT,” a joint exhibition that grew from a year-long partnership between the Design Consortium and the ACLU of New Jersey.

This event is free and open to the public. Light bites and drinks to be provided.

Shaped by a collaboratively engaged design process and rooted in Newark’s legacy of civil rights advocacy and the arts, this exhibition explores how design can help people understand, exercise, and protect their constitutional rights. Across two semesters, the partners explored communication as a process of meaning-making shaped through dialogue, participation, and shared experience, using design-driven research and co-building to generate new ideas, language, messaging, and forms of dissemination.

Bringing together work developed throughout the collaboration with new installations and participatory experiences created specifically for this exhibition, the work presented encourages reflection, conversation, and civic engagement. Visitors are invited to consider not only the constitutional rights explored here, but also the role communication plays in shaping how those rights are understood, exercised, and defended.