Keesa V. Johnson ‘21 was the first black woman to graduate from the masters program of integrative design at the UM Penny Stamps School of Art and Design. She learned the ins and outs of farming through her time at the UM Campus Farm, initiated lasting relationships with Detroit farms through SFSI’s urban agriculture internship, and became a founding member of the Washtenaw County Black Farmer Land Fund. She is currently a Food Policy Fellow with the MSU Center for Regional Food Systems while simultaneously building her own design firm.
What is your current position(s)?
I am a design consultant that focuses on community led design, strategy, and community research. I am a master facilitator of the design process. I currently work for the Center of Regional Food Systems at Michigan State University as a Food Policy Fellow. The food policy fellowship helps ground my work as the Racial Equity Chair of the Washtenaw Food Policy Council. In this role, I create healthy environments and tools that help with the cognitive realignment and restructuring that’s needed in local food policy creation.
Policy affects our mental health and our physical well-being in our society. My goal is to be a facilitator of a much needed transformative change in our behaviors, so I have to move differently as a designer. I can’t just worry about form and colors, I have to be concerned with strategy and the well being of all those involved in design decisions. This is what I was born and raised to do. I was trained and fashioned to be the designer that you see today. In my practice, I only use African and indigenous practices and methodologies. These African and indigenous perspectives are at the root of how I move, speak, and work.
What did you study at UM?
I came to the University of Michigan to change and transform. I worked for years within third spaces in education as an inclusive learning designer. I wanted to grow so I accepted a position as a Design Manager at the University of Michigan then I found the MDes program. As a graduate student, I chose to study the wicked problems of unequal access in food systems. I waited a long time to find a degree program that would align with my values, my principles, my personality and that was willing to accept who I am as a person.
In the Master of Integrative Design program, I immersed myself into the farming space by becoming the DEI manager at the University of Michigan Campus Farm. This was a very unique role which was co-created by Dr. Dorceta Taylor, environmental sociologist/historian and Jeremy Moghtader, farm manager. They both felt it was necessary to have DEI in the farming field to diversify the growing disparities of black and brown people in the field of farm management.
Due to my experience working on the UM campus Farm, I was able to apply to the SFSI urban agriculture internship which gave me ecological grounding in the Black farming space. As part of my internship, I was able to build an online ordering system during COVID for Jerry Hebron of Oakland Avenue Farm and Malik Yakini of the Detroit Black Food Security Network (DBCFSN). I continued working with them through my UM masters project and was additionally working with Peggy Vaughn Payne, the Executive Director of Northwest Initiative in Lansing, Michigan. Soon, all three became not only my community partners, they became my Jegnoch. (Jegna in African culture are special people who have shown determination and courage in protect his/her people, land and culture). They taught me that food and farming is intricate to our freedom as a people because it is the first economy in a civilized civilization.
Can you share about your work with the Washtenaw County Black Farmers Fund?
I was brought on board through my work as the first racial equity chair of Washtenaw Food Policy Council to be a leader within this space. They were just starting to form a coalition. Growing up, I was always taught that service is how you pay rent for the space you occupy while living on Earth. So, I’ve always engaged in service, wherever I pay taxes or live. I was excited about this opportunity because this was something that was going to help me grow and practice as a community driven designer. The Washtenaw County Black Farmers Fund started off by just trying to raise $50,000 for four to five Black farmers, but we ended up raising over $100,000 within six weeks. We are awarding 12 farmers who have some amazing farming models to uplift within Washtenaw county.
What is design justice?
Design justice aims to explicitly challenge rather than reproduce structural inequality. I’m into building tools that bridge. Within this type of bridging and healing process, you have to be accountable to yourself and other people. In this process, you learn and you also have to heal because these intricate wicked problems occur because of the deep levels of racism within the food space. For me, design justice reiterated what type of designer I wanted to be. I am about harmony and balance. I’m about creating things that are new and are beneficial for social impact that will last for centuries.
What inspired you to pursue this field?
Healing. Healing inspired my focus to work as a designer within the Food System. Design as a field alone can be devastating. It causes a lot of harm through toxic consumption in our society. What I learned from many black women in the food system is that change can be done through harmony and balance. So I’m here to create new design tools that will allow individuals to transform in a healthy balanced way..even through the creative friction which is needed if you’re going from one reality to a new reality. Our whole lives, all of our decisions, our politics, our concerns, and everything involves design choices. Design is in everything we do and what better way to learn about it is from some of the most magnificent designers in the world–farmers. You can find out more about the beginning design tools I started here as a design candidate at STAMPs.
Why did you co-found the Equity and Access Group L3C?
Before I came into the food space, I worked in technology as a creative project manager. I engaged in a lot of learning design and I got tired of people telling me who I am. I didn’t like that, and I didn’t like that those who were most impacted by changes when it comes to technology were never a part of the solution.
I wanted to create an institution not just for myself, but for other people who felt like they belong, they can come as their whole selves and they can work while getting paid. I’m starting to expand with a partner now and I’m hiring two other people. I don’t want to be a design firm where I’m the only consultant. I want communities that are affected by all these changes to be consultants. I want people to be able to bring their full selves to projects and be able to say “we’re excited about the lasting impact that will happen.” Therefore, I need groups of people who are like-hearted, and ready to get in there and get their hands dirty to produce the change that we need to see in our hyper-local food spaces.
You were a summer intern with SFSI’s urban agriculture internship with D-Town Farm and Oakland Avenue Farm in the summer of 2020. Can you share a bit about that experience and how it impacted your career trajectory?
I worked as a farm manager at the UM Campus Farm for two and a half years. Prior to that experience, I had no understanding of what it means to run a farm. During that time, I learned every aspect of farming and ecology while on the farm as I could. I also started working with Detroit-based black-led organizations D-Town Farm and Oakland Avenue Urban Farm during the summer of 2020, as a part of SFSI’s UM Urban Agriculture Internship. I learned that farmers are some of the greatest designers on the entire planet, even the world. The ecology and agrarianism of why we do the things that we do when we’re growing helped me become the type of designer I am today.
I went outside the context of design to study the subject better so that’s why I went into sustainable food systems to take courses such as unequal access in food systems or Food Systems Innovation.
Do you have any advice for UM students who are interested in getting involved with issues of food access and justice?
I suggest that students get involved with the UM Campus farm, join the UMSFP working groups and if you’re a grad student, go through the DEI certificate program if you would like to contribute to anti racism in the food systems. Also, food justice is not a noun. It’s a verb. Take the time to put in the work to understand the communities you’re there to help usher in change and transformation with — not for but within. Join the Washtenaw County Food Policy Council to take on projects that will not only benefit your school focus but it will benefit the soul work we all are here to do. Be uniquely who you are. It’s enough. When you’re ready to work in the community directly — contact me.
