Applications are now open for the eighth edition of DesignTO Youth, a free program that explores design as a living practice rooted in curiosity, self-determination, and social responsibility.
This year’s DesignTO Youth program features the theme “design is everything” and invites youth between the ages of 18 and 29 to participate.
This year’s program, which provides access to creative disciplines and professionals, is built around the belief that if given the language, tools, and a cause, anyone can make more intentional choices around how they live, what they create, and who they become.
Guided by a roster of creative practitioners, participants will move through three phases of discovery, including foundation: understanding what design is and how it operates in the world, application: what it is like to design with real communities and how to do that with care, and design as a way of being: exploring what it means to live and sustain a creative life on your own terms.
The program unfolds across six modules. The first module will move beyond aesthetics to consider design as a way of thinking. It will explore how big thinkers across disciplines have used design to change the world.
From there, participants will learn to reframe contexts. They will look at situations critically, and assess opportunities and test-fitting solutions. This discussion will explore how designers work within real, imperfect conditions rather than idealized ones, and how constraints can be generative.
The program then turns to design as an act of care. Design is most powerful when it is in service to something larger than itself. This week explores the relationship between making, culture, and community, and what it looks like to build a practice around public engagement, collaboration, and collective work.
The next module, “design is for everybody,” explores meaningful solutions to life’s complexities, which often come from those who are most directly impacted by them. During this week, a speaker will expand on the ethical considerations that should arise when designers work with, and not just for, communities.
Through the stories of practitioners who built their own paths, participants will learn that you do not need institutional validation to begin thinking and working like a designer. The focus will be on agency, resourcefulness, and a reminder that you do not need permission to begin.
The program will close by turning the design lens inward. This week explores what it means to hold multiple creative identities: artist, designer, maker, entrepreneur, and how to build a life that has room for all of them.
The program will culminate in a showcase during the 2027 DesignTO Festival. Working together, participants will develop and present original design responses that are grounded in real relationships and lived experience.
The program has a rolling application deadline, with final submissions due by September 4, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. ET.
For more information or to apply, click here.
