Design is political. This realization is not new, but it has rarely been as urgent as it is today. The Social Design Days 2025 in Nuremberg show how design can become a driver of social change in a time of multiple crises - from climate change and social inequality to democratic challenges. Together, we will address the following questions: How can design be more than just the embellishment of surfaces? How can it become a tool for social transformation?
From October 22 to 24, the three-day festival will bring together designers, entrepreneurs and experts under the motto "Shaping social innovations: for everyone - with everyone" to formulate concrete answers to this question. While the Design Jam on October 22 and 23 is already fully booked - where concrete solutions for demographic change will be developed in an interactive workshop - there are still places available for the lecture day on October 24 - admission is free.
Under the motto "Designing social innovations: for everyone - with everyone", the speakers will demonstrate how design can strengthen communities, enable participation and create new forms of coexistence: Design can strengthen community, enable participation and create new forms of living together. And it's not about theories, but about tried and tested practice. About projects that work. About people who prove that participatory approaches are not only ethically correct, but also successful.
We present some of them here, the entire article can be found here on the bayern design website. Grafikmagazin is on site as a media partner.
Barbara Lersch - Design as a lever for social change
"I am helping to shape the Social Design Days because it is more important today than ever to think together about how design can act as a lever for social change," says Barbara Lersch, Chief Program Officer of the World Design Capital Frankfurt RheinMain 2026, whom Grafikmagazin will surely remember from our issue 03.25 "Festivals & Events". She will open the event with her keynote speech - bringing an international perspective to a local event. The World Design Capital programme, which the World Design Organization awards to cities every two years, recognizes the effective use of design to promote economic, social, cultural and environmental development. For 2026, the Frankfurt Rhine-Main region was chosen - under the motto "Design for Democracy. Atmospheres for a better life". Lersch curates a year-round program that shows what design can achieve in concrete terms. What she appreciates about design processes: "They enable participation, allow for different perspectives and thus ensure sustainable solutions, are at best open-ended and therefore flexible in order to respond to short-term challenges. Social innovation and design is therefore a 'perfect match'."
From left to right: Christina Sweeney (Communications), Matthias Wagner K (Partner), Kai Rosenstein (Director of Production) and Barbara Lersch (Director of Program), photo © Ben Kuhlmann
She is particularly looking forward to the Social Design Days: "The Social Design Days in Nuremberg have established themselves as an important platform for social design in Germany. I'm looking forward to the professional exchange, the reunion with committed players and exciting projects. Events like this are particularly important for a field like social design, which still needs more visibility, discourse and conceptual sharpening."
Katja Meinecke-Meurer - When knowledge should reach everyone
"Design makes a difference when it takes people into account who are otherwise easily overlooked." Katja Meinecke-Meurer, Managing Director of Tessloff Verlag, expresses what social design means at its core: the conscious decision to leave no one behind. What does that mean in concrete terms? "For us, it means giving children access - to topics that are relevant, to language that reaches them and to a world in which they can actively participate. Good design opens up scope and encourages children to experience themselves as part of society." The challenges are manifold: How do you explain climate change without moralizing? How do you make diversity visible without categorizing? How do you create books that don't just reach educated middle-class households?
"As a children's non-fiction publisher, we make children strong for the future, encourage their curiosity and help them to understand their world. What drives us: Content and formats at children's eye level that not only impart knowledge, but also strengthen characters." Today, the publishing house works with science-based analysis models to measure climate impact and has developed a comprehensive sustainability strategy.
She is looking forward to the Social Design Days "to exchanging ideas with people who want to shape the future cooperatively - because that's the only way it will work." Her thesis: true participation begins with access to knowledge - and this must apply to everyone, especially the youngest.
Benedikt Buchmüller - Architecture as an invitation
A room is never neutral. Benedikt Buchmüller has made this realization the foundation of his architectural practice. As an architect for the "Halle für alle" initiative, he transforms the question "Who owns the city?" into concrete architectural answers. "Halle für alle" is more than just a building project - it is a social experiment. At a time when public spaces are becoming increasingly commercialized, Buchmüller is creating places that consciously belong to everyone. His approach is radically participatory: instead of planning about people, he plans with them. His construction processes become democracy workshops.
His experience speaks for itself: "Personally, I have found in many projects that jointly designed participatory project ideas are better accepted and more participation takes place than with top-down ideas." However, this approach also challenges the designers themselves: "Professionally, however, I have also found time and again that as a professional designer you have to let go sometimes and give group players freedom."
Buchmüller develops formats that overcome language barriers, compensate for economic differences and incorporate different forms of knowledge - from expert knowledge to everyday experience - on an equal footing. He is looking forward to the Social Design Days "to the professional and interdisciplinary exchange with cultural designers" - because participatory approaches thrive on exchange across disciplinary boundaries.
Johannes Ehrnsperger - pioneer of participatory economics
For over three decades, Johannes Ehrnsperger has been proving a theory that was long considered naive: sustainability and profitability are not only compatible - they are mutually reinforcing. As a member of the management board of Neumarkter Lammsbräu, he has turned the Upper Palatinate family business into one of the most innovative sustainable companies in Germany and an experimental field for participatory business: a company that systematically involves its stakeholders - from farmers to employees and customers - in decision-making processes. The result is a business model that views social and ecological impact not as a cost factor, but as a driver of innovation.
What does social innovation mean in concrete terms? For Ehrnsperger, the answer is anchored in our corporate values: "'Caring', as one of our corporate values, is a particular guiding principle for social innovation. In this way, we take responsibility for people and nature in ever new ways." This approach is not static, but alive - it challenges the company to continuously find new ways. "I am most looking forward to the inspiration of how many facets of design there can be in a socially sustainable sense," says Ehrnsperger about the Social Design Days.
Nick Potter - Design as collective intelligence
What happens when design is no longer the answer to a question, but the method for asking better questions? Nick Potter, co-founder of studio formagora, embodies an experimental approach that sees design as a collective research tool. For him, design is not an individual creative achievement, but a form of collective knowledge production.
The interdisciplinary studio explores new forms of collaboration at the interface between design, science and society. Potter's thesis: The complex challenges of our time cannot be solved by individual experts. They require new forms of collective intelligence in which different forms of knowledge and perspectives come together productively.
In doing so, Potter consciously adopts an opposing position to the current innovation discourse: "Personally and professionally, I try to take a critical stance on the topic of 'innovation'. I think that many of the challenges and problems of our time cannot be solved with 'more', not with the mode of the new, not with market mechanisms. We are looking for solutions in the existing, in the past and in a 'less'." For studio formagora, design becomes a medium of communication - prototyping, visualization and experimental approaches create new possibilities for thinking and acting together.
Eli Perzlmaier and Marta Bielik - stories that connect
Social design doesn't just take place in products, spaces or digital interfaces - but also in the way we talk to each other. With Eli Perzlmaier and Marta Bielik, the Social Design Days will be hosted by two women who themselves embody what it is all about: the conscious design of encounters that empower people and open up new possibilities.
"Our world needs creativity, ideas and openness to new perspectives." Eli Perzlmaier knows what she is talking about. As a storyteller, story coach and brand consultant, she has been developing narratives that move and connect people for almost three decades. But her real expertise lies in something else: She creates spaces in which transformation becomes possible.
Ten years ago, Perzlmaier founded an international community for women - not as a network in the traditional sense, but as a laboratory for collective change. She has been involved in TEDx Munich for eleven years and has experienced how powerful it is when people not only develop their visions, but also make them visible.
"I'm looking forward to the special energy that arises when people come together to think about how to make our future more humane and liveable," she says, describing her motivation. Perzlmaier is not just a moderator - she embodies the basic principle of the event. As a story coach, she understands that every story has the potential to change perspectives and trigger action.
"When we create spaces where people feel seen, we change the world bit by bit." Marta Bielik's story is one of bridges: from Warsaw to Landshut, from a refugee shelter to international projects in Beirut, from personal experience to professional expertise. In her role at the Social Design Days, she brings precisely this sensitivity to the co-moderation: she ensures that people not only speak, but are heard. That people are not just analyzed, but genuinely met. Together with Eli Perzlmaier, she creates spaces for dialog in which different voices come together productively.
Social Design Days 2025
October 24, 2025, 10:00-17:00
IHK Nuremberg for Middle Franconia, Hauptmarkt 25/27, 90403 Nuremberg
Free registration at: eventbrite.de
The Social Design Days Nuremberg are sponsored and supported by the Nuremberg Chamber of Industry and Commerce for Middle Franconia. Media partners are CURT and Grafikmagazin.
Partners: WDC 2026, UrbanLab, Senior Citizens Office City of Nuremberg - Seniorentreff Bleiweiß, Social Entrepreneurship Academy, Anders Gründen
Click here for the full article with all talk speakers.
All information about the Design Jam.
The entire program of the Social Design Days 2025.
More about the work of bayern design.
