OCTOPI is dedicated to collective action against systemic oppression. We work to reimagine more inclusive futures through narrative activism, systems design and solidarity.
Based in South Africa where the impacts of segregation, exploitation and dehumanisation are ever-present, we see this as a mirror to the world. Recognising our entanglement in this complexity, OCTOPI is our practice of weaving alternatives into the fabric of the future.
Humanity has spent centuries designing for a world of separate things, separate problems, separate solutions, separate people. Social design starts from the premise that the conditions shaping our lives are deeply entangled, and that designing well means working in that entanglement rather than around it. It encompasses the collaborative and intentional approach we choose to take in addressing complex social issues at systems scale. Using life-centred design principles and processes, we create environments dedicated to facilitating intersectional, divergent and commons-based work that can explore new possibilities, empower communities and challenge systemic inequities.
We follow small stories into large structures, and try our best to grapple with complexity long enough for something genuinely useful to emerge. The housing market, data infrastructure, boundaries of a city, the terms on which communities can organise, all of these were built by people and can thus be rebuilt. It is our responsibility to design for people, not for profit, and this is our way of doing that a little differently.
Research and investigations
We explore social systems and injustices, using fieldwork and inquiry to reveal patterns, challenge assumptions, and build evidence.
Storytelling and data activism
We transform evidence into visuals, narratives, media and campaigns that make visible the systemic dynamics of the global majority.
Facilitation and collective inquiry
We design workshops, dialogues, and collaborative processes that engage diverse knowledge, build solidarity, and co-create pathways.
Research and investigations
We explore social systems and injustices, using fieldwork and inquiry to reveal patterns, challenge assumptions, and build evidence.
Storytelling and data activism
We transform evidence into visuals, narratives, media and campaigns that make visible the systemic dynamics of the global majority.
Facilitation and collective inquiry
We design workshops, dialogues, and collaborative processes that engage diverse knowledge, build solidarity, and co-create pathways.
Systems and strategy design
We map complex landscapes, design methodologies and develop interventions that address root causes and strengthen locally-led change.
Partnership and organisational support
We work with movements, organisations, and institutions to build capacity, strengthen networks, and co-create strategies.
Education and advocacy
We speak, teach, and partner across classrooms, panels, media, and policy spaces, ensuring research and grassroots insights shape public discourse and decisions.
Systems and strategy design
We map complex landscapes, design methodologies and develop interventions that address root causes and strengthen locally-led change.
Partnership and organisational support
We work with movements, organisations, and institutions to build capacity, strengthen networks, and co-create strategies.
Education and advocacy
We speak, teach, and partner across classrooms, panels, media, and policy spaces, ensuring research and grassroots insights shape public discourse and decisions.
This is the architecture of practices and principles that shape how we engage with the world. Beneath sit a series of understories and beliefs that ground how we see it, and primary to that is a lens of queering. If design is world-making, this is the persistent refusal of fixed categories and closed possibilities. Following curiosity into the spaces that dominant frameworks tend to leave out, and staying open to what is possible yet potentially unseen. Alongside it run commitments to intersectional feminism, pluralism, the commons, epistemic justice, and the question of what it means to be a good ancestor – each as a different way of asking whose world we are designing for, and why.
Listen
In this beautiful, terrifying world, could you listen more in the spaces made invisible?
What could reshape the way you see the world, and provoke you to do something differently?
Imagine
As the cracks in the system reveal themselves, could our radical imagination fill those gaps?
What would the world look like, what would it feel like?
Gather
There is great warmth in a table of people making sense of this messy world.
Who could you share a meal with? Where could you weave social tissue? How could you mobilise?
Challenge
You don’t like what you’re seeing? Disrupt it!
Build counter power!
Fight despair, be brave, push back on the worldviews that exploit and oppress.
Design
What we make today changes tomorrow. Design holds responsibility and deliberation.
Are you creating with future generations in mind? Who else could be shaping what comes next?
Support
What is the soil we are planting all these change agendas in? Is it doing okay?
Can we combine strengths, distribute weight, and set up better conditions to sustain the work of change?
Listen
In this beautiful, terrifying world, could you listen more in the spaces made invisible?
What could reshape the way you see the world, and provoke you to do something differently?
Imagine
As the cracks in the system reveal themselves, could our radical imagination fill those gaps?
What would the world look like, what would it feel like?
Gather
There is great warmth in a table of people making sense of this messy world.
Who could you share a meal with? Where could you weave social tissue? How could you mobilise?
Challenge
You don’t like what you’re seeing? Disrupt it!
Build counter power!
Fight despair, be brave, push back on the worldviews that exploit and oppress.
Design
What we make today changes tomorrow. Design holds responsibility and deliberation.
Are you creating with future generations in mind? Who else could be shaping what comes next?
Support
What is the soil we are planting all these change agendas in? Is it doing okay?
Can we combine strengths, distribute weight, and set up better conditions to sustain the work of change?
What is social design?