2024: A Year of Stories
We’re honored to celebrate another installment of wonderful collaborators. Each offered their critical perspectives, lived experiences, camaraderie, tenacity, and positive vibes. As we continue to learn and evolve in the work we do, we will keep the wisdom they’ve shared top of mind. Onward into 2025 we go with good spirits, optimism, strategic minds, and focused hearts!
Illustrations by Katiana Rodriguez
Visit 2021 stories ︎︎︎ Visit 2022 stories ︎︎︎ Visit 2023 stories ︎︎︎
“It’s hard to find places that have political education and self love and healing. I didn’t want to feel like I was two separate people, and Sisters Unchained made me feel like I could have both identities at the same time.”
Find spaces that honor your wholeness.
Hawa Hamidou TabayiHawa Hamidou Tabayi is a 3rd year student at Dartmouth College and an alumna of Sisters Unchained, a refuge space for girls, young women and non-binary youth directly impacted by incarceration. Its work is rooted in abolition, shifting power from carceral systems by building communities of care.
Our time with Hawa taught us about abolition as a process of building and nurturing a community alternative to the carceral state. Working together to codify Sisters' approach and impact, we learned from the ways that they bring together their organizing and advocacy work with their personal journey of healing.
The project: We worked with Sisters Unchained to develop the organization’s strategic foundations and impact model, preparing it for a next stage of growth.
“They may become artists, they may become scientists, they may become who knows? But there's something to an arts education that teaches you so much about yourself, about how to look at problems from a thousand different ways and know that you can solve them most of the time.”
Creativity comes to life beyond the page.
Erin Muirhead McCartyErin Muirhead McCarty is Executive Director of the Community Art Center (CAC), an arts, childcare, and community center in The Port in Cambridge.
Our conversations with Erin helped us understand the value of arts education for children and teens – and how much bigger it is than craft or technique. She reminded our team that creativity comes to life in all sorts of ways, beyond the page or the wall, in how people tell their stories, approach a challenge, and care for each other.
The project: We got to deep dive into CAC’s work as part of a project to explore the professional journeys of BIPOC folks in creative careers to identify opportunities for investment and collective change.
“Trauma is where the truth is. Sometimes you don’t know you’re walking in the darkness. You gotta reach in and get to the trauma because you won’t get to the healing. “
Try for the truth.
Dr. Stacey BordenDr. Stacey Borden is founder and Executive Director of New Beginnings, an organization serving women leaving incarceration. She’s a storyteller who holds the legacies of women before and after her.
Stacey shows up with conviction and energy in each room we’ve shared with her. She taught us what it looks like to be open to change, to fight for it, and to say when you need rest.
The project: We worked with Stacey as part of a statewide co-creative process to develop a reentry council with the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security.
Our mission is to use design to reduce structural inequity in America. Agncy is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. © 2025 Agncy Design Inc.
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Boston, Massachusetts
Boston, Massachusetts