For WDC 2026, the Women*s Design Academy invites you to a hands-on workshop, lecture, and subsequent get-together.
The event begins with a workshop: through open experimentation, awareness is raised regarding tools and tangible results, as well as change and scalability. Together, we will develop spontaneous design solutions that use artistic means to promote gender equality and open up new perspectives. The subsequent lecture by artist, author, and type designer Charlotte Rohde offers further insight into the intertwined concepts of gender and design. To wrap things up, we’ll gather for a get-together with cold drinks inside and outside the gallery.
The Hanna Bekker vom Rath gallery, centrally located in Frankfurt, is one of the city's oldest galleries with a remarkable history: its founder and namesake offered secret exhibition opportunities to artists persecuted and ostracised by the national socialists. Today, the gallery showcases both Classic Modernism and Contemporary positions. As galleries are generally closed on Mondays, we can occupy the premises all day.
Programme
Monday, 08/06/2026
2 PM - 5 PM Workshop
Judith Augustin and Sophie Dobrigkeit
6 PM lecture Charlotte Rohde
”I’m not a writer, I’m a wronger“
From approx. 7:30 PM Get-together
Galerie Hanna Bekker vom Rath
Braubachstrasse 12, 60311 Frankfurt am Main
Frankfurt City Centre, Dom/Römer
Women*s Design Academy
8 June 2026 *2–10 PM
Galerie Hanna Bekker vom Rath, Frankfurt am Main
As part of World Capital of Design Frankfurt RhineMain 2026
about
The Women*s Design Academy is a collective space for knowledge production, practice, and structural transformation. A place where questions are asked, experiences are shared, structures are analysed, and scopes of action are expanded together.
W*DA brings together women* and FLINTA individuals from design, art, and related disciplines to experimentally question and new design professional and structural conditions.
What do we need to work well? What do we want to know? The Women*s Design Academy is dialogic, collaborative and research-based. We aim to create awareness and enable tangible design outcomes that trigger positive change.
context
The W*DA is characterised by intersectional feminism; it is accessible, intergenerational, and democratic. Knowledge is not created hierarchically, but through experience and exchange.
The Women*s Design Academy understands feminism as a collaborative and research-oriented practice for process-driven, experience-based, and interdisciplinary work.
At the same time, positions are reflected: Privileges are not legitimacy, but responsibility — to open up spaces, share resources, and broaden perspectives.
team
Photo: Andrea Breyer
Judith Augustin
Artist, Creative Director
Studio Augustin
Judith Augustin is an artist and designer; she lives and works in Frankfurt am Main. Before founding StudioAugustin, she worked as a Creative Director for design and digital agencies in the Rhine-Main region, Paris, and Costa Rica. Her design studio specialises in branding, UX design, social media, and various digital applications.
Sophie Dobrigkeit
Designer, Creative Director
Dobrigkeit Design
Sophie Dobrigkeit is a designer, creative director and owner of Dobrigkeit Design in Bensheim an der Bergstrasse. Her current projects include strategic brand development as well as the conception and implementation of branding concepts for events – in both analogue and digital spaces. She is founder of the experimental workshop OUGRAPO and a lecturer for design fundamentals and design methodology.
background
Judith Augustin and Sophie Dobrigkeit are committed to the sustainable networking of women* in design, self-determined career paths, and female* leadership. Since 2021, they have been jointly organising and moderating various formats, the heart of which is the DDC Women's Table, which they host bi-monthly — now with over 30 events digitally and in person in Frankfurt, Munich, Stuttgart and Berlin.
Another project within the German Design Club is the programme series Learn & Burn, which they co-initiated in 2021 with the event "Learn & Burn — Lab for Female and Diverse Leadership".
Augustin and Dobrigkeit regularly appear on panels and in talks concerning feminism and gender equality, as well as collaborative creativity in the art and design sector. They cooperate with other networks, such as the women artists' network. Frankfurter Kranz.
For businesses, they developed the Cross Innovation Workshops series, in which project teams collaboratively generate ideas using design methods.
formats (selection)
Since 2021 — DDC Women's Table — Programme, Moderation, Community
2021 – Learn & Burn – Lab for Female Leadership
2025 – Learn & Burn – Female Networking Day
DISCUSSIONS
2026 — Women in Design – Where Are We Now? Gender Equality in the Creative Industries,
GCES / German Creative Economy Summit, Hamburg
2026 — Panel talk „Designing Feministically?“, organised by Merle Hesse, Lilli Britsch, Luisa Laurion and Smilla Thöle, HAWK University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Hildesheim
2025 – Designing Feminism Podcast, DDCAST 214 – Judith Augustin / Sophie Dobrigkeit
Workshops
2025 – Unleashing Female Creativity, GE Healthcare – DACH Women’s Network
2025 — Female Creativity Empowerment, GE Healthcare – DACH Women's Network
2023 — Networking Reimagined, Keynote and Workshop at the BusinessWomenBergstraße Member Meeting
2022 — Out of the creative block, Lunch Workshop Content Marketing Forum
thanks to:
Women*s Design Academy
8 June 2026 *2–10 PM
Galerie Hanna Bekker vom Rath, Frankfurt am Main
As part of the WDC 2026
