Joshua Croke (they/them) is a mixed-medium artist and designer working at the intersections of design, community, and queer urbanism.

Josh’s mission is to make queer a joyful norm. Their design practice centers around community engagement, creative placemaking, and expressive arts like fashion and music. As a queer urbanist committed to redesigning communities toward justice and liberation, Josh works to advocate for inclusive spaces and places that uplift, amplify, and center marginalized people. As an artist, they challenge social constructs and seek to provoke considerations and conversations around the fluidity of gender and the intricate realms of personal and queer identity. 

Josh is the founder of Action! by Design, a consulting studio that makes equity-centered change happen for neighborhoods and cities through partnership development, community engagement, and creative placemaking. They are also the co-founder and president of Love Your Labels, a nonprofit that explores identity and expression with LGBTQ+ youth through art, fashion, and design and works with families and communities to make inclusive and loving space everywhere.

Their newest endeavor is Queer For Cities, an initiative centered around telling queer stories, building queer networks, and helping redesign communities to be inclusive places where every person thrives. Josh also sits on the board of the Worcester Education Collaborative because they believe that access to education that prioritizes equity, literacy, and critical thinking will reshape the world into a more joyful, sustainable, and liberated place.

Find Josh at the intersections, or reach them at josh@actionbydesign.co. You can hear Josh loud and queer on the Queer For Cities podcast and radio show wherever you get your podcasts and on WICN 90.5 FM on Wednesdays at 6pm and Sundays at 11pm.

If you have challenges in your community that require collaborative and creative solutions, hire Josh and their team!

Action! by Design specializes in forming and facilitating collaborative partnerships and finding creative solutions to community challenges. They also speak on topics of queer identity and expression, equitable community development, and cultivating inclusive innovation ecosystems.

Accolades include Worcester Business Journal’s Central Mass Power 50 (2023), Safe Homes People of Courage Award (2023), BEQ Pride Magazine’s LGBT Leaders Under 40 (2020), Worcester Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 (2019), Boston Spirit Magazine’s 30 Under 30 Young Trailblazers (2017), Key to the City of Worcester (2016), and Pulse Magazine’s 15 People to Watch (2015).

Josh is a corporator for the Worcester Art Museum and the Greater Worcester Community Foundation.

When they aren’t doing all that stuff, you can find Josh enjoying delicious food at local restaurants, listening to music across the genre multiverse on Spotify, watching sci-fi TV and intense dramas, or listening to podcasts.