Ground in Context
We start from place, power, and purpose to see what is already holding your work – including the informal care and community‑led efforts your systems rely on every day.
Making the Invisible Visible
Redesigning the systems beneath your work.
Shaped by the communities your work is for.
Who we are
Organizational systems design for community‑led work in climate, health, and housing
We work in the in‑between space where institutional systems meet community life. We help community‑serving organizations change what happens behind the scenes – who has a real say, whose knowledge steers the work, and how they stay answerable to their communities in the day‑to‑day.
If you’re working hard to live up to your organization’s equity commitments but keep running into the limits of its current systems, you’re not alone. ACBC Studio is for leaders doing that work from the inside out.
We make the hidden patterns of power, care, and accountability visible and help you reshape them so they hold up in everyday practice and in partnership with the communities you serve.
Our process for building systems that can actually hold your commitments
Across all our work, we use our Everyday Justice framework to turn big equity commitments into concrete changes in how things are actually done in your organization.
We start by mapping the current patterns of work – the unspoken rules, the unseen labor, and where care and accountability are really being held – so we can see what is and isn’t working in everyday practice.
From there, we work with you on real decisions, exploring new ways of doing the work, sharing roles, and integrating community knowledge.
Weave Partnerships
We move with those closest to lived reality as co‑designers, so the way work moves across teams and organisations stays accountable to the communities most impacted.
Spark New Patterns
We make room for small, concrete shifts in how you meet, decide, and resource community‑led work, so more accountable ways of working can be tested in real time.
Stitch the Systems
We help carry what works into roles, agreements, and tools, so community knowledge, learning, and accountability can last beyond any one project, funding cycle, or leader.
Testimonials
WAYS We WORK
Studio Advisories
For leaders who want a strategic partner and a working lab for everyday justice. We offer space, thought partnership, and practical tools to help you make clearer decisions, bring others into the work, and practice more accountable, community‑led ways of working.
Keynotes & Talks
For teams and networks who need shared language and perspective to move their work. Keynotes and talks make the invisible patterns of power, care, and accountability visible, and offer concrete ways to think and talk about everyday justice in your own context.
Systems Redesign*
For a small number of partners who want hands‑on support to redesign decision‑making, roles, and community‑facing spaces. Together, we rebuild the systems underneath your work so equity, care, and accountability to community are built into everyday practice.
*Our systems redesign is reserved for advisory partners, so implementation can deepen work we’ve already begun together.
Everyday justice CAPACITIES
What grows through this work
Over time, this work helps grow four Everyday Justice capacities that make community-led, accountable ways of working more possible in everyday practice.
CARE & MUTUAL SUPPORT
Building the capacity to see and support the informal care already holding your work, and to organize around it so people can do the work with more energy and ease.
COLLECTIVE AGENCY & SOVEREIGNTY
Building your capacity to move work with communities in ways that center their power, so people most affected help define priorities and co‑decide what happens next.
MEMORY & LOCAL KNOWLEDGE
Building your capacity to carry forward stories, lived expertise, and community ways of knowing, so multiple forms of knowledge can guide practice and future decisions.
PATHWAYS FOR LIBERATION
Building your capacity to explore new ways of working inside real constraints, so your everyday practice more actively builds toward collective liberation.
Meet our founder
Hello, I'm Andréanne Chu
I’ve spent my life between worlds. That in‑between has given me a sharp eye for the invisible rules of belonging and power – who is centered, who is asked to adapt, and whose realities are pushed to the margins.
Grounded in a PhD in climate, housing, and health justice and participatory governance, I’ve spent the past decade working with cities, non‑profits, and community‑serving organizations on public health, climate action, and community resilience.
That work has shown me another kind of in‑between: between what institutions can see and measure, and the invisible work of interrupting patterns that extract from communities and respecting the self‑determination of those most impacted.
I started ACBC Studio as a bridge for this in‑between work – a place where we can notice the gaps between what is promised and what systems can currently hold, and where we expand what institutions treat as knowledge to include the lived and embodied expertise of the communities you serve.