Community leadership, social cohesion, and organisation can play a meaningful role in shaping equitable futures, particularly in light of shrinking public budgets and growing contradictions within democratic systems. In this context, mutual learning processes between designers, different community and stakeholder groups, and commitment to communities’ needs and lived experiences are critical to shaping how social design can contribute to equitable futures. This involves harnessing community capabilities and acknowledging their limitations to build socially responsible design education, research, and practices that still need to be better explored and defined to support communities’ autonomy, empowerment and liberty. On the one hand, mediating communication and relationship-building between different stakeholder groups is an example of how design could contribute to or strengthen responsible community empowerment. On the other hand, addressing power imbalances and their political dimensions is essential to driving a shift towards more equitable futures – a shift that relies on functioning democracies.