Past Themes

At the core of our work is the belief in change—driven by a desire for growth, a more sustainable future, and a deeper understanding of one another. This year, the Education and Training Team is excited to embark on a year-long initiative titled Seeding Change: Reimagining our Collective Futures , inspired by the visionary work of Octavia Butler and rooted in the transformative themes of Afrofuturism.

Afrofuturism invites us to dream beyond the constraints of our present reality, encouraging us to imagine more just, inclusive, and sustainable futures. It prompts us to ask essential questions: Where are we headed? What kind of future are we building? Is this the future we want? If not, what can we do—individually and collectively—to create the world we envision?

As Octavia Butler so aptly put it, “What sort of future are we creating? If it isn’t the kind of future you want, what can we do to create a better one?”

What do we choose to remember? Who decides what is preserved? And how might the act of keeping become a site of resistance, healing, and imagination?

Re/Collecting Futures invites participants to explore the power and practice of archives—not as static repositories of the past, but as dynamic sites of storytelling, refusal, and possibility. Inspired by feminist, queer, decolonial, and radical archival traditions, this year-long initiative will engage questions of memory, erasure, authorship, and belonging across disciplines.

This initiative offers participants the space and tools to begin cultivating their own personal or collective archives—whether through storytelling, object curation, digital mapping, zine-making, or other creative methods.

Rooted in the belief that archives are not merely about the past, but shape the futures we can imagine, Re/Collecting Futures approaches archival work as both a critical lens and a creative practice.