A quick update: We’ve spent much of 2022 getting local, with projects that focus on the future of arts and media in key spots around the country, including here at home in Philly.
In an event we organized with the Lenfest Institute, we welcomed journalism innovators from across the U.S. to join local outlets and funders in reimagining the city’s news ecosystem. Panels on equity, sustainability, and innovation featured speakers such as Errin Haines of The 19th, Sarah Alvarez of Outlier Media, Kristine Villanueva of Equally Informed Philly, Chris Norris of WHYY, S. Mitra Kalita of URL Media, and many others. Read some of the takeaways by fellow panelist Andrew Ramsammy, here.
We’re also pleased to share the latest from the National Endowment for the Arts project on how artists use tech as a medium, which we produced in collaboration with 8 Bridges Workshop. This briefing rounds up insights from leading makers, hubs, and researchers across seven regions. In lively roundtables, they explored the need to increase access to tech and training, advance equity across the field, broaden funding strategies, hone in on issues of digital preservation, and keep the conversations flowing.
In other news:
- Want to learn more about futurism, or share your own practice? Join our new monthly working group.
- Don’t miss the latest issue of Immerse on Avatars, Assets and Access, including my interview on whether documentary filmmakers should care about NFTs.
- Catch up on the latest from our work with the Guild of Future Architects, including Christie George’s reflection on the New/s incubator, stories from a regenerative community of the future, and the big picture via the guild’s newfangled take on an annual report.
Back To School — Dot Connector’s Tools For Teachers
With back-to-school season in full swing, we also wanted to share some links with you.
Dot Connector Studio resources:
- Our Impact Pack (printed and digital) — a tool designed to help you think through your goals, weigh the merits of various platforms, and define your relationships with audiences.
- The Making a New Reality Toolkit — co-authored with Kamal Sinclair, this provides curated resources for making emerging media (VR, AR, social media, etc.) more diverse, equitable and inclusive.
- Collective Wisdom: Co-Creating Media for Equity and Justice — a first-of-its-kind media field study now out from MIT Press, with an additional long-form series for Immerse.
Other resources you may find helpful:
- ExperimentalRealism: the BOOK — a collection of articles and profiles that explores the power of imaginative literacy.
- Getting you started in Strategic Foresight — a comprehensive list of articles and books to help you get you learn and utilize all things forward-thinking.
- A report that asks “Who makes the future?“ — and offers a glimpse of three alternative worlds in 2036, where the most important things are belonging, care, and repair.
See the full list of resources here!
What we’ve been reading lately with #DCS_Reads
We’re keeping an eye on debates in art, tech, philanthropy, and more. Follow along each week Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook and use #DCS_Reads to share articles you think we’d enjoy.
- Immerse explores the metaverse as experienced by the masses, sans VR and crypto.
- If you can type it, this AI can create it. Text-to-image AIs are changing art forever.
- A sci-fi movement that counters impending climate disaster and right-wing extremism: Hopepunk
- Left-leaning billionaires helped secure the 2020 election, will they do the same for abortion rights?
Fun With Futures
We’ve been working with Austin-based creative studio In-House International to design the look and feel of our Fun with Futures collaboratory. Stay tuned!
Meanwhile, we’re exploring:
- Moonshots: A radical game of thinking
- Social Work Jobs of the Future: Explore signals, possible jobs and imagine what might be coming next
- I met 2050 me, and here’s what I learned
- NFT vibrators now exist: What will sex be like in the metaverse?
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