From February to June 2024, an exciting line-up of speakers will share how they bring disability justice into the classroom, tackle systemic discrimination in design institutions, challenge hegemonic narratives in design history, attempt to decolonize and depatriarchalize design curricula, and much more!
Stories
We publish a wide range of stories on a weekly basis, including articles and essays produced by fellowship participants, transcripted lectures, and original pieces by the Futuress team, often in collaboration with partner organizations.
Check our article library!
Latest stories
#Earthshaking
members
A Water Story
Tracing the ebbs and flows of India’s shifting aquatic ecosystems
#Designing Resistance
members
One NO Leads To a Thousand More
Tear gas and transnational solidarity: a letter to Asma, the defiant customs worker at the Port of Suez.
#TRAVESSIAS—CROSSINGS
members
Becoming Savage
A Guarani Mbya leader on environmental activism, food autonomy, and why we should all challenge the concept of “civilization.”
#Feminist Curricula
members
Institutional Frictions
Reflecting on the possibilities and challenges of bringing activism into the design classroom
#Earthshaking
members
When a Stone Says No
Following willful stones and the creative potential of refusal against cultural colonialism.
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#Living Archives
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(Re)claiming Archives: استعادة الأرشيف
A palace of memories for collective imagination قصر للذاكرة الجماعية والأحلام العامة لتتذكرها وتتخيلها
#Epistemic Activism
members
“The War Is inside Us”
How can we even begin to understand the conflict in Ukraine?
#Living Archives
members
Flat-Packed History
Disassembling simplified narratives and recovering anti-imperialist histories in Northern Ireland.
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#Living Archives
members
A Race Against Time
How the digital gallery Swatch Bharat is documenting the rapidly disappearing native Indian aesthetic.
#Living Archives
members
“Please Say More”
Bec Wonders on the Vancouver Women’s Library, the legacy of feminist archives, and the complex history of female conflict.
#Designing Resistance
members
A Designerly Inventory
Provocations to elicit questions, prompt critical thinking and help designers reconfigure their discipline.
#Feminist Curricula
members
A Critical Statement
Why I became a product designer who does not want to design products.
#Living Archives
members
Named After Men
Colonial exploitation and egocentric bragging at the roots of the botanical sciences.
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As a queer intersectional feminist platform, Futuress strives to be a home for the people, histories, and perspectives that have been—and still often remain—underrepresented, oppressed, and ignored.
#Politics of Display
members
Yemanjá, the Whitewashed Orisha
Unpacking Brazilian diasporic memories and aspects of structural racism through an iconographic analysis.
#Feminist Curricula
members
“Teach What You Need to Learn”
A conversation about the Swedish Master program critically addressing visual standards and promoting “norm creativity.”
#Epistemic Activism
members
A Rejection of the Term “Vernacular”
An analysis of the colonizing word coined for the sake of othering design languages that dare to challenge Eurocentric norms.
#Living Archives
members
Chasing Images
In search of the Black aesthetic and my own identity via Louise E. Jefferson.
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#Vulnerable Observers
members
Living an Immigrant Life
Settling and unsettling experiences of an Argentinian designer living abroad.
#Politics of Display
members
Reflejos Ajenos
The museum, national identity and the impossibility of classifying the intangible.
#Contra-Colonial Colors
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Gold
Fighting for existence in the wake of stolen wealth, toxic metals, gilded bureaucrats and golden visas.
#Vulnerable Observers
members
minimal id entity
Bodies and selves: Reflections on visual coding and identity by Dior Thiam.
Register now for “Design Educators* Unite!”—a lecture series sharing feminist practices from within.
#Earthshaking
members
#Fashion #SustainableFashion #FashionFutures
Debunking hashtags to imagine generative fashion systems in times of ecological collapse.
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#Living Archives
members
Not a Matter of the Past
How lesbian feminist tactics and strategies can help us overcome struggles of today.
#Designing Resistance
members
Making Room
Transforming homes from sites of carcerality into spaces for abolitionist imagination.
#Earthshaking
members
Un-sustaining Sustainability?
Tracing the colonial origins of India’s rising “sustainable” fashion industry
#Vulnerable Observers
members
Imaginations of Care
Curator Keyna Eleison making a case for expanding knowledges.
#Epistemic Activism
members
Once an Assistant, Always an Assistant
How AI representation is stuck in the gendered past.
#Epistemic Activism
members
Wokefishing
The pretensive premise of progressive views, and the false activism in the fashion industry.
#Complaint Collective
members
Does Design Care?
Is “care” just lip service to a new buzzword in design discourse?
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#Designing Resistance
members
“They are killing us”
How Peruvian designers are reshaping the way we see femicide.
#Politics of Display
members
South is Up
On subjective worlds, alternative Earths, and map projections.
#Feminist Curricula
members
The Last Shift
Field notes from La Entrega Final, or how feminist activism plays itself in the Chair of Design and Gender Studies at FADU, Buenos Aires.
#Designing Resistance
members
Hidden Messages, Repeating Patterns
Artist Lawrence Lemaoana on coding narratives into textiles and his uneasy relationship with the art world.
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#Politics of Display
members
The Interlocality of Typography
A conversation with Yu Jiwon about the suggestions of typographic diversity in society and culture.