To our Speculative Futures community,
We hope everyone is staying sane and healthy and following the directions of your local government to control the spread of COVID-19. We're seeing an outpouring of support for each other and it's showing us how strong of a world species we can be. However, as the world continues to practice caution and social distancing, we will have to maintain these uncomfortable parameters for a little longer, so please follow the directions of your local government and remember to say THANK YOU to all the essential service workers keeping us alive.
Here are a few ways we are responding:
How You Can Get Involved
We have created a couple of spaces to help organize our network around hosting virtual events, finding topics for remote meetups, and grappling with COVID-19 as a community.
Remote Meetup Ideas Brainstorm
We have put together a brainstorm document for us to collectively share ideas for events, activities, projects we can undertake while we are unable to gather in-person
Also includes an area for ideas about how we can speculate about COVID19 as a diverse community
Past Meetups Repository
We have created a repository for past meetup topics, recordings, and resources that we can share to help find inspiration, especially for new chapters
Speculative Futures Slack
Please join our Speculative Futures Slack channel to join the conversation, share ideas, and stay up to date on news and events from across our chapters.
#COVID19 Slack Channel
Please post all your thoughts, questions, ideas, articles, announcements about COVID19 to our #COVID19 channel so we can reserve our #general channel for important announcements to our wider international community.
How We Can Help
The DFI board is committed to helping support you and your Meetup through this difficult time. Please reach out to our board members: Adam Zeiner, Luisa Ji and Dana Martens if you need support planning, facilitating, or organizing the technology for remote events and collaboration. We have a small staff of volunteers and limited tech resources, but we will help you to the best of our ability!
Staying Positive
We are all feeling the frustration and anxiety from all over the globe. In North & South America we are just starting our quarantines and are uncertain what lies ahead and if we can contain the new cases fast enough. We know that many don’t have access to food, supplies or essential resources right now, and our hearts are with the healthcare workers on the front-lines and the businesses trying to stay open as their customers practice social distancing. Please remember that though our situations may be different, we are all pretty much in the same boat. We must stay positive and constructive, help our friends, family, neighbors, and communities, and, as best as we are able, demonstrate resilience in these uncertain times.
Futures For All
We believe in Futures For All. The need for diverse perspectives and platforms that elevate more voices in discussions around where we are heading.
We know that many of you may be anxious, for yourselves, your loved ones, your communities, even your future in this uncertain time, but you are not alone. More than anything, Speculative Futures is a community, a collection of people from all over the world who meet up in different ways to speculate what could be.
We are committed to using this time to explore new ways to come together, to forge stronger connections between the passionate individuals and chapters that make up our network, and in the spirit of futures for all, to think about how we can speculate in solidarity and co-envision ways to create collective impact through the lens of futures design.
Stay safe, and our thoughts are with you.
In Solidarity,
The Design Futures Initiative Team
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Looking for info on our Virtual Open Forums or Z-TOPIA? Check the Events page