Engaging Publics explores participatory practices that span across digital worlds, urban spaces, and rural environments. It asks: How do we engage in conversation across differences? How do we create resilient communities amid fragmented attention and the temptation of our glowing screens? How can we reimagine public engagement in the face of growing precarity, instability, and systemic fatigue? Within the fellowship, emerging practitioners develop a participatory project and an accompanying text to be published on Futuress.org.

The Pressing Issues online series explores a variety of approaches to publishing, translation, and archiving as political practices. The program offers a critical look behind the scenes—examining how it shapes discourse and unpacking the challenges, politics, and hopes embedded in its inherently community-based endeavors.

Invited speakers: Parasto Backman, Ly Xīnzhèn Zhǎngsūn Brown, Chimurenga platform, Lissa Choukrane, Loraine Furter, Be Oakley from GenderFail, Brigitta Isabella, Marwan Kaabour, Tamarra, Ferdiansyah Thajib, aqui Thami from Sister Library, and Kaiya Waerea from Sticky Fingers Publishing.

The Unwired Currents explored notions of technology beyond colonial, modernist, and solutionist views. The open program and fellowship brought together diverse perspectives from fields such as anthropology, history, and philosophy to art, design, coding, and activism to delve into Indigenous knowledges, ancestral ways of making and being, and community-based practices.

Invited speakers: Lesego Bantsheng (Rural Futurisms), Laura Campaz, Nicole Frei, Neema Githere, Farah Hallaba, Caos Ludd, and Ari Melenciano.

Over two days of presentations, roundtable discussions, and conversational formats, On the Seam explores how anthropology and design intersect—whether in education, technology, or engaged practices within and beyond academia.

Invited speakers: Dana Burton, Imad Gebrael, Farah Hallaba, Mahmoud Keshavarz, Cherry-Ann Morgan, Prathima Muniyappa, Helen Pritchard, Bibiana Serpa, and Grace Turtle.

The program was curated by Anna N. Nagele and Maya Ober, and coordinated by Mio Kojima and Anna N. Nagele.
Visuals by Heba Daghistani.

Design Educators* Unite! shared insights from within the classroom and education research to discuss practices that bring disability justice into the classroom, tackle systemic discrimination in design institutions, challenge hegemonic narratives in design history, and attempt to decolonize and depatriarchalize design curricula.

Invited speakers: Auge FADU, Cherrypye, Elizabeth Chin, Francisco Quiñones Cuartas, Layla Gharib, Sloan Leo Cowan, Ramia Mazé, Clara Meliande, Nina Mühlemann, Josefina Vidal, and Virginia Silveira.

Since 2020, Futuress publishes stories from within the urgencies of different communities across the globe. Our texts are mostly produced within fellowship programs but also include transcripted lectures and translations in collaboration with other platforms and publishers.