Food Futures
Dream Labs

To create a food future that breaks free of cycles of extraction and exploitation, we first have to envision it. Tap into the liberatory power of collective dreaming with us.

Spark visions of a food future rooted in joy, care, and reciprocity.

Artwork by Aisha Shillingford

Food Futures Dream Labs are creative workshops that grow our collective capacity to bring our dreams into reality with collective visioning and mapping. During each lab, participants listen to stories of community food sovereignty, and then immerse in a guided visioning and mapping sessions to help folx get specific on the futures they want to create.

  • This is about the radical and transformative power of dreaming in community.

    Rather than continuously replicating cycles of extraction, we believe that envisioning futures rooted in joy, care, and mutual belonging in community is a first step toward breaking out of harmful cycles and creating an irresistible future.

    If we can see it, we can move towards it.

  • Dreams from the lab will live on a public, digital page on Food Culture Collective’s website, to affirm our collective power to grow the futures we long for.

    Artists will also be commissioned to produce artistic expressions of dreams from labs, to reflect back our collective dreams and celebrate the multitude of creative expressions inspired by community visions of a future of care.

Hungry to dream and create with community?

Join a Virtual Dream Lab this Fall

  • September: "Rot & Renewal"*

    Part 1 - DREAM: Tues. Sept 17, 1-2:30pm PT
    We’ll listen to "Rot & Renewal" to spark our imagination, then immerse in a guided visioning session to get specific on food futures we want to create.

    Part 2 - STRATEGIZE: Tues. Sept 24, 1-2:30pm PT
    We'll get specific on how to move towards our visions. with guided prompts, to help us reflect on important considerations and next steps.

    ____________________
    * Registration fees are offered on a sliding scale. See the Registration page for details
    **We know that this work is only possible when we do it in community. Therefore, we highly recommend (but not mandatory) to sign up with a co-conspirator.
    ____________________

    Register

  • October: "Other Futures Are Possible"*

    Part 1 - DREAM: Fri. Oct 25 10-11:30am PT
    We’ll listen to "Other Futures Are Possible" to spark our imagination, then immerse in a guided visioning session to get specific on food futures we want to create.

    Part 2 - STRATEGIZE: Fri. Nov 1 10-11:30am PT
    We'll get specific on how to move towards our visions. with guided prompts, to help us reflect on important considerations and next steps.

    ____________________
    * Registration fees are offered on a sliding scale. See the Registration page for details
    **We know that this work is only possible when we do it in community. Therefore, we highly recommend (but not mandatory) to sign up with a co-conspirator.
    ____________________

    Register

Dream Garden

GLIMMERS OF COMMUNITY DREAMS

The dreams people share during the Food Futures Dream Labs reverberate into their communities and food culrture work. We’re reflecting back and affirming these collective visions of a world shaped by liberatory relationships with food, land, and people in our dream garden.

ENVISION THIS:

  • The values of collective freedom have flourished and spread. The places where we live have been completely reshaped so that all of our infrastructure, homes, and systems now support collective freedom. We’ve recognized that we all belong to the land, and that together we have what we need to flourish…

What does this place look, feel, sound, smell like?

No fences, continuity & fluidity in space, village flow |

Children's laughter |

There are many generations present at once in the community food forest |

Every neighborhood has a "food hub" that includes garden space, a community kitchen, gathering space. It's used for celebrations and sharing |

No fences, continuity & fluidity in space, village flow | Children's laughter | There are many generations present at once in the community food forest | Every neighborhood has a "food hub" that includes garden space, a community kitchen, gathering space. It's used for celebrations and sharing |

What rituals and ceremonies about collective freedom are people practicing?

Rituals and ceremonies to grieve and be in celebration together, in the commons, as everyday practice |

Rituals and ceremonies to grieve and be in celebration together, in the commons, as everyday practice |

How is this community governed to support collective freedom?

Land is governing. We listen deeply to their cycles. To their needs. Decisions are made based on the natural cycles, humans included. Decisions are made on a local scale. |

Intergenerational councils, including farmers and land stewards, as well as healers and teachers. |

We recognize the innate power that each of us holds, no matter what our "labor" contributions are. |

Land is governing. We listen deeply to their cycles. To their needs. Decisions are made based on the natural cycles, humans included. Decisions are made on a local scale. | Intergenerational councils, including farmers and land stewards, as well as healers and teachers. | We recognize the innate power that each of us holds, no matter what our "labor" contributions are. |

This is about the power of dreaming in community.

 Stories are seeds

Each Food Futures Dream Lab will ground in a story of food community reclaiming self-determination and sovereignty from the Radical Nourishment podcast. Each Dream Lab will listen to a story together then immerse in a guided collective visioning session to capture glimpses of a future where our relationships to food, land, and each other are rooted in joy, care, and reciprocity. Glimpse the story seeds here:

  • Producer: Donelle Wedderburn, freelance producer

    The history of indigo and its dye, and how the cultivation of this plant weaves with the history of enslavement and colonization in the Americas and Black land stewardship today.

    Listen to Seeding the Blues

  • Producer: Nino McQuown, farmer/land steward, community organizer and host of the excellent Queers at the End of the World podcast

    An interview in the field that travels, with an extraordinary Black land steward in Ohio growing a community garden created by her mother, an 88 year old powerhouse, community organizer and accomplished gardener.

    Listen to Nourishing Black Food -Sovereignty in Bronzeville, OH with Julialynn Walker

  • Release date: 10/30/23

    Producer: Alejandra Salazar, producer & story editor at TED

    The story of how the Black-led and POC-staffed BK Rot -- a community- centered composting organization that's changing how New York city composts -- came to be, and its vision for transformation.

    Listen to Rot and Renewal

  • Producer: Shephali, farmer/land steward & first-time producer

    Seed sovereignty and land stewardship access rights in Seattle's Black and Indigenous communities, rooted in the long arc of movement history and rich archival tape from protests

    Listen to Other Futures Are Possible

  • Producer: Nino McQuown, farmer/land steward, community organizer and host of the excellent Queers at the End of the World podcast

    Food as more than nourishment - food as love, as queer and trans community care after top surgery. Featuring the voices of folks with varying experiences of nourishment after surgery, interwoven with Nino's moving personal narrative of their own experience

    Listen to After Surgery, Food is Gender Affirming Care

  • Producer: Shephali Patel, farmer/land steward & first-time producer

    Indigenous efforts to protect the River Duwamish, formerly declared a superfund site in Seattle. Spiritual ties to water, a narrative centering the river as a sovereign being with profound lessons to teach us.

    Listen to The Rivers Running Through Us

  • Producer: Donelle Wedderburn, freelance producer

    Grief gardens as an act of radical self-determination and community healing

    Listen to A Lesson From the Leaves

  • Producer: Alejandra Salazar, producer & story editor at TED

    A deep dive into composting as sovereignty that delves into Pakistani, Colombian and traditional western ways of composting. The story centers Earth matter, a community org that composts over 7000 tons of food in Long Island and grows multicultural heritage gardens

    Listen to Growing Community from Compost

Lineages & Gratitude

  • Anti-disciplinary artist; Intelligent Mischief’s Futures Design Lab has inspired the format and questions in our toolkit.

  • Such as Octavia Butler, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, and Walidah Imarisha, for being leaders in building worlds where we are all free.

  • The group of folx who produced the audio stories that serve as the seeds for this project.

    Donelle Wedderburn, freelance producer; Nino McQuown, farmer/land steward, community organizer; Alejandra Salazar, producer & story editor at TED; Shephali Patel, farmer/land steward & first-time producer; gratitude to fellows for illuminating stories to nourish our dreams; Natasha Mmonatau, Narrative Strategist and Zak Rosen, Story maker for supporting the story and audio production.

  • Zen Priest & Movement Strategist, teaches Long-Arc strategy honoring our relationships across generations.

  • A cross-movement learning and strategy network convened by Movement Strategy Center to engage social justice movements in Just Transition; especially the founding team: Jovida Ross, Julie Quiroz, Kristen Zimmerman, Mimi Ho, and Taj James. The Transitions Labs blended futuring practices, cultural immersion, design thinking methodology, and embodied wisdom practices.