About Us

In 2015, we launched the first Speculative Futures meetup in San Francisco as an experiment to explore how Speculative and Critical Design could move beyond thought exercises and into real design practice. We invited speakers to share their work and created workshops to examine the future implications of the changes happening around us. Ultimately, our goal was to examine how Design could play a more critical role in shaping the future..

The response was immediate. Within two years, the community expanded to six cities, including San Francisco, New York, Guadalajara, Berlin, and Austin, and by 2018 it had grown to more than 60 chapters worldwide.

In 2017, the group formed a nonprofit, The Design Futures Initiative, and launched PRIMER, an annual conference that ran until 2022.

Today, the community continues under new leadership, guided by the same core values: integrating futures thinking into design and strategy practice. Its mission is to educate, connect, and advocate for futures thinking across disciplines, helping designers and practitioners shape more peaceful, progressive, and preferable worlds.

Our Mission

  • We exist to expand futures literacy through design-led practice — helping professionals, students, and institutions develop the imagination, tools, and ethical grounding needed to navigate rapid technological, social, and environmental change.

    We believe the future is not something to predict. It is something to design, question, and co-create.

  • Speculative Futures is a hybrid organization — combining:

    • A global, open community of practitioners and enthusiasts

    • A distributed network of locally-led chapters

    • A shared institutional platform for learning, research, and public engagement

    Our structure enables both:

    • Global coherence through shared values, branding, and principles

    • Local relevance through regionally-led chapters responding to their own cultural, social, and economic contexts

  • Our community brings together:

    • Designers, researchers, technologists, and strategists

    • Artists, storytellers, and educators

    • Students, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and future-curious professionals

    We are united by a shared commitment to responsible speculation and design-led futures practice.

  • Design as a Futures Practice

    We use design as a way of thinking, making, prototyping, and storytelling about possible futures.

    Plural Futures

    We explore many futures — not a single dominant narrative. We resist ideas of inevitability and technological determinism.

    Ethical Imagination

    We consider the social, political, and ecological consequences of the futures we create.

    Open Futures Literacy

    We believe futures literacy should be participatory, accessible, and shared.

    Local Agency, Global Alignment

    Chapters operate with autonomy while contributing to a shared global mission and identity.

  • Across our global chapters and platform, we create:

    • Public talks, salons, and exhibitions

    • Workshops, studios, and learning programs

    • Speculative design projects and future scenarios

    • Community experiments and collaborations

    • Research, publishing, and cultural programming

    Our outputs are not predictions. They are tools for thinking, dialogue, and action.

  • Speculative Futures chapters are the heart of our organization.

    Each chapter is led by local stewards who:

    • Build and grow their regional design futures community

    • Deliver a minimum of 2–4 public events per year

    • Curate programming aligned with our mission and principles

    • Represent Speculative Futures locally and globally

    • Operate within shared global branding and identity

    Chapter Leads are both community builders and cultural ambassadors. They are supported by:

    • A global framework and operating model

    • Shared resources and playbooks

    • A peer network of chapter leaders worldwide

    Leadership is a practice of care, inclusion, and long-term responsibility.

  • By participating in Speculative Futures — as a member, collaborator, or chapter lead — you commit to:

    • Advancing design futures practice

    • Expanding futures literacy in your community

    • Practicing ethical and responsible speculation

    • Contributing to collective learning

    • Supporting the long-term growth of the global network

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