Join us for a citywide exploration of what could beJuly 4 - 12, 2O26
San Francisco, California
INTERACTIVE
SHOWCASES
COMMUNITY-CREATEDEXPERIENCES
ART & SCIENCESTORYTELLINGA NEW KIND OF CIVIC CULTURE
Turning the US’s 250th anniversary into a celebration of civic possibility
We’re turning community visions of the futures we want into a festival of creative experiences, science storytelling, and public imagination.
Community visions translated by artists and speculative worlds crafted by scientists to capture the stories of possible futures, imagined by the people who will live in them.
Visions of the Future
Citywide Pop-Ups
Community visionaries crafting and hosting vibrant experiences across the city to create space for ideas and imagination in their communities.
Community Connections
Experiences designed to bring people together, spark new conversations, and support civic co-creation and exploration beyond partisan bounds.
Carefully researched content across festival programming to turn the most urgent issues of our time into engaging, creative, and uplifting activations that center participants.
Civic Ideas Exchange
“It is in dialogue that we uncover our biases, it is in community that we expand our knowledge base, and it is in coming together in places like this that we help shape and secure the future of our society.”
MICHELLE • PAST EXHIBIT ATTENDEETHEMES
GREEN FUTURES
Between the opportunities of emerging technology and the foundations of ancestral insight, what could it look like to cultivate a world where all living things can thrive?
SOCIAL FUTURES
In a world where it’s easy to get lost in the status quo, what might futures that center wellbeing, connection, and community actually look like?
TeCH FUTURES
Every generation has grappled with new technologies, and yet today’s choices may have outsized impact on both people and the planet. What do we – and don’t we – want from the tools we’re building?
MeDIA FUTURES
From stories to books to radio to television to internet, podcasts, and hyper personalized feeds, media is always changing. How could its next era get it right for needs of today?
So what is the Future of Us Festival?
A bold new experiment in civic possibility.
This inaugural festival is just the start. We’re building coalitions and collectives to support social connection, inspire civic vibrancy, sensemake complex but critical issues, and transform broadly collected, community-sourced visions into inspiring, participatory experiences.
More than a festival, Future of Us is a living exploration of what our civic culture could be when we create space to connect, imagine, and act together. Grounded in over a decade of research in experience design and public engagement, every event is built to unlock complex ideas, bridge divides, and spark collective imagination for a future shaped by all of us. It’s a critical first step towards the kind of civic culture we need to build more sustainable, just, and beautiful futures.
VALUES & COMMITMENTS
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VALUES & COMMITMENTS ✴
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We’re here for the mission, not the margins. As a society, we’ve invested more in the flourishes of democracy than its foundations, and rebuilding those foundations requires a space where people can exchange ideas openly, curiously, and without partisan pressure. Our commitment to being nonpartisan and nonprofit keeps the work focused on creating the conditions for informed exploration and genuine co-generation.
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Arts and culture are powerful tools for inquiry, connection, and openness — especially when the issues are complex. We support artists, musicians, designers, storytellers, and makers across craft to translate big questions into vibrant public experiences that spark imagination rather than overwhelm. We believe these topics don’t have to hurt; they can be joyful, hopeful, inspiring, and engaging, even when they’re hard.
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Across science, scholarship, practice, history, and everyday lived experience, we collectively know so much — but few spaces exist to meaningfully make sense of all that knowledge. Our role is synthesis, not discovery: bringing insights together, making them usable, and creating containers where they can expand through conversation rather than trickle down from talking heads. We’re building spaces where people can learn from experts and each other in ways that are relevant, relational, and genuinely illuminating.
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Communities already hold the vision needed to translate big issues into local meaning, and the people best positioned to lead that work are the visionaries rooted in those places. Across San Francisco and beyond, residents have stepped forward with creativity and care — often underresourced, unseen, or undervalued. We collaborate with these leaders to help them translate Future of Us themes in their communities, while celebrating and supporting them as the essential cultural stewards that they are.
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This isn’t just about a festival; it’s about taking real steps toward a generative democracy — one where people have the imagination, knowledge, agency, and trust they need to be co-creators of what comes next. As the world becomes increasingly shaped by increasingly complex issues, we need to get the foundations right. The festival is one step in a longer, larger, audacious, generous, and ambitious journey to build a new kind of civic culture, fit for the futures we actually want.
Why San Francisco?
As the country approaches its 250th year, we need civic leadership that comes from the ground up — not from political cycles or market forces, but from its people. We need a belltower city willing to take risks, push boundaries, and invest in bold experiments that center people over profit and collective vision over convenience.
San Francisco is uniquely suited to experiment with what could be. An emblem of both frontier technology and the arts, extreme wealth and deep social care, natural beauty and science, we carry the tensions of crossroads. Across our history, we’ve represented the kind of idealism, openness, audacity, and fellowship that the country needs. We’ve always been a sandbox city, and it’s our time to use our resources, ideas, and energy to help usher in a generative new era for civic imagination.
