To our community:
Since 2016, The Future is You and Me has offered 3 workshop series, supported the launch of Femmes Interactive, a subsidiary workshops series for interactive fiction and coding for womxn and non-binary folx of colour; and connected with 27 participants, 29 mentor/speakers and over 100+ applicants. We are proud to be recognized as leaders in equity and access in the Vancouver arts and culture community.
Recently, we’ve been looking for a way to convene the community that surrounds The Future and engage the many creative women of colour who we look up to and work with, who haven’t been able to participate yet due to their age, timing, or our capacity.
As the organization and the community grows, we find the best way to move forward is to share the visioning and planning with The Future alumni and our peers.
So, we’re going to try something new with the inaugural Future Forum. The 2020 Future Forum is a one-day symposium for women of colour artists and creatives to network, share knowledge, and scheme. It will take place on a Saturday or Sunday in February or March 2020 at a venue in Vancouver (to be determined*).
We are inviting creative women of colour in the Future community to pitch ideas for keynotes, panels, workshops and anything else that we can imagine. We need your input to make this inclusive, impactful and relevant. We are open to how this event will develop and what shape it will take, and are excited to hear from you about what’s top of mind for you.
Our role is to curate the day (with input from an advisory group), provide operational and logistical support, and the funding needed to make the event happen.
Below are more details for submitting a proposal. The deadline for submissions is November 26, 2019. We will notify you 3 weeks after the deadline.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at info@thefutureisyouandme.com.
Really excited to do this with you.
Kristin Cheung and Megan Lau
Co-founders, The Future is you and me
*If you know of any rental spaces (accessible and transit friendly) that will host up to 75 people and has smaller areas for breakouts and intimate conversations, let us know!
How to submit a proposal:
Please submit up to 750 words about your proposed panel, workshop, presentation, or keynote speaker on this Google form before November 26, 2019.
The form will ask:
Your name and contact info
An estimated budget (up to $2,500, excluding travel -- e.g. - $500 organizing fee, $250/per additional speaker for workshop speaker or panelist at $150/per person)
How long the session (i.e. panel, workshop, etc.) would be
A description of the activity, and why it is important to you and/or the community
Information about equipment, room/space set-up, travel, food, accessibility needs
How will you accomplish organizing this? (Who is your team? Describe your timeline, etc.)
Dream big, or think small and intimate — whatever suits you. Some starting points to get your inspiration going:
Self care and mental health in the arts
Workshops (writing, social media, coding, Adobe Creative Suite, podcasting, etc.)
Tech Jam or hackathon or Wikipedia Edit-a-thon
Panels or keynotes with awesome speakers (we’re open to inviting out-of-town speakers)
Consciousness-raising circles
Our Future Forum values/priorities:
We are intersectional and feminist
We aim to foster connections between BIWOC: friendship, mentorship, creative collaborations
We are accountable to each other. We will do what we say
Our behaviours and conversations do no harm. (Honesty and vulnerability are important, but some sensitive subjects can retraumatize when they aren’t handled with care)
We aim to push the conversation forward beyond platitudes about why we need diversity and inclusion
We share an identity as women of colour while recognizing our individual positionalities within Canada’s colonial history
We will manage our energy so that while we’re having important conversations and doing the work, we’ll have fun