Summary
Amahra Spence will speak on the themes of the conference, reflect back key insights that emerged over the course of the three days, and leave us with critical questions we can carry forward as a community, and individuals after the conference is over.
Key Insights
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Liberation transcends equity and justice by simultaneously addressing past harms, present fairness, and future outcomes.
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Civic design can be seen as rehearsing freedom through collective imagination and science fiction principles.
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The personal and spatial histories, like Amara’s grandfather’s home, offer vital design precedents rooted in radical imagination and communal learning.
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Artistic practices are critical tools for world-building, making abstract ideas tangible in liberation work.
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Mutual aid should be the default community practice, not just crisis response, embedding generosity structurally.
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Redefining hospitality through artist-led, locally owned models disrupts extractive financial systems and promotes spiritual sustainability.
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Organizational governance benefits from dynamic, non-hierarchical solar system models centered on mission rather than individuals.
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Young people hold embodied wisdom and agency that must be prioritized as present contributors, not deferred futures.
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Decentralizing resources includes meeting spiritual, social, and access needs, not merely financial redistribution.
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Designing for generative endings is essential to regenerative change, avoiding hoarding power or unsustainable leadership models.
Notable Quotes
"Liberation is the only thing that not only repairs for past Injustice but removes barriers to progress and affirmatively influences future outcomes."
"All organizing is science fiction—in the way we imagine futures that don’t yet exist."
"Imagination gives us borders, superiority, races, indicators of ability; I often feel trapped inside someone else’s imagination."
"Radical means grasping things at the root, not just surface layer intentions or interventions."
"Mutual Aid has to be an intentional act, the default way that we function as a community."
"Can we start to build and give form to liberation? What would that look like as a design practice?"
"Flat or hierarchical organizational structures don’t work; we designed a solar system where the mission is at the sun."
"If our mission is no longer serving, we need to design for the most generative ending possible."
"We build what we believe – expanding imagination is critical to breaking from old precedents."
"The only lasting truth is change; what if we set that as our design intention and boldly stepped into it?"
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