Join us for a three-day series of virtual sessions with Michelle King, co-director of the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project, in playful collaboration with Dr. Lonny J. Avi Brooks and Ahmed Best, the dynamic writer / researcher / educator / producer / performer co-developers of the Afro-Rithms game and co-creators of The Afrofuturist Podcast.

In the inaugural d.school K12 Lab Futures Summer Institute in collaboration with the National Writing Project, we’ll explore how to bring the principles and practices of Afrofutures and the Afro-Rithms from the Future game into more elementary and secondary classrooms and projects.

The Futures Summer Institute is designed to be a hands-on, deeply collaborative, perspective-shifting, co-creative experience that will explore:

• The interdisciplinary history and application of Afrofuturism

• The power of structured imagination and play to arrive at novel ideas and multi-dimensional concepts 

• Pathways for bringing the Afrofuturist lens and elements of Afro-Rithms gameplay into creative writing classrooms and projects

When: 

July 13, 14, and 15

10am  - 1pm PST (Virtual) 

What to expect:

Day 1: Playing the Game // Building the Future

We’ll dive right into exploring Afro-Rithms from the Future firsthand in an immersive and playfully expansive opening session. With a fresh and foundational experience of the game as players, we’ll examine the dynamics of gameplay and storytelling as means of exploring Afrofuturist themes and radically inclusive visions of possible futures. 

Day 2: Bringing Afrofutures to the Classroom

The game creates a safe space for generating unexpected possibilities, fostering radical imagination, and collaboratively fostering visions of diverse futures to rethink existing organizational, institutional, and societal relationships. On Day 2, we’ll get hands-on and creative in exploring how we might adapt principles and practices from Afro-Rithms to creative writing classrooms and projects. 

Day 3: Sharing, Learning & Extending

We’ll share and synthesize the previous day’s design work to begin building a collection of great ideas, relevant resources, and useful practice points for bringing some of the experience and stories of Afro-Rithms to your students or community. 

Who should attend:

Educators and learning designers who are interested in new approaches to facilitating learning opportunities with structured imagination and critical thinking that promote inclusive, equitable, and just narratives.  

To preserve intimacy and dialogue, we are limiting this experience to 24 participants. There is a $250 fee to attend the program with scholarship opportunities available via the sign up form.