HOW TO SUBMIT A STORY

Submitting a story is easy! Sign-up for an account here by creating a username and password, then use the form to submit an oral history story, a story for the map, or a blog post, including pictures, sound recordings, or video.  Your submission will be automatically added to the map. 

  1. SIGN-UP to become a community member so that you can share your stories! Click on the Sign-Up button and all you need is an email address to create an account on futureslab.community. You will be asked to create a username and password. 

 

  1. ADD YOUR STORY to the Community Futures Lab map by clicking on the Add Your Story Button. Your story can be about a personal memory, oral history, community history or historical site marker for displacement or gentrification, a future site or place where you envision something becoming, a community garden, a community art space, and more! You can also record an oral history interview with yourself or a community member and share it to the map. 

 

  1. ADD PHOTOS, VIDEOS, OR AUDIO RECORDINGS to your story, and pinpoint it to the map by adding a location, date, and time to your story. Press save when you are finished and your story will appear on the map on the Community Futures Lab homepage! 

 

  1. READ, HEAR, AND SEE other stories on the map, or check out the Community Futures Lab blog with posts from Community Futures Lab interns and collaborators. 

If it is easier, you can also submit a story, photo, map point, or blog by:

Some questions to help get you started are:

1. What are your favorite and/or least favorite places in your community?

2. What is your happiest memory in the neighborhood? Where did it happen? What is your worst memory in the neighborhood? Where did it happen?

3. Where do you feel like you most/least belong in the neighborhood?

ABOUT FUTURESLAB.COMMUNITY

The purpose of FUTURESLAB.COMMUNITY is to document shared memories, histories, and futures of communities in Brewerytown-Sharswood and the larger North Philly community. The stories on this site grew out of a project called Community Futurisms: Time & Memory in North Philly, a collaborative art, preservation, and creative research project exploring the impact of redevelopment, gentrification, and displacement in North Philly through the themes of oral histories/futures, memories, temporalities, and afrofuturism. From May 2016-April 2017, Black Quantum Futurism Collective (under the direction of Rasheedah Phillips and Camae Ayewa) operated Community Futures Lab at 2204 Ridge Avenue in the North Philadelphia neighborhood currently known as Sharswood. Community Futures Lab a pop-up community space, gallery, resource and zine library, workshop space, recording booth, and time capsule, where we recorded oral histories/futures in the North Philadelphia neighborhood of Brewerytown-Sharswood and documented the redevelopment happening there in partnership with local residents, community activists, and business owners. Community Futures Lab/Community Futurisms project is the winner of the Philly Geek Awards 2016 Impact Org of the Year and Girls Rock Philly 2016 PhillyRising Award and has been featured in a number of publications and.

The vision of Community Futurisms is one of a practical, communal, perpetually accessible quantum time capsule, built from the memories and stories of the community, activated by centering, amplifying, and sharing of those stories. Community Futurisms projects seeks to create space for marginalized community members to participate in the creation of space and time  (i.e. histories, presents, and futures) within their own neighborhoods; these histories and futures are both personal and communal, and by extension, global and universal. Community Futurisms aims to facilitate a deeper understanding of the dynamics, rhythm, temporalities, memories, histories, and ideas for a shared future(s) that define an intentional community.


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TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR SUBMISSIONS

You agree that your submission is subject to the following terms and conditions. Your participation is completely voluntary. Your submission must be created by you, wholly original, except that: you may include things that are in the public domain and/or, if submitting an oral history, share these terms and conditions to the interviewee and obtain his or her agreement to them prior to submitting the interview.

Your participation in the project is voluntary.  You do not have to answer any questions that you do not wish to answer. You may stop your participation at any time. You retain ownership in your submission, but by making a submission you give the project directors, and those authorized by the project directors, your permission to disseminate, modify, and use your submission, in whole or in part, in all media now known or later developed, for standard purposes.This permission includes publication in communication channels (websites, social media, print and online publications, newsletters), educational programming and publications, and exhibitions. If at any time you wish to revoke permission, you can contact the project directors at communityfutureslab0@gmail.com or blackquantumfuturism@gmail.com for removal of your submission in whole or in part.

By making a submission, you waive any privacy expectations you may have with regard to your submission.  If the project approves your submission for inclusion on the website and social media channels, the submission, in whole or part, will become available to the general public.  The public may use and share your submission in various ways including via social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest, and applications such as “share this,” all of which operate independently of the project (i.e., have their own policies and terms), and commentary with which you disagree may become associated with your submission. If you have questions about any aspect of these terms and conditions, you may contact the project directors at (215) 469-1606 or via email at communityfutureslab@gmail.com or blackquantumfuturism@gmail.com .

PRESS

The roots of the group’s latest record, Who Sent You?, can be seen in an essay called “Time Pockets” that Ayewa wrote for Space-Time Collapse Vol II: Community Futurisms. The ideas in the journal, dedicated to Black Quantum Futurism and featuring insights from various artists and activists, directly correlate to many of the ideas explored on the album: community preservation in the face of disenfranchisement, gentrification, and systemic injustice.

PHL Assembled collaborators on empowering marginalized communities through art

Reporter Ariel Taylor covers the eviction crisis in Philadelphia and how local advocates and city council are addressing the issue.

https://youtu.be/XK7WnK-tlyk

Get to know the minds behind Black Quantum Futurism—Rasheedah Phillips and Camae Ayewa—and the important work they do.

Mike Newall writes about the Community Futures Lab, an organization collecting oral histories in the quickly changing neighborhood of Sharswood

Temple News by Jazmyn Burton

A Temple alumna is creating a movement around the past, present and future of North Philadelphia.

Using time travel and afrofuturism, Rasheedah Phillips and Camae Ayewa are creating a community space for women to be empowered using art and music.

On this episode of 'Daily VICE,' we meet up with Philly-based avant-garde rapper and activist Moor Mother who uses her music to address social inequality and racial strife. We sit down with the artist before an electrifying hometown show to talk art, politics, and protest.

“Art helps people imagine other futures, alternative futures different from the ones they already have,” said Phillips. “That’s a big thing for people who are routinely told that they don’t have possibilities for the future.” She noted that people in unstable situations often deal with worries that prevent them from thinking beyond immediate needs, but art has the ability to take them outside of that.

Art in America by Michael McCanne

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In Philadelphia, a community that is rapidly gentrifying, one artist collective is taking steps to empower its residents by re-imagining black futures within the city landscape.

Temple University News by Kelly Brennan

Many of the resources for domestic violence survivors go unused.

Rasheedah Phillips, a Community Legal Services managing attorney and the founder of The AfroFuturist Affair, explains why it should matter to the social impact community in her Around the Corner interview.

Galleries at Moore Radio Show

Rasheedah Phillips one of the organizers of the Community Futures Lab project in North Philadelphia speaks with Matt Kalasky

Philly Inquirer by Aubrey Whelan

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Temple University News by Ian Walker

An alumna uses Afrofuturist principles to preserve memories of area residents.

Center for the Future of Museums, by Nicole Ivy

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Hyperallergic Magazine, by Hyunjee Nicole Kim

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The Philadelphia Tribune, by Ryanne Persinger

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