JOPRO a Winner in Fandom Forward's Civic Imagination Challenge

“Future-Makers Guild” pitch successful in Save Our Progress: Civic Imagination Challenge

JOPRO has been named a winner of the 2024 Civic Imagination Challenge, part of the Save Our Progress campaign hosted by Fandom Forward. The Challenge recognizes individuals and organizations that encourage communities to envision more equitable futures and engage in meaningful civic participation. Applicants were asked to submit ideas that expand the “capacity to imagine alternatives to current cultural, social, political, or economic conditions” and outline steps to achieve it. JOPRO’s project “Future-Makers Guild” was selected from a nationwide pool of applicants. This recognition includes funding to support the project’s development in the coming year.

“It’s an honor to be a small part of Fandom Forward’s near 20-year history of aiding communities to identify and act on important matters,” says Jesse Parent, JOPRO Director. “I look forward to working with our team in pursuing the Civic Imagination Challenge’s aim of envisioning alternatives, possible futures and their inceptions — or, to ‘dream a little before we think,’ in the Toni Morrison & Ruha Benjamin sense. Cultivating literacy and skillsets for assessing where we are now, how we got here, and how to discern pathways ahead — these are increasingly fundamental as we strive to navigate the 21st century.”

About the Future-Makers Guild

The award will support the development of the Future-Makers Guild, an initiative housed within the Society Ethics Technology working group and drawing on insights from the ongoing FrontierMap project. Preliminary designs of the Future-Makers Guild combine interdisciplinary lenses such as philosophy and history of science & law, policy analysis & critical theory, metascience, and civic engagement alongside gamification, storytelling, and collaborative, quest-inspired mentoring.

Next Steps: In the coming months, JOPRO will develop the Future-Makers Guild curriculum, recruit collaborators (internships and research assistants) and designers, and align efforts with current and potential partner organizations. For more information please contact info @ JOPRO.org.

About the Civic Imagination Challenge: The Save Our Progress: Civic Imagination Challenge is an initiative by Fandom Forward, a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to inspiring positive change through creative fan engagement. By blending cultural narratives, storytelling, and community action, the Challenge invites participants to imagine alternative futures and develop non-partisan, values-aligned project ideas that spur civic engagement.