What is the Everyday Futures Fest?
Every April, Everyday Futures Fest celebrates the unique talents and interests of inquisitive people of all ages around Philadelphia through sustainability-centered arts and science events. The Fest showcases the rich cultural diversity of our city by providing a free platform to experience art, performances, workshops, film, and more. While Philly continues to face ongoing issues related to climate change, waste stream management, violence, and gentrification, there’s incredible people in our city finding innovative solutions for these challenges. Everyday Futures Fest was created by community members as an opportunity to learn from each other and take steps towards uniting ourselves across neighborhoods to tackle issues together.
Each year, the fest centers its thematic focus on a different aspect of sustainability, emphasizing the crucial intersections between environmental justice, cultural identities, and urban sustainability. At its heart, Everyday Futures Fest is a collaborative initiative between creative people across the city, facilitated by the Da Vinci Art Alliance, a longstanding intergenerational community space and art gallery in South Philly. Everyday Futures Fest is a space for world building and envisioning together how to create a better future through science and art.
What is BUILDING CAPACITY?
Our 2024 theme of Building Capacity: Towards Self-Sufficiency and Collective Resilience echoes the rule of reciprocity running through spaces within our city. Whether referring to a community garden collectively managed by an oddball group of neighbors or a class at a formal learning institution, we pass on skills we have learned to new people, who will then pass those skills on to other people. In Philly's framework as a rowhome city, we push back on Building Capacity limits to create thriving ecosystems that allow us to connect as people. To build capacity is to build trust in our individual discernment, skill sets, and connections, so we can intentionally adapt in a changing and grieving world. Within the festival this year we're learning to better sustain ourselves, to grow our personal capacity, allow others to grow their own, and connect with them to become a part of a whole. We hope this programming is nourishing and empowering, a rowhome backyard from which many flowers can grow.
Our Community guidelines
1. We believe in building community through art.
2. We believe in fostering a communal culture of care, respect, and exchange.
3. We accept and believe each other's truths.
4. We lean into the discomfort of conflict, trusting one another to actively listen, show compassion and grow together.
5. We all approach the festival and each other from a place of curiosity, not judgement.
6. We bring all intersections of our identities into the room unapologetically, while continuing to make space for other people’s authentic selves.
7. We believe in accessibility, equity, and inclusion and finding solutions to meet every audience members’ needs.
8. We believe in the importance of the intersecting communities that interact with this festival and commit to actively listening to the needs of all involved people.
Additionally, DVAA believes that Black Lives Matter and respects and honors the Lenni Lenape People originally from this land. We prioritize the needs of both of these communities within our work and we ask that anyone interacting with our space do the same.
