Spring was invited to the Money & Movements conference, organized by Count Me In!: a consortium led by Mama Cash, and included the sex worker-led Red Umbrella Fund, the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID), CREA, Just Associates and Urgent Action Fund – Africa.
The power of Future Framing is the loosening of present boundaries and allowing the mind to travel forward. Through this creative process, participants come away with new insights about trends, their possible outcomes, and a deeper, clearer view of risks as well as opportunities. The purpose of Future Framing is to identify strategies and responses that strengthen the capacity of organizations and networks in pro-actively shaping the future.
Money & Movements brought together 100+ activists and feminist funders to strategize about the future of feminist organizing and funding of this work.
Participants came from around the world and across movements – women’s rights, sex workers’ rights, LBQTI rights, youth, Indigenous rights, environmental and economic justice, disability rights, health, and more.
Together, they asked:
- What is the change we want to see... bold and fully-resourced?
- What do our movements need to be resilient?
- What would a transformative and feminist funding ecosystem look like?
- What is the future of funding?
To help answer these questions, the Spring team was asked to create and present future scenarios. By experiencing the future through the power of visualization, music and acting, participants experienced three different scenarios where very different things are at stake.
After experiencing each story participants were asked to reflect on the following questions: What inspires about this future scenarios? What has been lost? What questions does it raise for feminist organizing today? And what questions does it raise for resourcing feminist organizing? And finally, what competencies need to be developed in order to pro-actively engage with these trends, and be future ready?
Fast forward to the year 2035 where nothing looks the same…: