Radical Future(s) Fest 💛 Civic Futures Remix
Wednesday, October 8th, 2025 • 6:00 - 8:30 PM
City Hall • Doors at 5:30 PM
What if a city ran its own grocery store? Civic Futures Remix is a participatory design jam exploring the future of public goods — starting with food.
In collaboration with Portland City Council staff, the Local Progress network, Technologists for the Public Good, and more, this session turns the idea of a municipal grocery into a live design challenge. Together, we’ll discuss how public ownership could reshape access, equity, and resilience — and what lessons this might hold for rethinking other civic systems.
What to Expect
The event will be a structured but playful design lab: participants will work in small groups with prompts and facilitation to generate, remix, and prototype new models for public grocery futures. Expect active participation, fresh ideas, and meaningful dialogue.
Engage in hands-on, collaborative design for systemic change
Explore new approaches to food justice, access, and community ownership
Learn design tools for civic imagination and collective problem-solving
Connect with civic leaders, organizers, and fellow participants in a creative lab environment
Who It’s For
Designers and strategists applying creative methods to civic issues
Policymakers, advocates, and community members invested in equity and food justice
Anyone curious about how imagination and design can reframe what public goods look like
Organized by the Agency for Speculative Futures
This design jam is part of the three-day Radical Future(s) Fest (Oct 6–8) and Imagining Otherwise: Storytelling & Narrative Future(s) Miniseries (Oct 18-20) during 2025 Portland Design Month:
Future(s) Assembly (science fair, meet design on Oct 6)
Spaces, Systems & Shared Futures (a multi-disciplinary panel on Oct 7)
Story in Motion (table reads of an in-progress performance on Oct 18 and Oct 19)
Narrative Design Lab (a hands-on workshop on Oct 19)
Imagining Otherwise (a multi-disciplinary panel on Oct 20)
Learn More at bit.ly/asf2025
Workshop Leads
Mary Li (she/my name)
Multnomah County
Mary’s professional experiences include 34 years of service at Multnomah County delivering training, facilitation, coaching, and consulting within and across County organizations to groups and individuals through a variety of learning and skill building learning experiences and methods; as well as extensive experience with and service to the non-profit sector - domestic and sexual violence, HIV/AIDS, general social justice organizing efforts, culturally specific community development and support. She is a proud Asian American woman working locally, regionally, and nationally within Asian American Indigenous Pacific Island communities, and in allyship with communities of the global majority to survive and thrive.
Reilly Martin
Executive Director, Technologists for the Public Good
Reilly Martin is a passionate advocate for leveraging technology and digital services to drive social impact. As the Executive Director of Technologists for the Public Good, she cultivates a safe and neutral space for public interest technologists to collaborate. Prior to TPG, she helped build a U.S. portfolio for the Open Contracting Partnership as well as worked embedded in state government with the State of Colorado through the Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University and in local government at the City of Boston. She was the inaugural recipient of the 2018 Public Service and Civil Leadership award from Spark Boston for her work and dedication to the field. With a background spanning technology, organizational operations, and digital services across government, nonprofits, philanthropy, and academia, Reilly is passionate about reimagining how the government serves the public through technology, data, and design.
Host & organizer
erin stevanus (she/her)
erin is an artist, strategist, and social entrepreneur committed to unlocking the potential of complex systems through foresight and speculative thinking. She runs a design futures studio, collaborating with leaders across the private, public, nonprofit, and philanthropic sectors to bring to life not-too-distant futures. As the founder of an innovation platform, she support changemakers in design thinking and social entrepreneurship. In her creative practice, erin writes, composes, and performs works exploring speculative futures and the mindsets needed to navigate them. You can also find her facilitating deep listening experiences and crafting live digital soundscapes through the sonic sound lab project, which invites curiosity, exploration, and rest.
