Radical Future(s) Fest 💛 Spaces, Systems, & Shared Futures
Tuesday, October 7th, 2025 • 6:00 - 8:30 PM
Kiln Coworking • Doors at 5:30 PM
What happens when we treat belonging as a design outcome? Spaces, Systems & Shared Futures brings together a multidisciplinary panel of designers, artists, and changemakers to explore how the built environment, systems, and cultural practice shape identity and community.
Across disciplines, from art as social practice to design anthropology to urban design, panelists will reflect on the possibilities and tensions of creating spaces that honor equity, identity, and shared futures. Together, panelists will ask what it means to design not only physical spaces but also the invisible systems that structure community and belonging.
What to Expect
You’ll hear from each of our panelists, and they will engage in a moderated dialogue followed by audience Q&A, offering multiple entry points for reflection and exchange. Expect a lively, layered conversation that bridges the actionable with the visionary.
Hear diverse perspectives on how visible design and invisible systems shape belonging
Gain insight into work that crosses sectors of art, community practice, and civic engagement
Explore how creative approaches can reimagine institutions, policies, and everyday spaces
Connect with others curious about placemaking, identity, and justice-oriented design
Who It’s For
Designers, architects, and artists working with community or within public systems
Community members interested in the connection between place and
Civic leaders and policymakers curious about cross-disciplinary approaches to belonging
Featured Panelists and Moderator:
Mrinalini (Minu) Tankha, Design Anthropologist, Portland State University
Suenn Ho, Urban Designer, Co-Founder, and Principal, RESOLVE Architecture + Planning
Farah Dinga, Actor, Playwright, Producer, and Educator
Organized by the Agency for Speculative Futures
This panel 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)
Civic Futures Remix (a design jam focused on the future of municipal grocery stores on Oct 8)
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
Featured Panelists and moderator
Mrinalini Tankha
Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Portland State University (PSU)
Mrinalini (Minu) Tankha is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at PSU, where she co-founded the Compassionate Computing Lab, an interdisciplinary space addressing bias and fairness in AI. She conducts research and teaches courses on design, technology, money, and economic inequality, with projects spanning Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States. As a design anthropologist, she explores how communities navigate effects of financial crises and economic exclusion and instability to craft new forms of value and belonging. Minu is a co-designer of Loy Loy: The Savings Game.
Suenn Ho
Urban Designer and Co-founder, RESOLVE Architecture + Planning
Urban designer Suenn Ho is the co-founder of RESOLVE Architecture + Planning and a longtime advocate for culturally-rooted design. Her work spans historic interpretation, public architecture, and community-based planning. As a former Fulbright fellow, and a grant recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts, Suenn’s research-based designs reveal the seldom celebrated stories of places and their communities. She uses her design as a tool to evoke memoryand our sense of justice. Suenn has designed and built for public agencies and museums and has created cultural placemaking installations across Oregon, such as the Heritage Trail Outdoor Museum in downtown Tigard and the Exhibit Plaza at the Oregon Rail Heritage Museum. Her design process of the Garden of Surging Waves in Astoria broke rules on all levels, and the project received four design awards! Suenn is currently serving on the Portland Parks & Recreation Advisory Board.
Farah Dinga
Actor, Playwright, Producer, and Educator
Farah Dinga is a San Diego-based Pakistani-Queer theatre actor, playwright, producer, and educator. Trained at the University of California San Diego, you may have seen their work at; Diversionary Theatre, The Old Globe, La Jolla Playhouse, New Village Arts, MOXIE Theatre, SD REP, University of San Diego, and many more. They are also current Rising Tides commissioned playwright with Diversionary Theatre and National New Play Network.
website TBD
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.
