PXF: A Future Vision of Black Thriving

The BLKHLTH Bodega is an interactive, pop-up cultural activation created by BLKHLTH—an Atlanta-based nonprofit focused on health equity and dismantling systemic racism in healthcare.

 

This experiential Futures (XF) project, led by the community health organization, BLKHLTH, was inspired by a keynote talk I gave. The team there built an extraordinary conference booth for the Congressional Black Caucus convening. They invited people to step into their vision of a hopeful futures— one where equitable, culturally attuned health services are as accessible and commonplace as a corner bodega.

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The result was the highest engagement numbers they have ever had at the conference and powerful word of mouth. This org celebrates black joy in all of their work and it was evident at the lively, buzzy conference booth.

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Methods

• Participatory Experiential Futures

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Explorations in Development

• Experiential Futures made BLKHLTH's vision tangible, culturally relevant, and joyful— engaging people deeply in what is possible

• Emancipatory imagination about the future — the Bodega did not resolve the tension between Afropessimism and radical hope — it held both as simultaneously true.

• Documenting and theorizing this imagination is itself a contribution to Black health equity — because futures imagined in community are futures that can be built.