How can art and culture not only reflect the world, but actively shape it? Is it possible to bring curating into play as a strategic tool to explore and address the complex and long-term challenges we face?

Curating is traditionally about selecting and presenting, but we see it as much more than that. We see it as a way to make connections that would otherwise not happen. A practice that can draw lines between the established and the unformed, between the sensory and the structural, between speculation and concrete action.

Right now, the future no longer feels like a space of opportunity, but burdened by crises and unresolved problems. We want to challenge this alienation. We live in a time of interlocking crises – climate change, geopolitical unrest, technological shifts, growing inequality. These are challenges that cannot be solved within the same structures that created them. That’s why we need to rethink how we work with art and culture. Not as passive spaces for reflection, but as active laboratories for possible futures.

We work with a practice that insists that notions of the possible do not only belong to political strategies or technological advances, but also to art’s ability to open the senses and create new images of what does not yet exist.

Can we curate possible futures? We insist on trying…

Background to the collaboration

We have worked together for over five years across formats – from publications, lectures and podcasts to teaching at the IT University of Copenhagen and conversation programmes for the Culture Summit. Our collaboration stems from a shared interest in how bridging domains and bringing people together across art, technology and futures studies can challenge established perspectives and open up for more voices in the public conversation.

One example is Friktion, which we launched at the Mors Cultural Summit in 2024 – a conversation programme that also functioned as an activist approach: using curating to create unexpected encounters, ask the difficult questions and insist on polyphony. Friktion consisted of a series of conversations with, among others, Merete Pryds Helle, author and chairperson of Kunstfonden, Pernille Taagaard Dinesen, KØN, Christian Have, Have Kommunikation and Ellen Marie Hedegaard, Unges Laboratorier for Kunst, SMK about what it means to be a cultural actor in a new political reality where cancel-culture is a reality and diversity and inclusion are on many minds.

We also debated the diversity and importance of queer culture and how queerness manifests itself in Danish cultural life with Ada Ada Ada, artist, Didi Cancerella, drag artist and Helene Nyborg Bay from Nikolaj Kunsthal. Plus much more. Friktion returns to the Culture Summit in 2025.

Through our work, we have experienced how cultural institutions are often built on fixed structures, traditions and mediation. We want to explore how curation can be used as a strategic tool to create more open, inclusive and future-oriented cultural environments.

With Snart – The Laboratory for Possible Futures, together with the Bikuben Foundation and 20 other partners, we continue this investigation by experimenting with formats that bring different voices and disciplines into play in thinking about the future. Our approach is based on curiosity and openness rather than authority and fixed answers. The future must be for everyone.

Therefore, we must continuously ask ourselves: Who is still missing? How can we create spaces where everyone feels invited to participate and contribute?

To ensure that we do not stagnate in our view of the world, we actively work to challenge dominant narratives and perceptions of the future. We seek to expand our understanding of the societal and cultural dynamics that shape the world we are part of, recognising that our own position is a product of historical and current power structures that we must constantly critique.

When we ask ourselves who is missing, we take active steps to engage voices and perspectives that have not necessarily been or are not being heard. We recognise that diversity is not just about representation, but about actively creating space for different opinions and ideas to challenge our own preconceptions.

Creating a space where everyone feels invited to participate and contribute is an ongoing process. We prioritise inclusion and openness, and we recognise that making our space both safe and accessible to everyone requires constant attention and active work. This means listening without bias, facilitating open dialogues and creating concrete opportunities for participation across backgrounds, experiences and perspectives.

About Snart – The laboratory for possible futures

In September 2024, Denmark signed the UN’s ‘Declaration for Future Generations’, committing to look after the interests of future generations – not only to create a better society in the long term, but also to find forward-thinking solutions to today’s complex challenges. With this in mind, Snart – Laboratory for Possible Futures opened on 14 March 2025 at Thoravej 29 in Copenhagen NV.

It is an experimental laboratory where we work with a wide range of partners to create a space where we work together to strengthen our imagination and our ability to act.

Here we ask the question: What happens when we make space for the future – when we combine change practices from futurology, social innovation, systemic transformation, economic sustainability theory and democratic engagement with artistic methods that engage our bodies and senses to explore what might come? What if, instead of just discussing the future, we can stand in it, feel it, touch it, move through it?

The space will evolve throughout 2025 with contributions from Snart’s many partners and participating practitioners, government officials, change agents, researchers, leaders, policy makers, artists, designers, activists, students and politicians gathering for events, workshops and learning programmes.

Embracing the future

In Snart, art, design and literature exist as sensory installations and concrete methods that invite active participation. Snart is not an exhibition in the traditional sense, where art, design and literature exist as completed works to be viewed from a distance. Change doesn’t just happen in the mind – it happens through the body, through emotions, through sensory experiences that change our understandings in ways that words alone cannot. Not through a total vision of one particular future, but through carefully curated fragments and artefacts that allow you to take ownership of your own imagination instead of living in someone else’s.

We’ve developed a series of installations and collaborations that exist in the space now. In the centre of the lab is the Two Loop Table, created by Mathias Toubro, as a physical interpretation of Berkana Institute’s ‘Two Loop Model’. The model illustrates how systems change – how something must be phased out while new structures emerge. The materials used in the tables come from Thoravej 29’s history, elements from the old system that now become a breeding ground for new ideas. At the table, we can concretely work on which practices we should let go of, which we should keep, and how we can support the emergence of new, sustainable solutions?

In Agora, an interactive installation by Cecilie Waagner Falkenstrøm and ARTificial Mind, we can engage in conversations with five AI agents representing future generations’ perspectives on love, the universe, economy, technology and nature. The AI agents are trained on different datasets about the future – from scientific reports to science fiction literature – developed in collaboration with Analyse & Tal. They invite us to reflect on how AI can be a collaborator in giving voice to the future – both for humans and other life forms. The AI agents are physically integrated into benches made from recycled materials from Thoravej 29 and serve as focal points for conversations about the choices we make today and what consequences they may have in the long term.

On the walls is Pantopia, an installation created by Baum & Leahy with FLOKKR at Roskilde Festival and GRASP. The large banners present dreamlike and complex scenarios for ecological futures – shaped via AI based on young people’s visions and activist dreams of sustainability. It’s a collective voice being heard: What future do we want to create together? How can we use artistic visions to translate hope and activism into concrete action? Pantopia is borrowed from Roskilde Festival, as an experiment in circular display of art that continues to evolve and inspire new communities.

Associated with each installation are method kits that guide visitors in translating their ideas into concrete actions. Together, these elements form an experimental framework to explore how we can contribute to change – not just by imagining the future, but by actively shaping it. In addition, a learning programme, Futures Fellows, was launched on 27 March. As well as all the other collaborations that will be happening in the space on an ongoing basis. And everything that hasn’t been defined yet.

Snart is not just a place. It’s an invitation to practise the future – to make it present. Not abstract, not passive, but lived and explored, here and now.

So we ask: How does it feel to make decisions as if the future is standing right next to us?

Theme: Arts and crafts scenes

Formkraft reaches out to craft exhibition spaces and curators. Which venues showcase craft artists? How are works curated? What are the challenges, opportunities and shortcomings? Articles are published on a rolling basis.

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