In closing the 10th anniversary of MUTEK Forum, we invite all festival stakeholders – organizers, artists and audiences – to collectively chart trajectories for future festivals. Returning to the forward-looking interventions of the Future Festivals Summit, Cultivating Temporary Utopias presents an urgent call to action to sustain festivals and their extraordinary ability to bring speculative, alternative and fantastic futures into the present.

Reflecting on the Summit and a week’s-worth of critical conversations surrounding accessibility, resilience, and sustainability in upgrading our cultural infrastructures, the panel brings together Jessie Mill, co-artistic director of Montreal’s Festival TransAmériques, Drew Hemment of the Edinburgh Futures Institute, and Naomi Johnson from Toronto’s imagineNative. Moderated by the Future Festivals Lead Maurice Jones, audience members are invited to join the discussion to critique and contribute to our collective, innovative visions for festivals to come.