about
Collective Futures
is a six-week, citywide project activating Philadelphia’s network of artist-run spaces, DIY venues, and community-based initiatives. This collaboratively organized project bringing together more than 30 independent spaces and organizations, Collective Futures will unfold across the city through exhibitions, performances, workshops, and public programs from Kensington and North Chinatown to West Philadelphia, Fishtown, and Old City, between October 2 and November 15, 2026.

At its core, Collective Futures centers collective practice as a vital mode of cultural production. Across disciplines and contexts, the project highlights how artists come together to build shared platforms, experiment with new forms, and sustain creative communities.

Taking place during the 250th anniversary of the so-called United States, while many institutions in Philadelphia conjure programming around the complex histories of nation-building and democracy, Collective Futures highlights the artistic experimentation and alternative models that grassroots cultural spaces have long been building

Collective Futures is grounded in the specific conditions of Philadelphia, where a rich ecosystem of artist-run and DIY spaces has made collaborative cultural production possible. As rising costs and development reshape the city, the project affirms the importance of collective cultural life and the infrastructures that sustain it, so that our work can mobilize resources, deepen connections, and envision transformative futures.

Collective Futures is:

  • 2C Books / Marginal Utility
  • 3rd Street Gallery
  • 5U Space
  • All Mutable
  • The Arts League
  • Asian Arts Initiative
  • AUTOMAT Collective
  • Batikh Batikh
  • The Bearded Ladies Cabaret
  • Big Ramp
  • Biomaterials Working Group
  • BYO Printmaking Collaborative
  • Center for Emerging Visual Artists
  • Cherry St Pier
  • cinéSPEAK
  • City Arts Salon LLC
  • Da Vinci Art Alliance
  • errata projects
  • Facing Bench
  • Fairmount House
  • FJORD
  • Future Flower Collective
  • FORTUNE
  • Gravy Studio
  • Grizzly Grizzly
  • The Halide Project
  • Hall Pass
  • Icebox Project Space
  • Jane Gallery
  • Luster Gallery
  • Memory Workers Guild
  • Muse Gallery
  • Obvious Agency
  • Paradigm Gallery + Studio
  • Peep Projects
  • Pentimenti
  • People’s Music Supply
  • Pink Noise Projects
  • Practice
  • Prism Arts
  • Second State Press
  • Space 1026
  • Teils Studio
  • Termite TV Collective
  • Tiger Strikes Asteroid Philadelphia
  • Ulises
  • Umbria Arts
  • Vox Populi
  • The Wooden Shoe

Collective Futures is made possible with the support of the National Endowment for the Arts, the PCI Catalyst Grant, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Free People and the Penn Treaty Special Services District (PTSSD).

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Priority Hoarding: A Retrospectacle

The Bearded Ladies Cabaret

September 10 — December 20, 2026

Priority Hoarding
Bearded Ladies Cabaret
at The Hairport (444 N. 3rd St)
on view Thurs–Sunday

TICKETS HERE

Take Flight at the Hairport!

Check in at the Bearded Ladies’ Hairport, Philadelphia’s newest and queerest transit(ion) center. Home to Priority Hoarding: A Retrospectacle, this immersive experience packed with 16 years worth of cabaret baggage is an “architectural, technological, and archival dreamworld” that’s yours to explore. Board a Flight of Fancy with Receding Airlines. Where to? You decide!

Produced by The Bearded Ladies Cabaret

Thursday & Friday 4-9PM | Last timed entry at 8:15PM
Saturday 11AM-3PM | Last timed entry at 2:15PM

at The Hairport | 444 N 3rd Street, Philadelphia PA 19123

Tickets:
Pay What You Decide Advance: $16-35
Pay What You Decide At the Door: $0-35 (NOTAFLOF)

It will take travelers approximately 75-90 minutes to explore the entire Hairport. An opportunity to ride a surrey bike is offered but not required.

Priority Hoarding has been supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage
Part of Collective Futures

TICKETS HERE

The Bearded Ladies Cabaret is a queer arts organization that sits on your lap and sings you a story. Whether it’s an opera, a home-made cabaret, a musical walking tour, or a show on a truck, we employ song, spectacle, storytelling, and heart to welcome audiences into moments of joy, healing, and subversion. Through sharing our original pieces and creating bespoke platforms for performance at home in Philadelphia, nationally, and abroad, we nurture artistic connection for a community of misfits, rabble-rousers, chanteuses and the people who love and need them.