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
  • 5U Space
  • All Mutable
  • The Arts League
  • Asian Arts Initiative
  • AUTOMAT Collective
  • Batikh Batikh
  • Bearded Ladies
  • 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
  • Fable Encounters
  • 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

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

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Plain Language

Teils Studio

October 23 — November 7, 2026

Plain Language

Presented by Teils Studio

October 23rd at Facing Bench
Doors @ 7pm. Screening at 7:30pm

November 7th at Vox Populi
Doors @ 7pm. Screening at 7:30pm

Teils Studio presents Plain Language, an episodic series and video-based collage of underground creatives, workers, and communities. This video series aims to broaden cultural narratives by boldfacing local stories and everyday life in the Philadelphia area.

Enter a world that belongs to the sweethearts, worn soles and earnest thinkers- the ‘nobodies’ avoiding being ‘somebody’. Come party party. We’re archiving our lil lives.

Plain Language, typically understood as an antidote to legalese, jargon, word fog- becomes a style of capturing and piecing together this life in the language we are already speaking.

Blending video, photography, poetry and filmed conversations, we share our world- our corners, our fears and wishes- things that feel simple. 

Come see your friends, neighbours, strangers. Come see that one intersection. Come celebrate the life and world we’re creating together. Come witness what is being built, boarded up, and reimagined. Leave spilling back into it all

About Teils Studio:
After writing, directing, and producing several community-led theatre productions, Shay Overstone founded Teils Studio in Philadelphia as an extension of these collaborative practices. 

Teils Studio is a rotating collective of multi-disciplinary collaborators working across experimental film, theatre, and the humanities. Through video work, live presentations, and public screenings, the studio explores local stories and everyday life as cultural material, creating alternative narratives outside mainstream media. Across formats, Teils Studio documents and archives intersections of community and place.