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
  • The Arts League
  • Asian Arts Initiative
  • AUTOMAT Collective
  • Batikh Batikh
  • 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
  • Hall Pass
  • Icebox Project Space
  • Luster Gallery
  • Muse Gallery
  • Paradigm Gallery + Studio
  • Peep Projects
  • Pentimenti
  • People’s Music Supply
  • Pink Noise Projects
  • Practice
  • Second State Press
  • Space 1026
  • Termite TV Collective
  • Tiger Strikes Asteroid Philadelphia
  • Ulises
  • Umbria Arts
  • Vox Populi

Made possible with the support of the Penn Treaty Special Services District (PTSSD).

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Eco-Social Realism

Big Ramp

October 10 — November 14, 2026

Curated by Daniel Tucker
Featured Artists include: Cynthia Hooper, Sarah Kanouse, & Sean Starowitz
October 10 – November 14, 2026

Opening Reception, Saturday, October 10 6-9pm
Big Ramp Gallery
2024 E Westmoreland St, Philadelphia, PA 19134

Eco-Social Realism is a bioregional scale exhibition series that grows out of the ongoing Eco-Social Series and includes artists who participated in the series between 2023-2026. The exhibitions are taking place in multiple sites throughout the region in late 2026, including Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery at Haverford College, Rowan University Museum of Contemporary Art, Street Road Artist Space, TILT Institute, Big Ramp and RAIR. This exhibition series brings together artworks that show an increased interest in infrastructural and bioregional practices that can visualize and embody the territorial scale of both problems and solutions related to the climate crisis.

Bios:

Cynthia Hooper’s videos, essays, paintings, and research-based projects examine and interpret infrastructural landscapes in the United States and Mexico. Her detailed investigations patiently capture the incidental and emblematic activities that define these complex places, and advocate for the credible efforts of embedded laborers, researchers, and activists. Her generously observational strategies and evidence-based narratives honor the diversity of perspectives that index the sites that she studies. http://www.cynthiahooper.com/bio.htm

Sarah Kanouse is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and filmmaker whose solo and collaborative work has been presented at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Documenta 13, the Museum of Contemporary Art-Chicago, The Cooper Union, The Smart Museum, and numerous festivals, academic institutions and artist-run spaces. Raised in Los Angeles, she is now based in Boston, where she teaches at Northeastern University. https://readysubjects.org/

Sean M. Starowitz has worked in a variety of community-based contexts, spanning more than a decade of socially engaged art practice. He uses archival research and public memory as material to reframe our current understanding of natural history and political imaginaries. In 2023, Starowitz received his MFA in Sculpture from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture. He currently lives and works in Philadelphia, PA, and spends his summers teaching at the Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts in Lexington, KY. https://www.sean-starowitz.com/