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
  • 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
  • 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.

(close)

Icebox Mall

October 8 — November 15, 2026

Get in Loser

Icebox Mall: Get in Loser

Get in loser, we’re going to the mall. Get in loser, we’re going to the meeting. Get in loser, we’re going to the video store. Get in loser, let’s share a salad by the fountain while I read aloud to you. 

Welcome to Icebox Mall. Opening soon in a town near you.

For the duration of Collective Futures, Icebox Project Space becomes Icebox Mall. Inspired by the mall as a third space, a commons of collective experience, where you had your first kiss or hung out with your friends after school, Icebox Mall reimagines the familiar architectures of commerce and social life for collaborative cultural exchange.  

Icebox Mall brings together 10 different major projects from Batikh Batikh, Fjord, BYO Printmaking Collaborative, Termite TV Collective, Biomaterials Working Group, FORTUNE, Da Vinci Art Alliance, Fable Encounters, PEEP Projects, and Icebox Project Space. 

You can wander between VCR (Video Collection & Resource) a lending library and archive of films, videos, and cultural histories presented by Icebox Project Space or Superfund Radio Greenhouse, an exhibition exploring contamination and deep time within the Delaware River watershed in Lenapehoking / North Philadelphia presented by Biomaterials Working Group. Or come out for special activations such as FORTUNE’s PRINT TIME AFTER TIME, a weekend-long gathering around print — its methods, its practices, its manifold lives, afterlives, and half-lives.