interlexionality

From October 10-18, people all over the country participated in the people-powered US Department of Arts and Culture’s national action: #Dare to Imagine. They engaged with each other and with Emissaries from the Future at Imagination Stations, using arts and participatory processes to co-envision the future they hope to live in in 2035, and begin to move towards it.

At the Carrollton, GA Imagination Station (at the Tour de Carroll bike ride on our beautiful Green Belt), we co-created a Crossword Puzzle From the Future, writing the clues that we hope will be apt in the 2035 we want to live in. People also participated remotely, and the future described in the puzzle below was thus collaboratively imagined by about 75 people.

It’s …pretty awesome. And now you can solve it!

The board looks like that because it can–it captures some of my own hopes for the future, which I envision as radically doodled, blue and green, asymmetrical, and more comfortable eschewing straight lines.

A few ways you can solve the puzzle:

interactively online:  right here (includes grid and clues, but not the hand-drawn radical version of the grid).

You can print things: click on this PDF for both the hand-drawn and straight-line grids (previews below!), all the clues, and the solution. 

Photos of the process at the Imagination Station are here, under “#DareToImagine: October 18, 2015.” (scroll as needed)

Finally, if you are like WHY DIDN’T I KNOW? I WANT TO WRITE A CLUE! why then, hie thee to tinyurl.com/futureofdemocrossy! Even if you DID know but didn’t get around to writing one, go ahead and contribute any time you like.

And if you are curious about participatory crossword construction, click here.

Finally, if you get stuck on the Future puzzle, here is a version of the same puzzle clued by the Atlanta World Expo and Kite festival participants, who were writing clues for the world we live in now.