re/membering our future

Twelve years into Free Minds Free People it seemed time for us to collectively reflect on our activities, inspirations, and influences–and to imagine our community into the future.

12 Years Free! was created for FMFP 2019 to exhibit artifacts from previous conferences collected by the Documentation & Evaluation Committee and others. By day two of the exhibit the curatorial team (Jamilyn Salonga Bailey, Brian Ford, Gabriela Fullon, Adeola Oredola, Susan Wilcox) was already committed to making it a permanent feature of FMFP. Since the exhibit will carry on in-person (once we are again free to roam) and continually hone the FMFP story, they renamed the exhibit

re/membering our future.

The concept of re/membering our future comes from some of our Indigenous elders who animate a “radical remembering of our future” and the Akan concept of Sankofa (to go back and fetch it). Like a tree with deep roots, we remember our future to help us continue to imagine grow into our liberation.

As Toni Morrison said, “Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is being created.” Everyone who has ever organized or participated in FMFP is a custodian of our historical narrative. The first exhibition was designed as an interactive experience that invited conference participants to add to an archive and to revisit it to see the footprints left behind by others. Since this year’s exhibit is virtual, please visit the FMFP 2021 Whova conference site to leave your stories, questions, unlearnings, new learnings, and feedback and/or use the 2021 hashtags (see page 2).

re/membering our future would not be possible without the labor, wisdom and commitment of FMFP organizers and participants (2007-2021) and without the contributions of Thomas Nikundiwe, Curtis Acosta, Keith Catone, Robin Owens, Leigh Patel, Bree Picower, and Teffanie Thompson White for contributing FMFP artifacts and recollections.

3