Springboard for the Arts invited Hi-Vis Agency provide creative documentation for their Rural Futures Summit in June of 2023. The Rural Futures Summit brought together rural artists, organizers, activists, community members, and neighbors for three days of exchange and collaboration.

The gathering celebrated the ideas and work of Springboard’s Rural Regenerator Fellows, while expanding this peer network of learning and ideas to other rural creative changemakers in the Upper Midwest. Participants developed regional collaborations and solidarity around rural-specific challenges and opportunities, and to amplified and celebrated the contributions of rural artists in creating and imagining a more just and equitable world.

As artists and hype machines, we translated the tenor, momentum, and visions of participants into creative time capsules. We collaborated with participants in visioning and producing relational content. The resulting Rural Futures Portal contained a collaboratively generated curriculum of readings, a crowdsourced mixtape, and a divination deck of cards for rural dialogue.