What We Do
Radical Futures partners with changemakers to design and prototype worlds beyond capitalism and crisis.
Radical Imagination
Radical imagination is our touchstone—an embodied, liberatory practice that dares to envision what lies beyond the limits of the present. It’s how we tell the truth about what is and dream into what could be.
Rooted in sci-fi, oral history, fantasy, cultural memory, and speculative storytelling, radical imagination stretches perception and provokes transformation. It’s not escapism—it’s a strategy. A portal. A tool for survival and design.
We use it to build futures that are not just visionary, but felt, practiced, and shared.
Radical Imagination
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When we define ourselves only by what we’re against, we risk getting trapped in the logic of the systems we’re trying to dismantle. Radical imagination starts with an unapologetic YES—a commitment to envisioning the worlds we actually want, and to building from joy, desire, and purpose.
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The people pushed to the margins—Black folks, Indigenous communities, queer and trans people, migrants, poor and disabled communities—have always had to imagine otherwise. Their futures are born of necessity, brilliance, and embodied wisdom. These communities don’t just deserve a seat at the table—they’ve already mapped the way forward.
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We’re not interested in surface-level innovation. Radical imagination asks us to dig deep—past quick fixes and sleek solutions—to name and transform the roots of harm: colonization, extraction, domination. Only by naming these truths can we begin to grow something new.
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Radical imagination moves across time—honoring ancestral knowledge, feeling into the present, and planting the seeds of future possibility. It’s nonlinear, collective, and deeply embodied. It remembers what came before. It listens for what’s emerging. And it dares to act as if liberation is already underway.
“Dream a little before you think.”
Toni Morrison
At the center of our work is Ruha Benjamin’s invitation
Radical Futures was born in the aftermath of rupture.
As the overlapping crises of COVID-19, racial injustice, climate catastrophe, and economic collapse exposed the fractures in our systems, we felt a collective call to reimagine. We asked: What if design wasn’t a tool of extraction, but of healing? How might we use imagination not just to critique what’s broken, but to build what’s next?
Who we are
We’re a collective of designers, dreamers, and doers who’ve spent years navigating the frontlines of change. From reimagining education and food systems to building more just approaches to health and work, we bring creative strategy and deep care to every challenge. Our strength is in the network—people who’ve worked inside and alongside movements, communities, and institutions, all with a shared commitment to designing futures worth living in.
Radical Futures is proudly Black woman-owned and led.
Tracee Worley
Founder (she/her)
Tracee Worley is the founder of Radical Futures, a speculative design studio where myth, fantasy, and foresight become tools for liberation. A consummate worldbuilder and mythmaker, she harnesses the ancient power of storytelling to expand collective imagination—helping organizations and movements craft new narratives about what becomes possible when we dream beyond crisis.
Through immersive worldbuilding and playful futuring, Tracee guides communities in envisioning regenerative futures where humans and more-than-human life flourish together. Her kaleidoscopic career—spanning design, education, and futurism—is rooted in the belief that fantasy isn’t escape, but a sophisticated technology for transformation.
Drawing from the legacy of Afrofuturism and the embodied, collective foresight of Black women, Tracee’s work blends celebration with challenge, play with purpose. She helps communities and institutions step out of linear, institutional time and into the felt rhythms of memory, imagination, and interdependence.
Her practice centers the idea that in moments of collapse, our most powerful tool may be our capacity to imagine otherwise. Tracee works with changemakers to move beyond both dystopia and techno-optimism, crafting deeply textured stories of how we might live in right relationship—with land, with lineage, and with each other.
