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The Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop is an intensive six-week summer program focused on fundamentals particular to the writing of science fiction and fantasy short stories. It is considered a premier proving and training ground for aspiring writers of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Instructors are among the most respected writers and editors working in the field today. Over one third of our graduates have been published and many have gone on to critical acclaim. The list of distinguished Clarion alumni includes Octavia Butler, Ted Chiang, Bob Crais, Cory Doctorow, Nalo Hopkinson, James Patrick Kelly, Carmen Maria Machado, Vonda McIntyre, Nnedi Okorafor, Kim Stanley Robinson, Martha Soukup, Kelly Link, Bruce Sterling, and many others.
Started in 2018, YFutures is a series of youth-oriented programs designed to help young people develop futures literacy as a core skillset for imagination in the 21st century. What is futures literacy? It is the skill to deliberately imagine future possibilities, reflect upon them, use that understanding to shape present action, and build new worlds. It takes what is typically either unconscious or an expression of anxiety and turns it into a powerful tool for changemaking. Futures literacy has been increasingly recognized as a core 21st competency. UNESCO defines futures literacy as “a universally accessible skill” that “allows people to better understand the role of the future in what they see and do. Being futures literate empowers the imagination, enhances our ability to prepare, recover and invent as changes occur.” Under the YFutures umbrella, the Clarke Center has organized yearlong programs for students studying public policy, imaginative fiction writers across five continents, and children exploring the possibilities for change across their lifetimes and the power of their own choices and voices to shape that future.
Nature Kin is a collaborative card game that puts young people in charge of an open space as they and their friends race to find a home for 28 different plants, animals, and insects native to Southern California. Each set of Nature Kin comes with 100 cards: 28 Nature Kin cards of unique species, 28 Open Space/Developed Space cards that make up the board, and then Energy cards needed to play each Nature Kin. This card game, developed as part of Clarke Center ecological literacy/ecological futures programs, is being shared with students around San Diego County thanks to support from the Rising Foundation and partners at the San Diego County Office of Education’s Cuyamaca Outdoor School, serving 12,000 students annually.
Practitioners of the emergent field of Speculative Futures Studies use speculative forms – including, but not limited to, art, literature, and theory- to confront the legacies of imperialism, colonialism, and racism in order to imagine and enact more sustainable and just futures.
Science explains it, but
art may be the key to finding it.
The Speculative Futures Collective seeks to cultivate research with faculty, graduate students, and community members using speculative cultural forms and theories to collaborate on the future of education, ecology, gender, sexuality, and race.
Practitioners of the emergent field of Speculative Futures Studies use speculative forms – including, but not limited to, art, literature, and theory- to confront the legacies of imperialism, colonialism, and racism in order to imagine and enact more sustainable and just futures.
Science explains it, but
art may be the key to finding it.
The Speculative Futures Collective seeks to cultivate research with faculty, graduate students, and community members using speculative cultural forms and theories to collaborate on the future of education, ecology, gender, sexuality, and race.
Unlike intelligence, memory, and creativity, there is an alarming lack of coherent theory and a thin empirical literature on imagination. Why alarming? Imagination may be one of the most important keys to human flourishing and human progress, with spiritual and evolutionary adaptive benefit.
The science of imagination needs a guide for the future.
The Atlas of Imagination is the guide, focusing coherent theoretical models of imagination to drive further investigation and the tools needed for the empirical study of the neurodiversity of imagination.
Unlike intelligence, memory, and creativity, there is an alarming lack of coherent theory and a thin empirical literature on imagination. Why alarming? Imagination may be one of the most important keys to human flourishing and human progress, with spiritual and evolutionary adaptive benefit.
The science of imagination needs
a guide for the future.
The Atlas of Imagination is the guide, focusing coherent theoretical models of imagination to drive further investigation and the tools needed for the empirical study of the neurodiversity of imagination.
The Clarke Center is a research-and-practice hub, where the best insights from the neuroscience of imagination are connected with the latest in technology and put to use to unlock the transformative power of imagination across age groups, and communities to tackle the most pressing issues facing the planet.
Imagination discovers
new possibilities within the impossible.
Imagination is at the root of empathy and compassion. Imagination gives rise to hope. We aim to unleash the power of imagination to tackle the most pressing issues facing life on Earth – to envision and build a more equitable an sustainable world.
