Last year, HOMECOMING: The Future is Family reminded us what it meant to return to each other, to ourselves, and to the spaces that have always held us. 

This year, WONDALAND: The Power of the BLAQ Imagination asks: what becomes possible once we do? What collective vision for liberation could we manifest all together?

How we re-imagine ourselves and our communities, and forge our futures into existence — all starts with a single thought put into action. Black people imagined freedom long before we touched it, and from that spark of imagination, we built our own languages, humor, ways of gathering, performing, dressing, speaking, loving, and surviving.

WONDALAND is not purely about fantasy as an escape (nor little blonde girls falling down rabbit holes), but about fostering imagination as the deeply Black and Queer tradition of world-building and storytelling. This is a celebration of how we create belonging in places that deny it and ways of remaining soft, expressive, joyful, and alive in the face of systems designed to diminish us.

In a time when authoritarian forces continue trying to erase Black history, attack LGBTQ+ life, silence truth, and disconnect people from one another, gathering together in story, conversation, art, and collective imagination becomes even more important.

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We look forward to imagining steps towards a better future with you throughout October.