We're Cooked!
STORY TIME
I met Vinay (and eventually Kent) at NEW INC’s speakers dinner for their DEMO Festival about a year ago. As the adage goes, real recognize real, and these two felt so familiar that almost immediately we decided to collaborate on future projects. We started applying for various strategic planning RFPs. No dice. So we pivoted to create products (lead generators) that would not only establish our unique approach to strategic design for arts and culture institutions, known as Collective Futuring, but create opportunities for us to work with the practitioners, communities and institutions we want to work with. Come on abundance mindset!
After hosting the first Climate, Arts, and Philanthropy lunch during Climate Week 2025, I realized that so many impact investors, arts administrators, and climate practitioners are unaware of how to create the futures they are working toward. Many of these folks operate in silos, hence why I bring them to the literal (lunch) table. And many of them lack awareness of tools and resources to fortify the efficacy of their efforts in a dwindling economy. Governance structures help, community engagement helps, systems thinking helps, but none of these approaches solve multi-problems on their own.
So we decided to write a zine to educate folks in these sectors about the opportunities to create sustainable futures that are being left on the proverbial table.
Enter, We’re Cooked! A white paper ‘zine that explores how communities, cultural workers, organizers, artists, and institutions are developing more adaptive and collaborative ways of working together. Using the cookbook as a conceptual framework, We’re Cooked gathers reflections, practices, provocations, and recommendations that emerged through relational research.
Rather than offering a singular solution or fixed roadmap, we approach collective futuring as iterative and relational — shaped through experimentation, shared practice, and ongoing participation. Like any good recipe, what works in one place may need to be adjusted in another. Some practices require time. Others require trust, flexibility, or entirely new ingredients.
What matters most is that we continue learning how to prepare for the future together.
MEET THE COOKS
This publication was shaped through conversations with cultural leaders, artists, and community organizers exploring more collective ways forward:
Raul Altamura-Zbengheci
Leonardo Bravo
Monique Davis
Claude Grunitzky
Em Joseph
Gabby Malavé
Lorie Milward
Anna Raginskaya
Jordan Weber
Moe Yousuf
AAM 2026
After publishing We’re Cooked, we headed down to Philly to present it as a workshop and let me tell you, it was delicious! We had a small but mighty crowd of museum administrators who were eager to address their institutions’ multi-layered issues regarding sustainability, community engagement, fundraising, and more. For two full hours we shared and contemplated and connected and learned. We had no expected outcomes for this workshop, but that transpired warmed my very big heart.
You know I love a check in. So we asked everyone how they were feeling and received the below responses:
But after the workshop concluded I asked them again how they were doing. And they said this:
Come on real time impact data!! Cue Anthony Hamilton, “…we had a ball…”
If you or your organization are interested in bringing this workshop to your communities, feel free to ping me at hello@themcguire.group. Here’s a brief description: “This Learning Lab introduces collective futuring: a strategic foresight methodology for museums facing climate and community crises. Through hands-on exercises based on real-world scenarios, develop tools to move beyond reactive planning, building institutional capacity to cocreate resilient futures with the communities you serve.”
I’ll be in touch real soon with another grief newsletter because as we are all starting to learn, grief literacy is a crucial part of sustainable futures.
Thanks for reading, sweethearts.
Take care,
Whitney