“Neo-futurists see the cities as huge lively ecosystems where every individual’s well-being is interdependent.” (neo-futurists’ Manifesto)

Neo-futuristic Walks is an ongoing project/movement that gathers a community of neo-futurists to collectively re-imagine our urban coexistence. Through the act of walking, neo-futurists explore the primal bodily experience's role in unfolding new relationships in and with urban environments. They observe their surroundings attentively, and, based on their insights, memories and dreams, they collectively create and live the site-specific speculative urban scenarios.

This project expresses our critical view on current cities' developments into glossy, sterile environments, where the neighbourhoods are more often defined by physical/geographical boundaries rather than the so-called “vibes” or the sense of community. In response to this process, Neo-futuristic Walks focus on uncovering the site-specific character and generating more profound connections between humans and their urban environments, thus embracing a sense of belonging.

Although the neo-futurists community is spread all across Europe, normally, the project lands on the scale of a neighbourhood. Here we start a series of walks and guide experimental city inspections. By employing narrative as a tool to create a reflective distance from everyday lifestyles and stimulate collective imagination, we cherish the unique site's qualities and manifest an attentive take on shaping our cities' futures.

Our creative process has a strong community-building focus. We organise city inspections, urban gleaning workshops and collective dreaming sessions, thus opening a space to meet. The project is continually enriched by feedback and collaborations with professionals from different fields, such as fashion design, graphic design, photography, urban research, anthropology and art. This way, the final results unfold into inspiring and interdisciplinary urban experiences.

The Neo-futuristic Walks project was initiated at the end of 2020 by two spatial designers, Aušra Česnauskytė and Goda Verikaitė. In June 2021, the project as a performative tour was presented at the London Festival of Architecture. In August 2021, a parallel event took place in Vilnius. This year, Neo-futuristic Walks in the format of walkshop will take place in Utrecht (April), Kaunas (April), as a part of the Kaunas European Capital of Culture 2022 program, and possibly in Brussels (June).

Through the series of walks and urban futures speculations, the Neo-futuristic Walks project celebrates our neighbourhoods' ecological, cultural, and social diversity. Its' creative process gathers a new community to "inspect" cities inclusively and see urban misfits, accidents and leftovers as a stirring urban nature and as a rich source of information about cities' inhabitants. By developing events, walkshops, hosting the discussions, neo-futurists invite locals to take a moment to collectively dream about the city futures we really want to welcome and pause from inertial producing, designing and building.

The Neo-futuristic Walks project opens a space for critical thinking, stimulates collective imagination and empowers new collaborative acts in the city. Together, these elements shape an innovative approach to the urban research process, strive for site-sensitive, inclusive and creative urban developments, as well as shapes a medium for the emergence of a new community.