School of the Future

School of the Future explores the role of school in shaping our values. The installation included over 1,000 inflatable balls as well as a central ramp leading to a 100-year-old antique school desk where visitors contemplated the first public school in Alabama—currently abandoned and under discussion two blocks from the gallery—and shared what they wish they learned while in school.

Thousands of responses were documented over the ten-month exhibition and revealed a range of both practical and emotional wisdom: how to be yourself, the value of travel, to not be afraid of bugs and gross things, Spanish, how to budget, patience and kindness, how to have fun without technology again, to never let anyone tell you that you wouldn’t be good at something you are passionate about, to take nothing for granted, how to love and make good choices, different cultures, how to change a flat tire, the compassionate life, how to handle stress and existential crisis. The project reimagines methods for initiating public discussions of civic institutions. Originally part of the Futures exhibition at the Centre for the Living Arts, the installation traveled to the Onassis Cultural Centre in Athens, Greece in 2016.