Transmission AD / NYU Arts and Humanities | Abu Dhabi / 2026
Hack the Future Lab Abu Dhabi
Where NYU Arts and Humanities | Abu Dhabi
When 23, 24 and 25 November 2026
Format Three-day experience
We don't predict the future. We travel there first.
What it is
A three-day working lab, not a conference. Leaders, faculty and students from NYU Arts and Humanities | Abu Dhabi work alongside artists, technologists and partners from Abu Dhabi's cultural and research institutions. For three days the room behaves as though NYU Arts and Humanities | Abu Dhabi's next chapter has already happened, then works backwards: what changed, what it took, and what can begin now.
The Lab is created and led by Karen Palmer, Storyteller from the Future, an artist whose immersive work explores agency, technology and the futures we are building. Previous Hack the Future Labs have taken place in Munich, Kenya and the Netherlands.
23, 24 and 25 November 2026 / One connected experience
Three-Day Journey
- Day OneINSPIRE→Monday 23 November
- Day TwoIMAGINE→Tuesday 24 November
- Day ThreeACTIVATEWednesday 25 November
Day One / Monday 23 NovemberINSPIRE
Day One opens the imagination. Provocation, Ubuntu, personal reflection, leadership dialogue and future learning give participants new ways to see what could become possible.
- Ubuntu and relational intelligence
- Fireside chat from the future
- The School That Outgrows Us
Day Two / Tuesday 24 NovemberIMAGINE
Re-entry, the two Ars Electronica contributions, Pattern Recognition and Drumming Future Histories. Afternoon consultations are followed by the museum visit and Leadership Dinner.
- Ars Electronica: Negotiating Humanity
- Ars Electronica: Hello Futures
- Drumming Future Histories
Day Three / Wednesday 25 NovemberACTIVATE
The final day tests imagined futures against institutional reality, then turns them into a tangible Future Artefact.
- The Disruptor and Platform
- Systemic review
- Future Artefact
Three Lab days, 23–25 November: INSPIRE → IMAGINE → ACTIVATE. Pre-Lab · Sunday 22 November, late afternoon / evening: Nature Connection — mangrove walk / kayak. This is a nature-connection evening only.
Working programme / Monday 23 November
Day One / INSPIRE
Provocation → Ubuntu → World-building
Day One opens the imagination. Provocation, Ubuntu, personal reflection, leadership dialogue and future learning give participants new ways to see what could become possible.
Morning refreshment
Karen Palmer | Opening provocation
Karen opens as Storyteller from the Future and establishes agency, autonomy and authorship as the Lab’s central challenge. Result: a shared future-facing question for the room.
Wakanyi Machariah-Hoffman | Ubuntu and relational intelligence
A relational and Indigenous frame for leadership, knowledge, community and collective responsibility. Keynote and circle workshop. Result: a shared ethical and cultural lens for the Lab.
BREAK
Pause and reset.
Karen Palmer | Warm-up identity exercise
Participants explore who they are, what they carry and the knowledge, values and lived experience they bring into the future-building process. Result: a personal and collective foundation for the work that follows.
Dean Awam Amkpa and leadership | Fireside chat from the future
A future-tense conversation exploring what changed, what decisions were made and which relationships made that future possible. Result: institutional ambitions and measures of meaningful success.
LUNCH
Pause and reset.
David Bassuk | The School That Outgrows Us
Participants prototype a Future Lab of Education across physical, social, imaginary and emotional space, then test whether it can survive beyond its original designers. Result: a shared spatial blueprint and handover protocols.
Break and room setup
David Bassuk | Workshop
BREAK
Pause and reset.
Student Voice / Interactive Media Representative | Student and emerging practice response
Feedback from recent questionnaires. Result: confirm alignment.
Ingrid Fleur | Future quick talk and meditation
Karen Palmer and Mario Marquez Lartigue | Collective reflection and systemic decompression
The room identifies what shifted, what remains unresolved and what must be carried into the next day. Result: captured questions, tensions and emerging patterns.
Artist in Residence Open Studios
Evening social.
Jesusita Santillan | Travel to Leadership dinner
30 minutes, as listed in the programme.
Jesusita Santillan | Leadership dinner
Connecting the speakers with the NYU Arts and Humanities | Abu Dhabi ecosystem and wider Saadiyat Island. The supplied programme lists travel and dinner at 17:00; please confirm these overlapping timings with the organisers.
Why Arts and Humanities, why now
Abu Dhabi is building its cultural, research and technology institutions at the same time, and fast. NYU Arts and Humanities | Abu Dhabi sits inside that build with a global network and a multidisciplinary community few institutions can match. The Lab treats that position as its central question: what role does NYU Arts and Humanities | Abu Dhabi play in Abu Dhabi's next decade, and what would the institution have to start, stop or risk to play it?
What we ask of you
- Be in the room. Day one sets the direction and day three decides what comes back. Both need leadership present.
- Dean Awam Amkpa joins a conversation on day one, speaking from ten years ahead about what NYU Arts and Humanities | Abu Dhabi became. It is prepared with him beforehand, not improvised.
- Bring one question you want the institution to have answered a decade from now.
Venue, timings and attendance details will follow from the host unit.
Who is leading it
We move people into the future, then bring them back to build it.