Afrotectopia
Afrotectopia is a social institution at the intersection of art, design, technology, culture, and pedagogy. The organization was established in 2018 in New York when NYU Interactive Telecommunications (IT) graduate student Ari Melenciano wanted to create a space that convened individuals working in art, technology, activism, and Blackness. What began as a conference has evolved into an international fellowship bridging connections across the Black and Pan-African diaspora. In 2021, Afrotectopia partnered with NYU’s IT program and MIT’s Space Exploration Initiative to create an incubator program that imagined a new world, not only on Earth. The incubator selected four artists, Jordan Caldwell, Kordae Henry, Jeremy Kamal, and Ari Melenciano, who worked together to develop Black Metal, an art book centered around the relationship between science fiction, Black culture, art, and technology. Black Metal has expanded into an imagination-centered practice with space travel and science fiction as protocols for understanding the world around us.

Art+Feminism
Art+Feminism is an organization that builds a community of activists committed to closing information gaps related to gender, feminism, and the arts, beginning with Wikipedia. Founded in 2014 in New York City, Art+Feminism envisions an internet that reflects diverse global histories of art-making, where communities that have most often been written out of history feel welcomed and empowered to participate in writing (and righting) their stories. Art+Feminism’s central initiative is an annual edit-a-thon, teaching people of all gender identities and expressions worldwide to organize and edit Wikipedia pages through locally facilitated events. The organization provides edit-a-thon organizers with informational and limited financial resources, empowering them to create events that benefit their local communities while participating in a global movement. Art+Feminism also leads and collaborates on Wikipedia-oriented research and community action initiatives. Since 2014, over 40,000 people have participated in more than 1,700 edit-a-thons, resulting in the creation and improvement of more than 370,000 articles in over 27 languages on Wikipedia and its sister projects.

BUFU is By Us For Us
BUFU is By Us For Us is a project-based collective founded in 2015 by Jazmin Jones, Tsige Tafesse, Katherine Tom, and Suhyun “Sonia” Choi. The collective initially began in the experimental documentary space as a means of facilitating a global conversation on the cultural contact between Black and Asian diasporas, with an emphasis on building solidarity, de-centering whiteness, and resurfacing the deeply interconnected and complicated histories of both identities. It has since evolved into a space that builds solidarity through experimental models of organizing and making, generating prestige, and mining time as a resource. From 2015-2020, BUFU organized The WYFY School (With You For You), a decentralized, communally manifested school that hosted classes and programming in NYC and online. In 2020, BUFU created CLOUD 9, a global platform that shares love, care, and solidarity with those impacted by COVID-19. CLOUD 9 organized 86 public programs in collaboration with 90 artists, scholars, technologists, activists, and dreamers and hosted two 24-hour party celebrations. Now, BUFU acts as an evolving living archive with endless possibilities for growth and change.

Dark Laboratory
Dark Laboratory is a creative technology collective, production company, and design studio that Tao Leigh Goffe founded in the summer of 2020 in upstate New York, close to the Underground Railroad. Although Dark Laboratory has since moved to New York City, the collective maintains its interest in personal geographies and the layered, sedimented presence of race in the United States. Dark Laboratory consists of technologists, scholars, artists, and theorists who use immersive technologies such as VR, AR, sound design, films, and video games to produce solutions for tackling the climate crisis and racial injustice. In an effort to bridge the gap between formal institutions and decentralized communities, Dark Laboratory prioritizes community knowledge over higher education, listening to and learning from local cultivators, practitioners, and artists. Some of the lab’s work includes peer-reviewed journal publications, contemporary art installations, commissioned multi-sensorial activations and performances, curatorial writing, podcasts, and master classes and writing circles. Dark Laboratory’s advisory board includes Julie Dash, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Fred Moten, Stanley Nelson, and Tracy K. Smith, among others. 

Kinfolk
Kinfolk (previously known as Movers & Shakers) is an organization that harnesses emerging technologies to empower stories of Black, Brown, and queer communities in public spaces through imagination and play. Founded in 2017 by Idris Brester and Glenn Cantave, Kinfolk is a downloadable app that uses augmented reality to inscribe Black and Brown history into the American educational curricula. Kinfolk creates AR-generated monuments of historically accurate yet underrepresented historical figures such as Shirley Chisholm, Fannie Lou Hamer, Toussaint Louverture, and Gaspar Yanga. In addition to the augmented reality image of each figure, the organization also offers archival material and biographical information from which users can learn. Kinfolk has also created UNSUNG, a multiuser, interactive augmented reality learning app that educates students about the Harlem Renaissance through the stories of Florence Mills and Tiny Davis.

POWRPLNT
POWRPLNT is a media arts organization that empowers individuals to bridge the digital divide by organizing community interactions that elevate digital literacy and encourage expression through technology. Founded in 2014 by Angelina Dreem and Anibal Luque in Bushwick, Brooklyn, POWRPLNT delivers resources, mentorship, and education to the next generation of creators. The organization provides digital arts education and access for all, with a focus on connecting emerging media artists and young adults so they can learn tangible creative skills and pursue their passions, based on the belief that access to technology is a right, not a privilege. Through digital art workshops and activations, the organization offers courses led by trailblazing teaching artists, focused on tools and techniques for digital art production. Annually, POWRPLNT collaborates with around 100 emerging media artists and organizes over 80 art projects. Since its inception, the organization has engaged roughly 1,500 young creatives in workshops centered around community, creativity, and digital literacy. In addition to courses and seminars, POWRPLNT also hosts POWRPLNT Rad.io, a collaborative radio show and music-focused series that highlights up-and-coming musicians, emerging DJs, and nightlife veterans.

Processing Foundation
Processing Foundation was founded in 2001 by Ben Fry and Casey Reas to increase digital literacy and promote software learning within the arts. Their goal is to support individuals of all backgrounds in learning how to program and make creative work with code, with a particular focus on communities frequently marginalized by dominant technology. At the core of the Processing Foundation is the philosophy and politics of FLOSS: free/libre, open-source software. With the belief that learning to code is a creative and exploratory process, Processing Foundation has developed tools such as Processing (Java), a language for learning how to code; p5.js (JavaScript), an accessible tool for learning to code and make art, and Processing Android, a software that helps individuals easily create Android apps. In addition to their software and applications, the Processing Foundation also sponsors various programs that bring together diverse communities. These programs include fellowships that aim to reimagine access and empowerment at the intersection of art and technology, advocacy programs, and public events and panels. 

School for Poetic Computation (SFPC)
School for Poetic Computation (SFPC) is an experimental school founded in 2013 by Taeyoon Choi, Zach Lieberman, Jen Lowe, and Amit Pitaru. SFPC is based in New York City and offers online courses to participants worldwide. SFPC facilitates the study of art, code, hardware, and critical theory through lenses of decolonization and transformative justice. It offers programs grounded in solidarity across social differences and empowerment through a deeper technical and political understanding of tools for building just communities. Courses cover a range of subjects, from Damage Overflow Value: Race in Video Games to Solidarity Infrastructures to Interrogating Computational Approaches to Art. SFPC  organizers, teachers, and participants regularly collaborate to define and redefine “poetic computation” through publications, online and in-person showcases and exhibitions, websites, special sessions, event series, and radio productions. Examples include the publication Speculative Instruments of the Black Gooey Universe, the Electronic Cafe for Poetic Computation exhibition, and SFPC_Malware_Anthology.zip, a downloadable zip-file collection of software art.