Urgent Fantasy – MAD Festival 2026

Description

The prevailing logic of our time insists that there is no alternative, no outside, no elsewhere. Yet, at the edges, in the interstices, something endures: the persistent, urgent human ability to imagine something different. If survival depends on imagining what does not yet exist, then fantasy becomes a radical act – a rupture where new worlds are born: in stories and games, in communities and economic experiments, in art forms that refuse the given. The MAD Festival 2026 takes Urgent Fantasy as its compass. We invite thinkers, creators, practitioners, and dreamers to explore imagination as a collective tool for cultural and systemic change – and to ask which fantasies are already transforming the world around us and what it would take to give them space. Date: October 17, 2026 Location: Kornhausforum, Bern Language: English Admission: free Website: https://www.hkb-ma-design.ch/ Contact: madfestival@hkb.bfh.ch Registration until October 9 for participation in the festival including lunch and workshops: madfestival@hkb.bfh.ch. For attending the festival without lunch and workshops, no registration is necessary. Accessibility & Awareness: A concept for accessibility and awareness ensures that as many people as possible can participate comfortably. It will be published on Instagram before the event. The festival can also be watched via livestream. To access, please send an email to madfestival@hkb.bfh.ch The MAD Festival is a small interdisciplinary design festival in Bern, organized by students of the Master Design at the University of the Arts Bern (HKB).