In Kjipuktuk, the city is constantly changing, but Who gets to imagine what it becomes? This project invites the community to step into the role of dreamer, city-maker, and future-shaper. Gathered around a long table and a shared meal, neighbours create stories filled with wishes, memories, impossible ideas, hidden creatures, gathering places, and things that have never existed, each twisting and folding into one another, travelling somewhere we couldn’t predict.Together, these collective imaginings form a shared dreamscape, transforming the familiar city into a city softer, wilder, brighter, and more playful than the one we know. Our stories will no longer sit quietly on paper. They will unfold around us, larger than life, our collective imagination becoming a form of resistance.
Once upon a time, in a city called Kjipuktuk, the buildings began to rise faster and faster. New streets appeared. Cranes stretched across the sky. Plans were drawn, decisions were made, and the city kept changing. But the people who lived there began to wonder… Whose dreams are shaping all of this? Most of the time, a city is imagined in offices and meeting rooms by planners, developers, and engineers. The people who walk its streets, gather in its parks, raise families, make art, and build community are often not part of the decisions. So one summer evening, OSO set out a long table and invited the community to dream differently. They gathered around a shared meal, to imagine strange and wonderful things together, each person adding to what someone else starts. We imagined our wishes, memories, questions, and impossible ideas. Our stories twisting and folding into one another, travelling somewhere we couldn’t predict. Not imagining the city as it is, but as it could be. Softer. wilder. brighter. more playful. Filled with hidden creatures, gathering places, unlikely structures, and things that have never existed before. Every drawing, sentence, shape, and story becomes a piece of a new world. Then we will build it. Our stories no longer sit quietly on paper. Unfolding around you and larger than life. Most people move through a city as recipients, inheriting decisions made without them. This project asks what happens when that relationship flips, when the people who live in a city become the ones who imagine, shape, and transform it. Imagination becomes a form of resistance.
