SIU will be holding the Fuller Futures Festival to honor the legacy of the SIU emeritus professor, Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller, starting on Wednesday, April 22. The festival will discuss and explore how people can make the world work for 100% of humanity; a question Fuller himself had committed years of his life trying to find an answer to.

The event will stretch from Wednesday to Sunday, April 26, with each day having different activities, exhibits and guest speakers.

On Earth Day Wednesday, to open the festival, there will be two guest speakers, Medard Gabel and Thomas Zung. Gabel is an SIU alum who worked closely with Fuller on his World Game. Zung is a New York architect and longtime partner of Fuller who helped him design his signature geodesic dome design. The two will speak on Fuller’s legacy and where the world is at today. 

“It’s important to realize what (Fuller) did,” Zung said. “He’s been all over the world, but it all started at SIU.”

After the speakers are finished, there is a list of other activities in the day’s itinerary, including book signings with Zung, hands-on workshops and an award ceremony. The opening day will conclude with an Earth Day celebration at Campus Lake, where there will be food trucks and live music.

Thursday, April 23, will be the day Fuller’s World Game is played. The World Game is an educational simulation created by Fuller, which started in Carbondale in 1969. 

The game is played on top of a large Dymaxion Map, a map of the world that Fuller had designed himself that reduces shape and size distortion compared to what many consider to be the traditional map. It also does not prioritize a particular area. 

The 50-foot-wide map was printed at the SIU School of Art and Design by Corey Tester, an associate instructor.

To play the game, players will team up to represent countries and regions around the world. The participants will play the game on top of those areas on the big Dymaxion Map. 

Each nation or area is given the exact amount and quality of resources as the real country, represented by miniature figures. 

For example, an oil-rich country like Saudi Arabia would be given much more oil than a smaller nation. A poorer country would be given lower quality water compared to the quality of water given to richer, more developed areas.

This part of the simulation is meant to educate players on the disparities of the world as they acclimate to the resources they have.

Once the players understand the circumstances the areas they represent are in, they can begin to work toward the main goal of the game. To win the World Game, the participants need to have created a better world by the end of the simulation.

“The war games are for the rich and powerful,” Gabel said. “The World Game is for everybody. It is a tool for recognizing and solving world problems.”

Thursday will also be the opening day for the Buckminster exhibit in the Sharp Museum inside Faner hall. This exhibit will feature a collection of unique Fuller artifacts and art that was inspired by Fuller.

A Simulation Center will open on Friday, April 24. The SIM is a discussion- and technology-driven experiment in which participants gather to discuss an issue, learn about the local and global impact on communities and consider what attendees can do to solve the issue within their own communities. 

While the discussion is happening, six different screens will be present in the room, which participants will be able to research and find information on. This will allow people to sync information from up to six sources at once while engaging in trying to figure out a solution to an issue.

The SIM Center activity will take place in the Communications Building at Studio B.

“You can do it with any subject,” event organizer Elizabeth Donoghue said. “It’s a way to kind of deep dive into a subject and look into it from a local and global perspective. The thing that makes it a simulation is that you can play out different scenarios. We will have media centers where you will be looking up information in real time.”

Gabel will also be present discussing his work on modernizing and continuing Fuller’s vision of a peace game. Gabel has spent a large amount of his life developing a “New World Game.”

“Things have changed a lot since back then,” Gabel said. “Technology, computers, phones, cars, AI. You don’t need to be all in the same place to play the new World Game, people can now work on solving the world’s issues together from across the globe.”

After all the daytime activities conclude, a theatrical performance “The History and Mystery of the Universe” will open at the Varsity Center in downtown Carbondale. The play by Doug Jacobs will be about the life and accomplishments of Fuller. Tickets will be available in person at the theater.

Saturday will be Dome Day, featuring tours of Fuller’s dome house at the Fuller Dome Home museum. Fuller lived in his dome house at the corner of Cherry and Forest from 1960 to 1971. 

Additionally, there is an art walk that starts at 1:30 p.m., in which people will walk around Carbondale to view several Fuller inspired murals. The walk will leave from the Dome Home Visitor Center and end at the Varsity Center.

A closing ceremony on Sunday will give attendees an opportunity to reflect on the week.

“The Fuller Festival grew organically,” Donoghue said. “I feel like what happened and the response I received, even beyond SIU, was greater than expected. That’s really important right now. Creating a space where we can celebrate and can actually believe that there’s a better world possible is in alignment with what Fuller believed entirely, and I think that is exactly what’s needed right now.”

Admission is free for students and a discount code for anyone else is available by request at [email protected].

Register for tickets here. 

Staff reporter Jackson Morris can be reached at [email protected]

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