Proposal: A short story contest to call for and exhibit protopian fiction stories that creatively features systems of collective stewardship and care to build a better civilization.

The stories need to be framed or touch upon significant civics topics:

Creation or care of the commons and public goods Support of human needs Civic Innovations, Utilities or Service. Civic Stewardship. Design Principles for systemic innovation Resilience and integrity of systems Decentralized systems and protocols Vitality: Life’s capacity to create more Life, the embodied state of thriving that emerges from the interconnected levels of well-being and quality of life for individuals, communities, and ecologies. Choice, agency, new and more robust governance system that allow for more participation. Citizen engagement in governments and collective stewardship of the commons and our communities Community and Community organizing tools and principles Development of operating systems for collective stewardship

Requirements for the stories: A 20 minute read. That’s about 3000 — 5000 words. A plot or storyline with characters. A 3 month exclusive to the story before it can be published elsewhere. Licensed under Creative Commons By. NC. SA.

We will help editorialize and add at least 2 AI generated images to illustrate the story. Stories will be published in a public forum and promoted by our team.

There will be monetary prizes given to the best stories voted by a jury.

The authors will be encouraged to: Create stories inspired by existing civics solutions and ideas, in order to highlight real case studies but under a fiction wireframe that allows for a more expansive an easy to digest form of the idea Collaborate with other projects funded by the grant to highlight their solutions through protopian storytelling Add a section at the end of the fictional story with context about the ideas proposed and potential follow ups to bring them to life

We will seek partnerships with aligned organizations to fund some of the prizes and expand the promotion of the stories.