FAQs

Rooted in Consciousness: Transformation begins with awareness — of history, of relationships, of belonging.

Imagination at Work: We bring care into strategy and imagination into systems work. Our approach helps people and organizations move through complexity with clarity and creativity.

Attention + Intention = Imagination: We believe in imagining futures with conscious care and intentionality — where attention and intention join to become imagination. This is imagination practiced with empathy, grounded in history, and open to possibility.

Our work has spanned (but is not limited to):

• Research, Insight Development, & Analysis

• Organizational Strategy

• Narrative Strategy

• Participatory Design

• Curriculum Development

• Foresight Practices

Sometimes that looks like designing frameworks for intergenerational dialogue. Sometimes it’s co-creating tools with community partners. Other times it’s helping organizations reimagine their role in systems change.

At its heart, Conscious Futures is about expanding what feels possible. We don’t just generate ideas — we co-create pathways, frameworks, and strategies that help people and organizations act with clarity and imagination.

We hold space for questions that spark new perspectives, and we translate those insights into grounded practices and actionable change.

Conscious Futures is grounded in Kate Barranco’s independent practice, but it is also an evolving space. We partner with organizations, artists, and change agents across disciplines and geographies — always relationally, always with curiosity.

Conscious Futures isn’t a collection of disconnected gigs. While the work is project-based, freelance describes the structure of the work—not its purpose. Conscious Futures is a container for a long-term practice of research, strategy, and design grounded in shared inquiry and world-building.

What connects each project isn’t the client—it’s the practice: a consistent commitment to conscious, collective ways of relating, imagining, and acting toward futures worth living into.

Designed by the BRILLIANT Abby Fish, my longtime friend and design inspiration, the glasses represent the gaze toward the future — and the understanding that how we see shapes what becomes possible. They face forward to signal orientation rather than nostalgia, and their open, spacious design reflects the non-singular nature of the future: open, unfolding, and shaped by many paths. The hand-drawn, imperfect lines are intentional, echoing the reality that the future is not precise or polished, but emergent and alive. At their core, glasses are simply a tool for seeing more clearly — a reminder that the lenses we use to perceive the world shape how we move through it, relate to one another, and ultimately help bring future possibilities into focus.