Our Mission

1Future is a creative studio and online platform that produces art, media and events to drive social change around the world. By connecting artists and innovators, organizers and audiences, with stories of historical and global impact, 1Future uses creative work as a language to discuss the pressing issues of our time.  Learn! Create! Share! Act!

Our Story

On a planet facing deep peril and many polarizing issues that impact all of its residents, only a single language exists that can bring the global human tribes to the same table for a meaningful discussion: that language is art.

Since the dawn of history, each people and each culture has used some version of art — in the form of pictures, sounds, shapes, words, images — to tell the stories important to them, stories that brought innovation into being, and determined what happened next.

The time has come for us all to come together and use art in order to learn from one another, create with one another, share our creations, and act on the social meaning of our stories. The time has arrived to shape and drive our collective future. 1Future.

To the cynic, it might seem a quaint concept: use art to change the world. But how idealistic is it really? The stories that humans tell, through the mediums of the day, have always shaped popular opinion and drove change, whether technological or social. Even today: content is king, and the telling of news-stories — fake or otherwise — paves society’s path. Just look all around.

So why not organize the world’s artists and storytellers to become true activist creators – artivists – whose work drives change rather than profit? Why not promote their topical tales the same way that commercial work is promoted? Use all the tools of innovation to re-establish and reconnect global communities, instead of simply developing global consumers?

This is what 1Future does — working with the world’s leading artists, musicians, writers and filmmakers (local are respected internationally); with community leaders, organizers and historians (thinking globally as they act locally); with education groups, public-media organizations and socially conscious business leaders (modern communication with young minds).

It’s no mystery that for the planet to survive and for its people to thrive, we all need to get on the same page about social change, about environmental, racial, gender and food justice, about managing progress and proliferation. Survival requires a shared understanding of one future. Using individual knowledge as its basis, art as its mother tongue, modern technology and human interaction as a delivery system, we can get there.

Our Team

Cannon Hersey  Project Director
Cannon Hersey is a photographer, fine artist and organizer of large-scale cultural efforts.

Hersey believes that as an artist, he has a role beyond the studio, working as an educator and organizer to address social change through art, media and education. Hersey has exhibited at numerous institutions and galleries including Lincoln Center’s Frieda and Roy Furman Gallery, the opening event of the 2008 Sao Paulo Bienale at the private collection of Kim Esteve, the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporic Arts (MoCADA), the New York Open Center, the Johannesburg Art Foundation, and the presidential award ceremony for Nelson Mandela at NYU.

Roger Sichel  Business Development and Innovation Director
From rock concerts, finance tech startups and organic beverages, Roger has been a key figure in the production and development of hundreds of projects over the last 30+ years. At the forefront of mobile solutions, Roger’s compa­nies have developed customer engagement mobile solutions that provide proven, turn-key approaches that understand the demands of the digitally connected consumer, delivering high visibility marketing and branding awareness campaigns.

Roger was a strategic investor in Sonu Beverages, a manufacturer and marketer of USDA certified organic beverages, and was instrumental in enhancing Sonu’s business plan. Previously, Roger was the Business Develop­ment Director of Wordlogic Corporation, where he turned around the fortunes of a company that was cash-challenged, product deficient, and in a deep and long share price slump. Recognizing the value of the company’s largely underdevel­oped algorithm-based predictive word technology, Roger brought the company into the mobile arena. He introduced an aggressive program of building out the patents and developing new applications. His tenure culminated in a licensing deal resulting in a $5 million cash infusion that
set the stage for the next round of product build-out.

Henry Cross COO
Henry Cross is the founder of Hosh Kids and Executive Director of Hosh.

Taku Nishimae Media Director
Taku Nishimae is a Peabody Award winning journalist and a filmmaker, with work spanning nearly 30 years. He covers a wide range of business, economy and culture topics as a news producer and interviewer based in New York and Tokyo. Nishimae is a founder of ZENGO, Inc., which produces feature films, documentary films, television programs, multimedia digital contents and educational contents and workshops. His films have screened at international film festivals, and have garnered a Peabody Award, the Galaxy Award (Japanese Emmy) Grand Prix and the ATP (Association of TV Producers) Award in Japan. For PIKADON Project, he produced live music/art shows in 16 international cities around the world including NY, London, Berlin, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Shanghai.

Bahiyah Yasmeen Robinson Business Development
Bahiyah Yasmeen Robinson started her first business importing textiles from Tanzania to the United States. Since then, she has worked largely as a consultant and advisor, engaging public-private sector stakeholders and building partnerships to drive ecosystems with demonstrated social and economic impact.  She has worked with organizations including Ashoka, News Deeply, Global Citizen, the Rockefeller Foundation, the U.S. Department of State, The Paul Allen Foundation, the ONE Campaign, UNICEF, and the U.N. Foundation. Robinson is also the Founder of Young Art Collector, an initiative that convenes and engages young contemporary art collectors to build, grow and internationally showcase their collections around African Diasporan art.

Todd Sines Creative Director
Todd Sines is a director and photographer who combines expansive, often desolate landscapes with surreal and dadaist influenced fashion editorial work; a hybrid of Guy Bourdin, Helmut Newton, Ansel Adams and David Lynch. His prior work as a graphic designer and visual effects artist blends sci-fi VFX with iconic typography; his new work as a director is a culmination of all things past, present and future.

Regina Viqueira  Development and Social Media
Regina Viqueira is a visual artist with a background in non-profit development and community engagement. She reimagines environment, experience, and identity through a multi-disciplinary art and social practice.  Her work has been shown at El Museo del Barrio in NYC and the Philippine Embassy in Washington, D.C., among other spaces.

Kazunori Kurimoto DOP

Peter Bill Archivist, Educator and Projection specialist
Peter Bill is an Artist, Activist and Educator. He has, since learning Photoshop v. 1.5 been interested in connecting under-represented communities with digital tools so their voices may be broadcast. He has been involved with large scale video projections, guerrilla art actions, and community building since the 90s.

Peter Bill’s award winning paint and video landscapes have shown in such diverse venues as The Kitchen(NYC), the Henry Art Gallery(Seattle), FILE Festival(São Paulo, Brazil), and other international venues. He continues in his Oil paintings and video work to weave the painterly with the digital, pixels and paint, indigo and 191970 blue. He envisioned and realized the first time-lapse film festival in North America, the Gila Timelapse Film Festival and has curated and directed shows on three continents. “Art must be realized on the streets, as an agent of change and progress.”

Akira Fujimoto Artist + Organizer

Alexis Mena Education Director, Artrepreneurship

Shannon Shird Education Director
Shannon Shird is a producer, writer and filmmaker whose work centers around art and social activism. She serves as producer and conducts marketing, outreach and distribution efforts for award-winning documentary film Black and Cuba. Since June 2013, she has organized campaigns and projects with Black Alliance for Just Immigration that work to address racial equality, economic justice and immigrant rights including, ICE-FREE NYC, Safety Beyond Policing, and more.  She is co-founder and creative director of ARTrepreneurship art collective and is currently producing her first short film, BodyMore, set to be released in 2017.

Junchen Huang Social Media Manager

Piotr Orlov Writer/Editor/Content Strategist

Ken Hirama  Production Director + Filmmaker (Tokyo)
Ken Hirama is an award winning director, photographer and a visual artist based in Tokyo, Japan. His first project to garner attention was hi test video “D90 Short Film,” which was chosen as the “Best video done by the Nikon D90 on d90plus.” His work has been shown at Huis Marseille Museum, Amsterdam with Japanese leading photographers Mika Ninagawa, Rinko Kawauchi, Risaku Suzuki and other photographers around the globe. Hirama’s collaborations include shotahirama, pleq, Anna Rose Carter, Natalia Noelia and Japanese art label matter and SIGNALDADA.

Zanele Mazibuko 1Future South Africa Director
Zanele Mazibuko has over a decade of combined experience in journalism, research, communication, media strategy, and marketing in both mainstream and alternative media. She worked as a full-time journalist for Sowetan-Sunday World, City Press and Daily Sun before she was promoted to Gauteng editor of City Vision, a Media 24 Community publication. Mazibuko has worked for projects such as Crosspathculture and the International Arts Alive Festival, among many others.