Prompt & Purpose × The Institute of Black Imagination
An Archive
for 500 Years
A one-day hackathon.
New York City.
October 1, 2026.
We are already in a war over what gets remembered. Apply to help design what survives it.
Apply via Typeform ↗Deadline Friday, September 18, 2026
What we call “saving” has quietly stopped meaning “keeping.”
The platforms we trusted to hold our lives are no longer safe places to keep them. Feeds rewrite themselves. Videos vanish. Comment sections that held thousands of real lives disappear overnight.
In an era of ubiquitous intelligence, we face a famine of wisdom.
So we put memory in a room. At our first gathering, Cyph 001, we brought together artists, technologists, scholars, and cultural custodians to ask a single question: in the age of AI, what is preserved, what is erased, and who gets to decide? The room made one thing clear. This is not a niche concern. It is urgent, it is felt, and people are ready to build against it.
“The archive is not dead. It is not static. It is generative infrastructure that allows us to create, build, and implement new futures for the next generation.”
Dario Calmese / The Institute of Black Imagination
Design an archive built to last 500 years.
Design an archival system built to protect community memory for 500 years, with a verifiable chain of custody back to its original owner. The material is real: cultural artifacts donated by The Institute of Black Imagination, a cultural R+D hub of Black Genius.
Prompt & Purpose and The Institute of Black Imagination share a commitment to confronting the exclusionary structures embedded in design, particularly the systems that determine how culture is built, recorded, and remembered.
IBI’s work began in 2018 with a library built around more than 1,900 books from Geoffrey Holder’s personal archive. By bringing real cultural material into the hackathon, our partnership asks participants to design beyond abstraction: to imagine infrastructure capable of carrying memory, ownership, and meaning across generations.
Start with
the idea.
For the open call, keep it simple: a few sentences describing your solution. Just enough for us to understand what you would build and why it matters. The selected artists will develop their concepts into working proofs of concept on the day.
You are not expected to build a finished system in a day. You are designing a proof of concept, an idea. What could it be? How would it operate? What does it look like? At the hackathon you will have access to Luma to prototype your concept.
Your idea is yours. Prompt & Purpose does not own, claim, or reproduce your concept. We exist to connect it to the people who can fund it.
October 1,
2026.
One day in New York City. A build of six to eight hours, followed by a public showcase and reception where you present your proof of concept live.
Venue to be announced. Each selected artist receives a $500 honorarium. The audience will vote for the fan's choice winner.
Put the idea in front of the room that decides what gets built.
You will present your idea in front of academics, established artists, and the cultural and technology institutions that have joined us before.
Prompt & Purpose is the conduit that connects artists to the institutions searching for real answers to urgent cultural problems. This is a room where an idea can find its funding, and a chance to help make history.
Artists. Technologists.
Systems thinkers.
Open to anyone 18 or older who can be present in New York City for the full hackathon. We are especially looking for artists, technologists, and systems thinkers.
Before
you apply.
- Apply
- Submit your proposal via the Typeform on the Prompt & Purpose website.
- Deadline
- Proposals are due Friday, September 18, 2026. No late submissions will be accepted.
- Selection
- All applicants will be notified by Thursday, September 25, 2026, one week before the hackathon.
- Eligibility
- Open to anyone 18 or older who will be present in New York City for the hackathon.
- In person
- Selected artists must be present in New York City for the entire day of October 1, 2026, for both the hackathon and the reception and presentation.
- Honorarium
- The $500 is an honorarium. There is no additional compensation for travel, lodging, materials, or any other expense.
- Ownership
- The ideas you submit remain entirely your own. Prompt & Purpose does not take ownership of, and will not independently develop, your concept.
Submit your proposal
Apply for
An Archive for 500 Years.
Presented by Prompt & Purpose and The Institute of Black Imagination.