Good Together and Berlin launch Make/shift festival of future-making in Walyalup Fremantle

With anxiety about the future increasingly spilling into politics and everyday life, a new festival launching in September is creating space for a different kind of public conversation – one that’s less interested in hot takes and culture wars than in helping ordinary people imagine and build better futures together.

Presented by local design studio Good Together and creative agency Berlin, Make/shift is a two-week ‘festival of future-making’ blending big conversations with hands-on workshops, films, performances, a storytelling night, and even a pub quiz. The program invites audiences into some of the biggest questions of our time (and the times to come) through art, culture, and community.

How much AI do we really want? Can we pull democracy back from the brink? How do we make housing, work, and the economy fairer? And what happens when the future we’ve been promised stops making sense? Avoiding neat answers, Make/shift invites a broad public audience to explore these questions together – often with a drink in hand.

Festival Co-Director Joni Sercombe said: “The festival was created for people who care about where the world is headed, but don’t necessarily see themselves reflected in traditional political or cultural spaces.

“The future can feel like something that’s going to happen to us, something that gets decided by politicians or billionaires. We want to bring it much closer to home. Make/shift is an invitation to get curious, meet interesting people, try something you wouldn’t normally try, and remember that ordinary people have more influence over the future than we often realise.”

You don’t need to be an expert to attend. You don’t need to work in politics or social change. You don’t even need to agree with everyone in the room. If you’ve ever looked at the state of the world and thought, ‘Surely we can do better than this’, you’re exactly who this festival was made for.

Co-Director Matt Berry said art and culture had an important role to play at a time when many people were feeling overwhelmed by the state of the world.

“When everything feels uncertain, it’s tempting to retreat or look for someone else to tell us what comes next. We think events like this can do something different. Creative spaces give us somewhere to wrestle with uncertainty, stretch our imaginations, and discover new possibilities for what our futures could look and feel like. That’s the spirit we’ve tried to build into every part of Make/shift,” added Berry.

Make/shift Festival runs from 4–18 September 2026 across Walyalup Fremantle.

The full program and tickets are available now.

First published on CBWA on August 19.