Once Upon a Future

Retreat into Futurecraft & Storymaking

5 days / 4 nights

Tuesday April 15th - Saturday April 19th, 2025

at The Weller House, Fort Bragg, California

Hosted by The Design Science Studio and The Weller House

Produced by habRitual

Step into a sanctuary of imagination, where storytelling becomes a portal to the futures we long for.

This five-day analog retreat is a guided exploration of future folklore—melding the timeless structures of fairytale, myth, and speculative fiction with the radical act of imagining new worlds.

Through creative exercises, written worldbuilding, and deep engagement with landscape, we will rekindle our power to co-author the future. This is not just about imagining alone—but making with. With each other, with story, with the land. Here, creativity becomes a collaborative act with the more-than-human world — an invitation to weave visions alongside wind, trees and time itself.

Whether through manifestos, poetry, future fiction, zines, or even game design, each participant will craft their own visionary fragment of a future culture — a glimpse of what could be.


Rather than a singular collective story, this retreat invites you to form your own future-facing work while witnessing how our individual pieces interweave, revealing unseen patterns of possibility. Inspired by the mycelial model of interconnection, we see each work not as isolated genius, but as a planetesimal — each fragment holding gravitational potential to attract others, forming new, unexpected futures together.

By the end, we will co-create a micro-museum of future culture, a living archive of hope, resilience, and creative power.

Taking place in Fort Bragg, CA, at the historic Weller house in a town out of time, in a landscape that opens the imagination, this retreat offers respite from a dark world and a space to dream forward. In times of crisis, imagination is not a luxury — it’s a surthrival strategy, a form of resistance and a radical act of care.

As Nick Cave once wrote, imagination may be our last true wilderness. Let’s protect it, explore it and offer it forward.

Our Analog Journey to #getweller

  • Immersive co-learning sessions and writing workshops that guide you in the exploration of future folklore

  • Step out of time and embrace the pause: we will tuck away our devices and enjoy the magic of  good old fashioned pens, paper, and hand-wielded tools.

  • We’ll ground each day with nourishing yoga for all levels, movement and meditation

  • Kayaking in a lagoon surrounded by redwoods!? 

    Working with the land through coastal restoration?

    Whale watching and communing with the sea? 

    All of the above, and more!

  • Re:form the future by integrating writing with image-weaving as we collage our way through invocations of our imagined worlds

  • Be nourished by local, organic and sustainably sourced meals and the magical company during our shared brunches and dinners.

  • Lean into the ancient practice of tending to our focus and weaving new tapestries of the imagination through a sit and knit with Sunny.

  • We’ll walk two blocks and hop aboard the historic skunk train, weaving through the redwoods we’ll tend to the strands of our inner vision as we soak in the majesty of the natural world.

Meet Your Hosts

  • Catherine Connors is a digital and media leader who has architected narrative impact strategies across academia, non-profits, start-ups, and global entertainment companies. As a former scholar whose work focused on the political science of storytelling, she brings an unique depth of expertise in and understanding of the nuances and dynamics of narrative, communication, and story to her work in empowering and supporting next-generation storytellers, creatives, and media innovators. She’s the former head of content and editor in chief for The Walt Disney Company’s digital division, and led that company’s women & girls’ strategy, working across key global franchises and leading a Princess task force. She’s also the author of the critically acclaimed The Feminine Revolution, and an in-demand speaker and advisor on all things storytelling. She lives in Los Angeles with her family.

  • Roxi is a regenerative artivist, cultural ecologist, protopian futurist, ontological designer, experiential producer, transdisciplinary social sculptor and creative doula. She is a student of living systems, regenerative design, herbalism and decolonial sustainability. She has over 18 years of experience working at the intersection of art, science, experience and technology. Her quest is to harness this intersectional approach to catalyze social and systemic change through inclusive, transdisciplinary collaborations for the regeneration of our planet and culture.

    Her path is grounded in a commitment to creating inspiring and embodied ways of learning together. As behavior is a function of culture - she supports and develops creative cultural interventions and co-learning evolutionary containers. Her thesis is rooted in a belief that as we perpetuate equitable and just cultures, societal behaviors participating in life affirming ways of being will emerge in that process. As we are facing a crisis of imagination, Roxi’s efforts as an immersive artist, regenerative designer and educator encourage collective imagination beyond the limits of the plausible and probable into the possible in service to the potential of a world where all life thrives at the expense of none. She is a deep believer and practitioner in designing for states of being, having those states of being prime us for connection, reparations and regeneration with ourselves, each other and our beautiful living planet. 

  • Jeff has always believed one thing: It’s the story that matters.

    He has made a living from words his entire career, starting out as an award-winning tech journalist for InformationWeek magazine and moving into marketing. He now runs his own Los Angeles–based PR and strategy consultancy, Sweat + Co, and welcomes travelers to the historic Weller House.

We want you to join us! Payment plans are accessible through the portal.

Where we’ll be:

The Weller House

We’ll retreat into the sanctuary of The Weller House, a portal into the past on the breathtaking Mendocino Coast. We’ll sleep in its whimsical bedrooms and gather in its historic ballroom – once both a church and a speakeasy – and in its studies and gardens and cozy corners.

Explore more of the weller story here

Nestled in the heart of Fort Bragg, just minutes from the ocean, we’ll be surrounded by history and by the soul-nourishing landscape of Northern California.

Questions? Comments? Bring those here!