At a recent gathering of MOFGA staff, we collectively envisioned what we want the world to be like in five years. The exercise, guided by communications director Jennifer Wilhelm, was to sit in our reality and not let dominant cultural narratives — of climate disaster and societal collapse — engulf an alternative future. We were not conjuring a dystopia. Nor were we tasked with envisioning a utopia. Instead, Jennifer introduced the concept of a “thrutopia”: a future in which humanity is actively working towards a better world. In a thrutopia, we rise to meet the challenges to build the future we want.

Jennifer then asked us to resist jumping into solutions mode, inviting us to linger, in small groups, on the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and feelings of the world we want to live in. As we took turns noting ideas in colored marker on flipcharts of white paper, MOFGA’s exhibition hall filled with the buzz of brainstorming. In my group, we envisioned a world that smells like sourdough bread, lilac in spring and beach rose in summer, and the earth drinking in a gentle rain. It sounds like cows mooing, a chorus of wild birds, bicycle bells, and home-grown music. The future tastes like that freshly baked bread, with sweet-cream butter, and all the other seasonal harvests one can imagine. It looks like a robust local food system, people helping one another, clean air and water, and ample, accessible green spaces. The world we conjured feels safe and equitable, abundant and joyous.  

Do you notice a theme here? And no, I don’t mean the sourdough … In a staff-wide reflection following our break-out groups, I shared an observation: this vision seems an awful lot like the Common Ground Country Fair.  Not only that, the world we scribbled into our collective consciousness sounds possible. It’s not just the three days of the Fair — where people commit to riding their bikes or the train to reduce their environmental footprint, where they celebrate the season by enjoying organic food grown by local farmers, where sounds of joy score the reverie of the fall harvest. It’s the fact that people come together — year-round — to dream these three days into being, and then they do the work to make it happen.

If the Fair is a test case of a thrutopia, I’d say it’s been proven. And we didn’t need this exercise to realize this. The elements of the Fair — the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and feels — are being built into our daily lives through the work of MOFGA.

In the pages ahead, you’ll find your guide to the 2025 Common Ground Country Fair, complete with keynote speakers, a full schedule, maps, and more. You’ll also find stories of people across Maine who are envisioning a better world and actively working towards it — from a community garden project in northern Maine to experienced organic farmers sharing their knowledge with beginning farmers through a mentorship program. May you be inspired to participate in building the world you want to live in.