Our Design Fringe provocation in 2023, Speculation: Eight Billion Little Utopias, invites Australian designers to reimagine our societies, communities, politics and ideals to be catalysts for conversations on alternative visions through the breadth of design practice. We are looking for work that is speculative in its fullest interpretation: through materials, methodologies, approaches and an understanding of what constitutes design and how it can be a source of vision. We are seeking designers whose work is poetic, critical and progressive, engages with the big issues of our time, critiques and encourages conversations and has the capacity to imagine new utopias. Speculation: Eight Billion Little Utopias doesn’t ask for answers but rather questions. It doesn’t seek singularity but instead multiplicity. It is not only about the viable but rather the unimaginable possible. It doesn’t define the future, it helps imagine alternatives. It is as Dunne and Raby articulate, not a solution, not a “better way”, just another way, a catalyst for social dreaming.