The Institute for Worldmaking (IWM) is a global cultural research lab and public platform developing tools for imagining and building dynamic futures for and from the Arab world.

Through digital tools, and educational programs, research fellowships, publications and exhibitions, IWM supports artists, researchers, and institutions developing speculative work at the intersection of fiction, technology, and cultural practices. Through FAHRAS — our research platform and public, searchable database — we trace how futurist cultural productions by Arab artists are acquired, described (or excluded) by major institutions around the world. Mainstream AI excludes much of the Arab world from its datasets — our work intervenes by integrating ancestral knowledge, speculative fiction, and cultural archives into learning systems — shifting how intelligence is built, aligned, and understood.