De dissertatie "Probing Futures, Acting Today" van Caroline Maessen onderzoekt hoe organisaties alternatieve toekomsten kunnen verbeelden om dagelijkse toekomstvormende praktijken te veranderen teneinde complexe maatschappelijke uitdagingen aan te pakken. Organisaties hebben de neiging door lineair denken hun verbeeldingsvermogen te beperken tot conventionele toekomsten, wat effectieve reacties op problemen zoals klimaatverandering en sociale ongelijkheid belemmert. Het gevolg is dat na de zoveelste heisessie voor visieontwikkeling, er nog steeds niets fundamenteel verandert. Hoe de toekomst zich ontvouwt, tegen de achtergrond van maatschappelijke complexe problemen, gaat vaak voorbij onze collectieve verbeeldingskracht. Organisaties hebben moeite om zich te verbinden met onconventionele toekomsten en acties in het heden daarop af te stemmen. Voor betekenisvolle verandering moeten organisaties navigeren tussen de aantrekkingskracht van inspirerende onconventionele toekomsten en de behoefte aan stabiliteit en controle. Maessen heeft in twee (semi) publieke organisaties onderzocht waarom dit zo lastig is en hoe organisaties daarin ondersteund kunnen worden.
DOCUMENT
In the last month, the Visual Methodologies Collective participated in Regenerative Futures, a month-long design challenge to envision what a more desirable future could look like. Launched by SPACE10, a research and design lab based in Copenhagen, the call invited to use different AI generative models to develop a vision of the future home, community, or city.The call invited to reflect on different speculative briefs: resilient futures (How will future communities co-exist with non-human species? And how might the design of our homes and communities nurture surrounding ecosystems?), symbiotic futures (As we look to the future, how can we design homes as spaces of refuge and resilience? How will they flex to sudden climatic changes, while being conscious of the land and ecology around them?) collective futures (What would a self-sustaining city look like? How can we adapt and evolve existing structures and streets to better support collective living?)
MULTIFILE
Futures Literacy (FL), developed by UNESCO (2014), is a capability that provides insight into how we approach unforeseeable challenges by using the future to innovate the present (Miller, 2015). When we only use the past to predict the future, detecting novelty is difficult. By knowing how we are using the future, we can integrate complexity and novelty in our choices and therefore make better decisions. Hanze University has adapted FL to higher education by developing intensive Futures Literacy Knowledge Laboratories (FLKLs) for Professional Masters. This paper focuses on the hypothesis that participants become more Futures Literate after participating in a Lab. Operationalizing underlying skills and measuring improvement during FLKLs is an important step towards an evidence-based approach. Therefore, this paper will focus on the development of a method of measurement that is aimed at measuring the effects of the FLKLs.
DOCUMENT
This article examines how collaborative design practices in higher education are reshaped through postdigital entanglement with generative artificial intelligence (GenAI). We collectively explore how co-design, an inclusive, iterative, and relational approach to educational design and transformation, expands in meaning, practice, and ontology when GenAI is approached as a collaborator. The article brings together 19 authors and three open reviewers to engage with postdigital inquiry, structured in three parts: (1) a review of literature on co-design, GenAI, and postdigital theory; (2) 11 situated contributions from educators, researchers, and designers worldwide, each offering practice-based accounts of co-design with GenAI; and (3) an explorative discussion of implications for higher education designs and futures. Across these sections, we show how GenAI unsettles assumptions of collaboration, knowing, and agency, foregrounding co-design as a site of ongoing material, ethical, and epistemic negotiation. We argue that postdigital co-design with GenAI reframes educational design as a collective practice of imagining, contesting, and shaping futures that extend beyond human knowing.
MULTIFILE
This overview article for the special issue on ‘Desirable Transport Futures’ sets out with a brief introduction of the current development of the global transport system, suggesting that it remains unclear whether transport systems are heading towards desirable change. This desirability is defined as a reduction in the system's negative externalities, including accidents, congestion, pollutants and/or noise, while retaining its functionality. There is evidence that transport externalities continue to grow with an increasingly mobile and growing global population. Against this background, the article discusses what may constitute more desirable transport futures, as well as the barriers that have to be overcome to move towards such futures. The article concludes that transport governance will be essential to far-reaching change, and that greater focus has to be placed on individual and societal socio-psychological perspectives shaping mobility consumption. Nine papers contained in this special issue provide in-depth analyses of transport systems, as well as insight into how these may be changed in more systemic ways. A concluding research agenda is offered that outlines a number of innovative approaches researchers may pursue as part of further efforts to engender desirable transport futures.
LINK
The challenge of mitigating climate change is critical to desirable tourism transportation futures, although to date relatively little attention has been paid to this aspect of sustainable tourism. This introductory article to the special issues on ‘Desirable Tourism Transport Futures’ explores approaches to transitioning the tourism sector to a sustainable emissions path. It starts by describing an undesirable tourism transport future associated with a business-as-usual scenario, which will inevitably cause the climate mitigation goals outlined in the Paris Climate Accord to soon become unattainable. We then outline a scenario for a climatically desirable future, and its social and economic implications. It is important that desirable tourism transport futures are critically considered in terms of both spatial and temporal scale. The scenarios that inform this editorial provide some insights at the long-term macro-scale. These scenarios are associated with desirable and undesirable elements that will no doubt continue to be the subject of much debate and contestation. While these scenarios will represent both opportunities and threats to the full spectrum of tourism industry stakeholders, they should also inform manifold avenues of future research at a critical moment in the evolution of tourism transportation and the pursuit of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
LINK
Carnival Futures: Notting Hill Carnival 2020 is a King’s Cultural Institute project led by Nicole Ferdinand (Culture, Media and Creative Industries at King’s College London) which sought to engage cultural organisations and other stakeholders in planning for the future of the Notting Hill Carnival. The content of this report is intended as a contribution to current research and to identifying future directions for the development of the Notting Hill Carnival. The material and views expressed are produced by various stakeholders in a series of workshops.
DOCUMENT
In the field of climate change adaptation, the future matters. River futures influence the way adaptation projects are implemented in rivers. In this paper, we challenge the ways in which dominant paradigms and expert claims monopolise the truth concerning policies and designs of river futures, thereby sidelining and delegitimising alternative river futures. So far, limited work has been performed on the power of river futures in the context of climate change adaptation. We conceptualised the power of river futures through river imaginaries, i.e., collectively performed and publicly envisioned reproductions of riverine socionatures mobilised through truth claims of social life and order. Using the Border Meuse project as a case study, a climate change adaptation project in a stretch of the river Meuse in the south of the Netherlands, and a proclaimed success story of climate adaptation in Dutch water management, we elucidated how three river imaginaries (a modern river imaginary, a market-driven imaginary, and an eco-centric river imaginary) merged into an eco-modern river imaginary. Importantly, not only did the river futures merge, but their aligned truth regimes also merged. Thus, we argue that George Orwell’s famous quote, “who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present, controls the past” can be extended to “who controls the future, controls how we see and act in the present, and how we rediscover the past”.
DOCUMENT
In light of increasing cashlessness, platform economies, Open Banking APIs, financial bots and cryptocurrencies, money is on the move - once inert, money is gaining agency, becoming programmable, automated, data-driven and part of 'more than human' infrastructures. These financial futures demand that designers engage with difficult questions of economy and value, while retaining a sensibility to the many subtle and social qualities of money and our everyday economic interactions. This one-day workshop will therefore bring together practitioners and researchers to explore design challenges related to four broad themes: Designing with Transactional Data; Designing Alternative Representations of Value; Money, Automation, Power, and Control; and Financial Futures with Vulnerable Users. Developing scenarios related to these themes, the workshop will cultivate a rich design space to establish the value of design-led research in shaping our financial futures.
MULTIFILE
As the Arctic undergoes unprecedented environmental and climate transformations, an urgent call for inclusive governance and intergenerational leadership echoes across the circumpolar region. In January 2024, 29 Emerging Leaders from the Circumpolar Arctic and Subarctic gathered in Northern Norway ahead of the 2024 Arctic Frontiers Conference. This diverse group, with global identities and multi-disciplinary backgrounds spanning science, policy, business, geopolitics, and law, brought together experiences that inspired this paper. We highlight the unique perspectives offered by younger generations and leaders to advocate for changes across a spectrum of critical Arctic issues. Our voices must be present in the decision-making which shapes our future, yet we observe some politicians, diplomats, legal, and business officials engaging in protracted discourse overlooking the urgent realities faced by those most directly impacted.We address the concept of “youthwashing” and offer a critique, as well as actionable recommendations, for fostering inclusive decision-making. We explore the role of youth leadership in Arctic governance across various disciplines and how diverse perspectives are required to better shape Arctic futures. Our concerns encompass the sustainable management of the Arctic’s natural resources, respect and protection of Indigenous rights and Traditional Knowledge, and developing solutions rooted in sustainability, survivance, and justice. As Emerging Leaders, we aspire to create liveable futures for generations to come, challenging the present trajectory set by current senior leadership. In turn, we ensure that while the Arctic is undergoing significant change, it develops in a framework respectful of all generations, ultimately rooted in justice for all Arctic peoples.
LINK
