Posted: 30th August 2021

Futures Literacy Labs: Unleashing imagination and creativity for the future

Amerissa Giannouli

Futures Literacy Labs provide a mechanism and a process for unleashing imagination and creativity about the future by making use of the uncertainty. They involve the theoretical principles of futures literacy and provides space for experimentation using different methods and techniques, one of which is storytelling. Futures Labs expose why and how people use the future by making their anticipatory assumptions explicit. As part of our staff training on the theory and practice of Future Narratives, we explored Futures Literacy Labs in a workshop with Stefan Bergheim of Zukünfte. Here, we explore the ways in which Futures Literacy Labs can enable us to imagine and create new futures.

Methodologically, according to R. Miller (2018), Futures Labs apply an approach that involves three phases that structure the learning process: Reveal – Reframe – Rethink.

During the revealing phase, you are requested to state your expected and desirable futures related to a particular issue. By this way, you can distinguish the probable (Which are your expectations for the future?) from the desirable (What are you hoping for in the future?) future. This is the first step to understand that there are more than one futures. Keep in mind that these futures are constrained by your knowledge of the world, the past and the present. To see how these can be connected to your imaginary futures, first, explore what was happening in the past and which trends might have led to the present state. If you wish, you may choose a specific issue that matters to you. Try to find more about how things were in the past in relation to this issue. Which changes related to the trends have affected this issue in the present. What does the present look like now?

Analysing the complexities of your selected issue might help you with your prediction and future stories. You can draw a mind map of your thoughts with regards to the changes that may happen in the future due to this particular issue (Futures Wheel). Simply expand your thoughts and relate them to different elements, such as the economy, the environment, the political sphere, the legal framework, the society in general, the technological developments, etc.

The conversation should stay away from discussions of dystopias and sequences of events. Instead, it is more effective and efficient to describe snapshots of everyday life with as many details as possible. Snapshots that are probable (Predictions) and desirable (Hopes) in a specific year in the future. The selected year in the future is connected to how fast the elements connected to the issue can change. The harder it is for something to change, the further in the future we should go to explore the different scenarios.

To better make sense of the collected information, you could cluster it according to Sohail Inayatullah’s Causal Layered Analysis (CLA). Look for a. the litany (i.e. the quantitative trends and the conventional research indicators for the future), b. the social system and structure (including the economic, cultural, political, and historical factors that affect behaviour), c. the worldviews/ideologies/stakeholders (i.e. the discourse that legitimizes and supports the structure), and d. the metaphors and myths in your scenarios.

These CLA elements are connected to your assumptions about the future. Decolonising your imagination means that you liberate your assumptions from past and future trends. The purpose of this phase is to make these underlying assumptions visible in order to transform them into new assumptions that could lead to the desirable future. This process is related to “Transformative Learning”. Let’s see how this can happen during the next phase.

The reframing phase might be the most difficult to grasp. It basically invites you to experiment with unfamiliar futures in an unfamiliar way. Using the future to prepare and plan has limitations. It takes considerable effort to design this phase in a way that you can develop your capacity to think beyond futures that rely on deterministic causalities. Try to remove, add and/or change elements and assumptions identified and stated in the 1st Phase. In order to build a new scenario think:

• What would the future look like if you remove some of the assumptions you have?
• What would the future look like if you add another assumption that was not there before?
• What would the future look like if you change your assumptions? Try using the opposite assumption.

Now all you have to do is to find a way to play out and explore the different aspects of this new scenario. This is where storytelling can be very useful for Futures Literacy Labs. Use any artistic expression you prefer such as literature, theater, painting, filmmaking, photography, etc.

If you choose to use theater in your work, you may try out Augusto Boal’s techniques in the Theater of the Oppressed (see for example the Futures Literacy-Theatre Lab for unaccompanied asylum seeking minors in Greece). Social oppression is associated with the perception we have about ourselves, the possibilities and our capabilities.

If you are a game person, you can play “the thing from the future” card game with your group and explore alternative imaginary futures.

Then, follow the CLA framework again to cluster your ideas and move on to the next phase.

The rethinking phase compares and contrasts the results of the previous phases. You can see now that on the one hand, your imagination is framed by deterministic parameters and on the other hand, you just started to imagine what it would be like to be able to invent different anticipatory assumptions about the future itself, as well as identify different uses of the future beyond preparation and planning. The process allows you to have some distance from your mental constraints, pushing these mental boundaries towards novelty as they incorporate new images and assumptions for the future.

After this exploratory process and realisation of your assumptions (defined or independent from the past and the present), you can move on to action and work towards a particular goal. This might be the identification of steps required to pursue a specific ideal scenario of the future or in depth research on the elements and constraints that do not allow people personally, socially and systemically to move forward towards other directions, no matter if these directions will be eventually desired or not.

Futures Literacy Labs can broaden our horizons and help us to make sense of the complexities of the systems and the possible futures. It invites us to choose which future we desire the most, look for the elements that support this future to become a reality and decide upon the actions that need to happen in order to go towards this future. This does not look like a simple task but after this process, you might find yourself being more confident and determined to challenge the constraints that oppress your imagination and desires related to the different parts of your life, including your self, work, society, and relationships.

Sources:

Miller, Riel. “Futures Literacy Laboratories (FLL) in practice: An overview of key design and implementation issues.” Transforming the Future (2018): 95-109.
Inayatullah, Sohail (May 12, 2013). “Causal Layered Analysis: Sohail Inayatullah at TEDxNoosa”
Futures Literacy-Theatre Lab for unaccompanied asylum seeking minors in Greece Case Study

‘The thing from the future game’ by Stuart Candy and Jeff Watson, Situation Lab 2015.