What is Futures Literacy?

Futures Literacy, a universally accessible skill that builds on the innate human capacity to imagine the future, offers a clear, field tested solution to poverty-of-the-imagination.

UNESCO

Futures Literacy is defined by UNESCO as a skill that allows people to better understand the role that the future plays in their perception, understanding and experience of the present. A central goal of the Future Narratives project is to enhance understanding of and ability in Futures Literacy by using the power of storytelling to create new ways of imagining and creating the future. To approach this aim, we draw on the key concepts on which Futures Literacy is based:

  • People have the capacity to imagine the future in different ways;
  • Our understanding of the future shapes the way that we live in the present;
  • By developing our capacity to imagine new futures, we can transform our present at a personal, community and social level.

Futures Literacy encourages us to ask how and why we think about the future, and how we might uncover and reframe the assumptions on which our anticipation of the future are based. By asking these questions, we can further consider which aspects of the present we would like to keep, and those we would like to change.

Futures literacy enables us to become aware of the sources of our hopes and fears, and improves our ability to harness the power of images of the future, to enable us to more fully appreciate the diversity of both the world around us and the choices we make.

Nicklas Larsen, Jeanette Kæseler Mortensen & Riel Miller

Future Narratives sees storytelling as a key tool enabling people to understand their perceptions of the past, present and future, and so to develop Futures Literacy as a way to embrace inclusion, complexity, and diversity in our images of tomorrow.

Read more:

Futures Literacy at UNESCO

Nicklas Larsen, Jeanette Kæseler Mortensen & Riel Miller, ‘What is Futures Literacy and Why Is It Important?’

Copyright 2025. All Rights Reserved