Episode Six: Backcasting Workshop

Kia ora workshoppers! We’re back after a big break and kicking off a new season with Alice Dimond of Ngāi Tahu, a South Island Iwi (tribe) from Aotearoa New Zealand. Alice talks to us about Te Korekoreka, a Māori approach to futures that she and her Iwi have developed to connect their people through the “four realms of creation”. Like other tools we’ve explored, this one uses metaphor and story but with a uniquely indigenous approach - where past, present and future exist simultaneously. As Alice explains, we stand connected to our ancestors and descendants through time but the connection is not linear, it is ever-present. Even if you haven’t caught up on all of our previous episodes this is a fantastic one to begin with. For New Zealanders it’s a rare insight into how Māori conceptualise the future; for internationals, it’s a wonderful introduction to this special aspect of Aotearoa. Thanks to Alice, thank you for listening and as always thanks to The Beths for supplying our beautiful theme music! Victoria ________________________________________________________________ For more information about Te Korekoreka, visit the website here. To find out more about Alice’s latest project to empower young people with innovative and future focused approaches to creating solutions to the challenges of our world, visit Mō Āpōpō Future-Makers. You can find Alice on LinkedIn here.

Kia ora and welcome to episode thirteen of The Futures Workshop! Most of the tools we’ve looked at so far rely on scenarios - imagined future scenes which we then use to work out the implications for us and our organisations. But today’s guest Andrew Curry says scenarios aren’t always the best approach. It can be cognitively tricky to get groups to fully embrace a speculative future and make the leap to where they fit into it. Sometimes, says Andrew, it’s better to stay in what he calls the “thick present”, using a tool known as Futures Landscapes. Andrew is another significant voice in our global futures community. He is the director of Futures at the School of International Futures, and has led projects that span everything from net zero mobility to the impacts of geopolitical events on food and energy. We hope you enjoy this episode on the Futures Landscapes tool. You can find some of the resources Andrew refers to below. Thanks to The Beths and (The Boss) for their beautiful music. Further resources: An abstract on Futures Landscapes which Andrew created for the Discovery of the Future conference https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:EU:0123fb5a-75aa-4f5d-8b4d-6450f21d35df An urban food environments report to show how the tool might work in practice. Andrew tells me that the ‘domains’ part is a little harder to find in this report, but they are listed out on p13 and the supporting systems loops and analysis are at the back as an Annex https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:EU:0fc744c1-7940-40a0-988b-1581f2b21d78

Welcome back to the Dubai Future Forum podcast lounge, from which I’m delighted to share another special episode of The Futures Workshop. For this episode I was joined by former Head of Foresight and Futures Literacy at UNESCO Riel Miller, who shared his reflections on the Forum before taking a deep dive into “futures literacy” - a concept with which he has become synonymous. We talk about the importance of futures literacy, what it is and is not, and how to create an effective literacy lab. I hope you enjoy the conversation with Riel as much as I did! Thanks so much to the Dubai Future Forum 2024 for hosting us and as always thank you to The Beths for the beautiful music. You can find further resources in this Futures Literacy Playbook, which is free to download. These slides introduce the futures literacy lab methodology.

This week, a special episode of The Futures Workshop: my conversation with Professor Paul Saffo, recorded in front of a live studio audience at the Dubai Future Forum in November 2024. Also special is today’s topic. After ten episodes exploring different tools and how to use them, Paul challenges us to think about the proper place of tools in futures work. He says we should use them in the same way a drunk uses a lamp post: for support, rather than for illumination. Paul is a deep thinker, a rock star in the futures world and has a real gift for communicating complex ideas. He shares some beautiful and clever metaphors to help get his message across, and we think this episode will be of great interest not just to future thinkers but to anybody who uses tools in their day to day practice. Please enjoy this special episode. Thanks to the team at Dubai Future Foundation for your hospitality and expertise, and thanks of course to Professor Paul Saffo for your generosity and intellect!

This week we’re following up our conversation with Ivana Milojevic with an imagined workshop. We show you how you might use the Futures Triangle tool with a group - guiding them to identify the pull, push and weight forces that affect the way we work towards a preferred future. We then look at how those forces might interact with each other - particularly where the tensions or obstructions might lie. Then we conclude with some final insights and briefly talk about how to turn those insights into practical next steps for action. You’ll benefit from listening to Episode Nine: Ivana Milojevic on The Futures Triangle, before you take on this workshop episode. And as always, if you’re more of a casual listener to the podcast, feel free to skip over these even-numbered workshop episodes which are focused more on the day-to-day work of futures practitioners. Whatever your background, we hope you enjoy this episode and as always welcome your feedback!