Entangling and Elevating Creativity and Criticality in Participatory Futuring Engagements

This article proposes that creativity and criticality not only can but should be entangled and elevated in participatory futuring engagements. Selected concepts from creativity theory and critical futures studies are applied to develop a set of futuring games through action research. We claim that participatory processes designed to entangle and elevate creativity and criticality produce more novel and varied ideas that better fit the purposes of futures studies. This article offers four arguments for combining creativity and criticality in participatory futuring engagements. First, due to complexity and uncertainty, the future is ultimately unknowable and requires tools to probe the unknown. Second, novelty is difficult to achieve in practice while creativity and criticality can help overcome these challenges. Third, discontinuities are the main sources of futures that are most radically different from the present and will have the biggest impact. Fourth, creativity and criticality support the rigorous imagining required for exploring and discovering new possible futures. This article analyzes three experimentations in entangling and elevating creativity and criticality in game-based futuring, stemming from Causal Layered Analysis. Based on these examples, we demonstrate that creativity and criticality, when combined, help people break through the limitations of current understanding, reveal approaching tipping points, and find the “unvisited cavities” through rhizomatic knowledge creation. However, there remain challenges in evaluating how well various participatory designs support creativity and criticality in practice. Context-sensitive evaluation tools and open sharing of outcomes are needed to develop participation design principles capable of supporting creativity and criticality in participatory futuring.</p

FUTURES LITERACY LAB FOR EDUCATION : Imagining Complex Futures of Human Settlements at Finland Futures Academy Summer School 2017

This report presents an instance of Futures Literacy Laboratory (FLL) held for the Finland Futures Academy Summer School on the topic of “complex futures of human settlement in 2050” held in June 2017 at University of Turku. The Futures Literacy Laboratory approach was developed by Riel Miller and UNESCO through a series of instances held around the world starting in 2012. In essence, an FLL aims at increasing futures literacy by increasing awareness of anticipatory assumptions and ‘how the future is used’ in the present. This report describes the theoretical background, pedagogical design, practical implementation, and outcomes of this Summer 2017 FLL. It concludes with lessons learns and suggestions for future applications of FLL

Precursors to a 'Good’ Bioeconomy in 2125 : Making Sense of Bioeconomy & Justice Horizons. First Foresight Report of the BioEcoJust Project

The Bioeconomy today is a field full of promise, brimming with potentially transformative solutions, and developments still only in their infancy. The aim of this report has been to convey the findings of the BioEcoJust foresight research to date, and especially to highlight the core critical thinking involved in approaching the future of the bioeconomy for the next 100 years. The BioEconomy and Justice (BioEcoJust) is funded by the Academy of Finland BioFuture 2025 programme and aims to develop a future-oriented ethical and justice framework useful in assessing long-term bioeconomy developments. The consortium has two research teams, representing Practical Philosophy (Aalto University) and Futures Studies (University of Turku)

Futures Literacy Lab for Education: Imagining Complex Futures of Human Settlements at Finland Futures Academy Summer School 2017

This book is published as part the research and education agenda of the UNESCO Chair in Learning Society and Futures of Education (LSFE) held by Professor Markku Wilenius at Finland Futures Research Centre, University of Turku. The aim of the UNESCO Chair in LSFE is to utilize the tools of futures research to increase global futures thinking and well-being. The Futures Literacy Lab for Finland Futures Academy Summer School 2017 was co-organized by the UNESCO Chair in LSFE research team, the Futures of Cities and Communities research team, and the UNESCO Management of Social Transformations Programme. </p

Bio#Futures: Foreseeing and Exploring the Bioeconomy

Abstract†† This chapter builds upon the premise that a multiplex of shared and divergent Bio-Ethos –models of what would be a ‘good’ relationships among humans and other living beings–inform the actions humans take toward living nature and ecosystems.Global Warming and Environmental Change demand from people and our societies new ways of existing as part of living ecologies on this planet.In this setting, the Bioeconomy and Justice Project (BioEcoJust) aims to explore ethical troubles that could arise in the development of a global, pervasive, and dominant bioeconomy.This chapter demonstrates how a role-based futuring game piloted in the Bioecon-omy and Justice project supports people in ‘sensing and making sense’of emergent BioEthos. It presents and analyses the outcomes from the BioEcoJust Game session held at the 2019 World Futures Studies Federation Conference in Mexico City. The conceptual framework applied in the game interweaves theories of complexity, fu-tures literacy, and scenarios as worldmaking, and operationalizes sensemaking tools developed in the earlier stages of the BioEcoJust project including BioWorlds, bio-economy socio-technical domains, the Human-Nature-Technology triangle, and Bi-oEthos. The BioEcoJust Game pilot in Mexico City enabledi ts players to explore and critically assess the nuances and dimensions of an ethically troubled futures it-uation and produce a new BioEthos which could be helpful toa unique set of roles for engagingthe situation. While much of the literature concerning bioeconomy is concerned with the technical or social factors which can contribute to its develop-ment, little attention is paid to what larger ethical frameworks can support its just and fair evolution. The BioEcoJust Game emphasised ‘keeping whole’ the created worlds of a variety of roles responding to an imagined future situation and focused the participant’s attention on the interface between assemblages of persons and their bounding conditions.The BioEcoJust Game can serve as a model for futuring games designed to help people develop skills for sensing and making sense of emergent BioEthos so they can apply these skills to develop a more just bioeconomy. </p

FTA2018 - Future in the making

The bioeconomy is proposed as a next phase of development based on renewable biological sources, replacing an age of fossil resource dependency. Because the bioeconomy is comprised of technologies, products and services related to and sourced from lifeforms, its emergence as a socio-technical and socio-economic regime will necessarily entail a reconfiguration of humanity’s relationship to nature, thus completely changing dominant values and frameworks for decision-making and policymaking. Meanwhile assumptions and frames of reference used in bioeconomy strategy, vision, and policy discourses largely go unquestioned, leaving future views of its development open to ethical pitfalls. This paper presents preliminary insights generated from a research project called Bioeconomy and Justice linking philosophy of ethics and futures studies. The overall aim of the research project is to identify ethical questions for decision makers concerning the bioeconomy in relation to three-time horizons--the years 2025, 2075, and 2125. A key objective of the futures studies team is to identify high-impact future contexts appearing on these three time horizons which will require difficult ethical choices by elected officials, industry leaders, scientists, entrepreneurs, consumers, and policymakers. To meet this objective, potential blind-spots and unknown futures of the bioeconomy are identified using a mix of futures studies methods, including Horizon Scanning, Evidence-based Narratives, and Worldmaking as Scenarios (see Vervoort et al. 2015). Based on material generated through these methods, a set of ‘world archetypes’ are produced and used to map ‘collision points’ among competing interests, worldviews, value systems, as well as relationships among humanity, technology and nature. These collision points are then analysed to determine future contexts of high-uncertainty with troubled ethical groundings. This paper presents some of these seeds for ethical re-evaluation as an entry point for anticipating what types of policy interventions may be required both in the present and in various possible futures. By analysing these seeds for near and 107-year futures of the bioeconomy, this paper contributes new insights into potential impacts on future society and its governance. Bioeconomy and Justice is a project funded by the Academy of Finland. </p