The Futures We Create
“The Futures We Create” strengthens the public’s ability to be reflective, critical and hopeful about the future by supporting creative and imagination practices through tools and methods based on future thinking
We are facing and experiencing multiple interconnected crises: a state of environmental, social, economic and political turmoil. Hollywood movies, social media, tv documentaries and news coverage present us with a paralysing and apocalyptic picture of both today and our future, contrasted only with unattainable and inequitable technological utopias. As we engage with these frightening narratives, individual emotions such as guilt, anger, frustration, or combined webs of emotions experienced as grief and hopeless disengagement emerge.
Though completely normal and rational responses to the polycrisis, these “eco-emotions” (known also as eco-anxiety and climate grief, read more about climate emotions here) are often buried, leaving us feeling disconnected, separate and polarised. This collective anxiety and fear for the future is palpable — we’re feeling a disengagement in conversations with friends, colleagues and clients, and a fizzling out of hopeful, imaginative and exploratory narratives of the future.
Instead of ignoring or attempting to fix these difficult emotions, psychological research has positioned the need to confront, experience and accept them in order to reimagine our responses and foster agency and resilience. In sharing collective experiences of how eco-emotions feel and impact us, for example, we can build community and relate to each other’s experiences.
When we name and process these emotions, the energy that they hold can be redirected, and a sense of agency can emerge. In turn, acknowledging and facing these emotions can lead to resilience and a preparedness to face future challenges. We are, however, lacking safe spaces, communities and environments where these emotions can be shared and processed.
Space for imaginations of hopeful possibilities
The Futures We Create is a project that emerged in response to this entangled crisis of environment, society, culture, hope and imagination, and the need to face the resulting emotions. The project set out to explore how our creative backgrounds and facilitation skills could create participatory, playful and accessible spaces that invite new imaginations of hopeful yet realistic possibilities and in turn foster agency, hope and a revitalised sense of community in the face of the polycrisis. With support from licensed psychologist and eco-emotions researcher Sanni Saarimäki from Tunne Ry, and physical theatre and embodied practitioners Ekata Theatre, our iterative design process has focused on designing a creative yet safe space that takes care of participants and appropriately manages the boundaries of exploring these complex and difficult emotions.
The project also builds on the idea that creative and artistic practices can play active roles in stimulating action towards social and ecological sustainability. The project objective is that through futures thinking practices, we can equip individuals and communities with knowledge that contributes to building resilience, hope and agency for the future.
Through the project, we have designed, prototyped and iteratively tested a series of tools and approaches that support engagement with the full spectrum of emotions resulting from conversations about the future. Stitched together into a 2.5–3 hour workshop, these tools have been designed as an experiential intervention for agency and resilience in the face of the polycrisis. These workshops, held in Summer and Autumn 2024, have explored how to welcome these complex emotions and recognise the potential value and energy in every emotional response.
“The project objective is that through futures thinking practices, we can equip individuals and communities with knowledge that contributes to building resilience, hope and agency for the future.”
Tools and exercise to create spaces for imagination
“We encourage participants to explore the emotions through movement, breath, or stillness. After this, participants are invited to connect to their longing; feeling where it manifests in their body and imagining what this longing is.”
“The goal of this imagination exercise is to solidify the idea that a positive future in which climate change is addressed, is possible.”
“We bring our pluriversal future scenarios to life by creating a shared story of the future — a mosaic of the group’s individual hopeful visions, stitched together into a collective story that we build together. “
Invitation to join
The first stages of this project have been led by a culture of emergence and exploration. In this process, several discussion points have surfaced around democratising imagination and pluriversal futures work; supporting participants to face their emotions for the future; and broadening the conversation around the future beyond utopian and dystopian visions. We’ve touched on these topics in our work, but haven’t been able to fully integrate them, due to a lack of knowledge, a language barrier, the settings in which the workshop has been hosted, or maybe due to its explorative and iterative nature.
Moreover, we recognise the value in artistic collaboration with science and other disciplines, for this project. Which is why we have sought the expertise and advice from Tunne Ry and Ekata theatre. In the future, we seek to continue building networks and collaborating closely with our advisors, and with other interested people with whom this thinking resonates.
We continue to integrate these perspectives more intentionally, in conversations, tool development and facilitation, as The Futures We Create takes on new shapes. If you’d like to join the conversation, collaborate, give feedback or reach out, we are open to cross-pollinations and emergent forms of collaboration.
