My close friend Darren Sharp from Social Surplus invited me to collaborate with him on the design and delivery of two half day workshops for the City of Melbourne’s “Future Melbourne 2026 Process“.
The project was unique in that we applied a new approach that brought together online mapping technology with appreciative inquiry visioning, strategic foresight and human centred design. The initial idea was published on futureslab.net in November 2015, and we worked through February and March 2016 to take it from idea to effective process.
The map combining the appreciative inquiry and design data can be found here.
I’m very appreciative to Darren for bring me into this exciting project, and I’m looking forward to applying and evolving vision mapping for other communities and needs and looking forward to future collaborations and innovations.
I was given an opportunity to provide a presentation at VU’s Metro West for Learning Agenda, an ambitious start up create by Professor Siew Fang Law, which aims to shake up the way in which learning happens. It is a super exciting initiative which I’m very keen to be part of as it grows.
It gave me the chance to reflect on the various emerging issues, trends and developments that are potentiating change in the domain of learning / teaching / education.
At first I considered doing “Futures of Education” as a topic, but then realized this was a bit too broad for me, and what I was proposing was a particular metaphor of how education could be different, what I titled “Education out of the box”.
In the talk I discuss how six issues have implications for the futures of education:
1. The global knowledge commons
2. Localized peer to peer platforms
3. Problem solving sustainability challenges
4. Shifts in values orientations
5. Cyber currencies and local credit systems
6. Online maps and augmented reality
In it, I do not prescribe or even predict a particular future for education – I argue that these elements provide a space of potential for creating alternative futures of learning, which can be taken in multiple directions.
I also draw on Prof. Sohail Inayatullah’s idea of the Used Future, a powerful idea via Critical Futures Studies and his Six Pillars methodology that allows us to unpack the existing legacy of images of the future that may be holding us back, to create space for the new.
As an aside, while the talk was scripted, I experimented with presenting visual slides, and this being an audio-only artifact, there is some context missing for those who were not there, and my apologies for this.
Acknowledgements belong to many, Dr. Siew Fang Law, Gareth Priday and Dr. Tim Mansfield as research collaborators at the Smart Services CRC, Ari Panagiotou at the EarthWatch Institute, the work of Dr. Inayatullah and M. Bauwens and co at the P2P Foundation, and others.
For years I’ve benefited greatly from the work of and association with teachers and friends in the domain of foresight and futures studies who have brought intuition into the field. There are too many to name, but have spanned at least 3 continents!
“This essay details my own learning and experiences with respect to intuition and futures
studies. The essay is in part an auto-ethnographic narrative that attempts to situate my own
personal experiences in a broader cultural context. It also describes intuitions’ pivotal role
in both bringing me to futures studies and guiding me within futures studies. I employ the
voice dialog perspective of Hal and Sidra Stone (1989) to shed light on intuition’s place in
an ecology of ‘inner’ selves, and I also employ the action research framework developed
by Reason and Bradbury (2001) to make sense of intuition’s place in an approach to
triangulation for futures research.”
Many thanks to all those that have contributed, friends and teachers that have formed the supportive community that has helped to bring this forth.
I was recently given an opportunity to give a presentation at the Local Lives – Global Matters Conference in Castlemaine, Vic, where I pitched the idea of “Cosmo-localization”. I’ve been wanting to talk about this idea for a while, and the conference gave me a good excuse to pull something together, especially with its commitment to sustainability, resilience and relocalization.
Cosmo-localization describes the dynamic potentials of the globally distributed knowledge commons in conjunction with emerging capacity for localized production of value. The imperative to create economically and ecologically resilient communities is driving initiatives for ‘re-localization’. Yet, such efforts for re-localization need to be put in the context of new technologies, national policy, transnational knowledge regimes and the wider global knowledge commons.
I argue there are six trends that potentiate cosmo-localization:
emerging global knowledge commons
new technology
the maker movement
urbanization and rise of mega-city regions
distributed energy production and storage
resource scarcity, eco integrity and precarity
And there are three identifiable obstacles as well:
platform oligopoly / netarchical capital
adjudication of national policy
global knowledge regimes
In this I need to acknowledge my colleagues through the Footscray Maker Co-op who have taught me quite a bit about the maker movement, as well as Michel Bauwens and P2P Foundation friends, who have pioneered analysis and innovation in this area (P2P + netarchical capital + the FLOK project). Finally I ended up using, somewhat intuitively, the futures triangle developed by Sohail Inayatullah (drivers + weight of history + images of the future). So there you go, Footscray Maker Co-op + Bauwen’s P2P + Inayatullah … all in one talk!
Actually, I don’t think I’m describing anything new here … we are seeing this via MakerBot, Tesla, Global Village Construction Set, FLOK and a variety of other projects. But it does need to be named and analysed, and I hope this adds to the collective vision, analysis, understanding and action – as it evolves.
One of the most pressing challenges faced today, is how to develop government decision-making processes that are responsive to long-term societal challenges and which are flexible in turbulent and changing environments. Anticipatory Governance strategies exists which can help governments and organizations to choose and design the right approaches to building-in foresight capacity into their organization.
Our service is based on comprehensive research and expertise in the field, developed through a research fellowship in 2012 at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (National University of Singapore), where I researched, designed and delivered a course on foresight strategies for public policy for Masters students. The fellowship led to this research paper: Anticipatory Governance.
Since then, I have helped governments in Victoria, Australia, Brunei Darussalam, and Mexico City to use Anticipatory Governance thinking to design strategies that support long term social navigation.
Anticipatory governance describes a number of approaches to building-in foresight capacity into policy development and governance processes. Anticipatory governance strategies are used by dozens of governments from around the world. In development for over 40 years, they include a variety of strategies. The research at NUS uncovered a ‘design space’ for Anticipatory Governance, in particular the following seven strategies.
Taken together, the variety of approaches comprise a strategic design space for Anticipatory Governance.
This unique consulting service helps organizations to choose the right approaches to apply. We diagnose the key needs, issues, challenges and intentions that need to inform an organization’s development of their unique Anticipatory Governance strategy. We help to conceptualize, design and tailor the Anticipatory Governance approach best suited for the organisations circumstances. We offer critical guidance in putting an Anticipatory Governance system in place.
Outcomes:
Awareness and depth understanding of a variety of Anticipatory Governance strategies.
Support in evaluating which Anticipatory Governance strategies match the contextual circumstances and organisational needs.
Support in designing the most effective and appropriate strategy mix for an organization.
Over the past 3 years I have been teaching a course for the University of Sunshine Coast. It is an action research / learning subject which engages students in formulating foresight interventions. First they consider and analyze a context within which they want to apply some futures tools and frameworks. Then they apply these as the action research / learning experiment. Finally they evaluate the experiment, deriving learnings from the application of futures / foresight.
I’ve really enjoyed the subject, it has been one of the most enjoyable courses I have taught, and it has consistently had the most interesting and inner-connected people, which I have also been fortunate to learn from as well.
One of the things I like best about the course is that I get to introduce students to a wide variety of frameworks and methodologies for doing futures work – thus forcing students to grapple with multiple strategies for the contexts they want to apply futures in. For example students are introduced to:
Six pillars (Inayatullah)
Foresight Fan (Schultz)
Three Horizons (Curry and Hodgson)
Generic Foresight Process (Voros)
Futures Action Model (you know who;)
While I lean toward Six Pillars and my own FAM, I have also used the others in various contexts and appreciate what they can do. In general I would like students to appreciate the multiple ways the cat can be skinned, and that different methodologies and approaches are suited to different environments and needs.
One of the most exciting things for me about the course is that many students, who are located in highly professional environments, choose to apply foresight in their organization or their consulting / facilitation work. This makes me more of a coach to the student-professional, to assist them in making the best choices and navigating what can be a tricky professional environment.
I have always had a great deal of respect for the mid-career professional who wants to add futures to their repertoire. I myself came into futures studies at the age of 29-30, and by that time I had already lived in East Asia (Japan and Taiwan) for four years, and had some life experience. I had experienced globalization before I received the academic definition. I never appreciated a patronizing approach to pedagogy, and almost always saw my peers as filled with various forms of life experience that could be combined with this new field. So the role of facilitator / coach suits me well, as I want to work with the student-professional’s knowledge and strengths to combine this with what they are learning in the course.
I’m also grateful for the opportunity that the director of the program has given me, Dr. Marcus Bussey, who I have blogged and podcasted about previously, as well as my work with Steve Gould, who has supported me at various times and who is also teaching in the same program. This is more a reflection than an official promo, but you know the drill! If you are interested or if you know someone who might be…. here is the official blurb below:
“The application of futures thinking and futures methods can invigorate organisations, inform leadership, and enhance institutional learning and levels of purpose and wellbeing. This course explores a range of futures methods, the values that inform these and links them to strategic thinking and organisational learning. This is done through linking theory and practice with your own contexts. The learning aims to be practical and applied, expanding your personal and institutional horizons.”
In 2012 I was invited to set up a “foresight for public policy” course at the Lee Kuan Yee School for Public Policy (at the National University of Singapore). As part of this job I did a review of as much public policy and governance lit as I could in the area, in an attempt to make sense of it all and present something coherent to students (we all learned how to use the RAHS system / software as well, which was valuable). What emerged was an understanding of 7 key traditions and trajectories for anticipatory governance. Initially course material for the unit, it took me a while to bring it together into an article. But here it is finally, hot off the press.
The hope is that this will assist foresight practitioners, management science, governance and policy designers to get a quick grasp of the available strategies, and bring these together into context appropriate designs to embed foresight functions into governmental and other organizations. Here is an overview of the paper:
Over the course of the last half century, a number of practices were developed that connect foresight with governance. From the early development of technological forecasting and anticipatory democracy, to municipal and regional (local) approaches and futures commissions, to the more recent development of transition management, integrated governmental foresight, and to the cuttingedge in networked/crowd sourced approaches, traditions and discourses that link foresight and governance have evolved considerably. The purpose of this article is to review these various traditions and discourses to understand the context within which different approaches can be valuable, and expand the basis by which we can develop Anticipatory Governance strategies. Not all strategies are appropriate in all contexts, however, a major proposition in this paper is that we can design strategy mixes that can combine a number of traditions and discourse in creative ways that allow practitioners to address complex, fuzzy and wicked challenges that singular approaches would have a harder time addressing successfully.
This research was funded by the Singaporean government in conjunction with the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. I would like to thank colleagues and that made this research possible. I would like to thank the two reviewers for their feedback, as well as Professor Jim Dator, who provided valuable suggestions.
I was very lucky to meet up with Kate McCallum, at her offices at LA Center Studios, in June 2012. I had been hoping to catch up with her for a while, she is one of the global pioneers in bringing together alternative futures thinking with media and storytelling. I had heard many good things about her and was really impressed by her work with the Millennium Project node on the future of art, media and entertainment, where she brought together dozens of professionals from a variety of backgrounds, science, art and spirituality, in a collaborative exploration of emerging transdisciplinary patterns for the future of creativity.
Since that time much has happened. Due to Kate’s commitment to tracking future trends in the arts and media, her company Bridge Arts Media, LLC, was contracted by www.createasphere.com to help design and chair a new media conference they named TransVergence Summit. An entertainment educational summit addressing Tech+Story, innovative narrative, transmedia and cross platform storytelling, emerging technologies and branded content. Concurrent to launching and programming the summit, she also launched and has been serving as the Managing Editor of www.transmediacoalition.com which has entailed curating contributors and content, the companion editorial platform for the TVS. Createasphere then contracted her to curate, program and produce a Digital Asset Management (DAM) conference in NYC and also a Post Production Master Class in both NY and LA. She’s also co-created a DAM 101 Workshop and Certification program launched at the DAM conference. Currently, she’s working with Createasphere to design and launch a new conference called StoryWorld Quest for Canadian clients NAIT and AMPIA.
She was recently nominated and voted on to the PGA National Board and also serves on the New Media Council Board as a Delegate. Her university WMU in Michigan honored her with an Alumni Achievement Award last year as well. Toward the end of 2014 she produced an event for the c3: Center for Conscious Creativity STATE OF THE ARTS 2013: The Future of Fulldome co-hosted with IMERSA.org and provided a panel, talks and screenings of fulldome content and immersive storytelling.
Recently Kate was invited to Singapore to teach a Masterclass in Transmedia Storytelling at the Singapore Media Academy and will also be lecturing and teaching a Transmedia Storytelling Workshop at the Hong Kong Design Institute in July.
Since our initial meeting, Kate has been working with her partner, Ed Lantz, President of Vortex Immersion Media www.vorteximmersion.com to build out an experimental AIR: Artist In Residence program in The Vortex Dome theater www.thevortexdome.com that they operate and maintain. Together they have supported R&D in the fulldome immersive space and have produced several unique dome projects with a growing collective of talented artists and creatives.
Upon her return from Hong Kong, Kate will be getting back into creative development with Vortex to hopefully launch in their fulldome theater one of her passion projects — VISIONS FROM THE EDGE — a series focusing on the innovation and the future.
In my interview with her she talked about her roots in television and film, the Los Angeles media culture and working her way through the ranks the old-fashioned way. She also talks about her love of art and music, and her music and singing background. Creating the C3 Center for Conscious Creativity has been a profound journey for her and she talks about what it means to bring arts to bear on social change, the evolution of humanity and the future. Her introduction to foresight and futures through both the WFSF and Millennium Project inspired her to begin to make new connections between thinking about the future and creative media, and importance developments in the futures of media. In an important digression, she talked about the Florentine Camerata, a very important analogy to the monumental transitions happening today in media and creativity. The role of storytelling being fundamental, she explained the importance of exploring and developing new stories for the future of humanity and our world. Alongside this is the importance of hope in developing a new story, new narratives for empowering futures even as we face the harsh challenges. We ended the interview with a discussion on the emerging area of Transmedia Storytelling, and the way in which participation can transform the story space through a new mode of public story hacking. She is definitely one of the most amazing people I have talked to and it was an absolute pleasure. Thank you Kate and I hope others enjoy our conversation.
My students at the University of Sunshine Coast were intrigued by Prof Marcus Bussey’s Six Shamanic Concepts – yet they found it a challenging read and wanted a more accessible bridge to the ideas.
I promised them that I would interview Marcus and ask him about the idea, in a way that was more directly related to the practice of futures / foresight.
The six concepts are a coherent philosophical system for transformation and emancipatory foresight work. The idea include:
They draw from broad influences but have anchors in critical theory, post-structuralism, and post colonial development discourse, among many others.
Filming and editing in the end proved logistically and technically challenging – as I was a solo interviewer / technician – I had various audio and video issues arise and the editing was dogged by poor software and my own time and skill limitations.
But the result is a watchable and a very interesting version of the Six Shamanic Concepts, with some technical rough spots attributed to my own lack of skill. I pushed Marcus to apply his ideas to the practice of foresight, who responded with a rather brilliant explanations of how it applies. He navigates the ideas like a skilled captain amid a sea of heterotopic possibilities.
I met Tessa Finlev in my capacity as consulting editor of JFS. She wrote an amazing article called “Future Peace: Breaking Cycles of Violence through Futures Thinking”, in which she argued that violence induced trauma in post-conflict situations can seriously impede suffers’ ability to imagine peaceful futures and enact new pathways. In what I would consider ‘integrative’ research in foresight, she brings together new knowledge from neuro-physiology, with cased based research / experiences with post-conflict communities, and links this with futures / foresight methodologies and “the role futures thinking might play in helping people break out of cycles of violence.” She writes:
Why is it so hard to break out of cycles of violence? This paper focuses on the challenges associated with breaking out of cycles of violence and why futures thinking may provide a potential solution. Research suggests that people living in violence lack the ability to think about a peaceful future, or any future for that matter. Addressing this inability may hold a critical key to breaking out of cycles of violence. While there is mounting theory to support this idea, evidence based research is still lacking.
I was able to catch up with her last year (2012) on a visit to San Francisco. I stopped by the Institute for the Future (IFTF) and met with colleague Jake Dunagan, and later got to meet up with Tessa in the city.
She is a research manager for the Ten-Year Forecast program at IFTF. She has degrees in anthropology and international political economy / development, and experience as a Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya. I learned that she was ‘game master’ for IFTF’s foresight engine “Catalysts for Change: Paths out of Poverty”, a Rockefeller Foundation sponsored project that brought thousands of gamers together to explore new ideas and strategies to tackle poverty globally. As game master, she coordinated a team of game facilitators from around the world that served as games nodes developers. Thematically and logistically the whole thing is fascinating, and an example I believe of things to come. Coincidentally I got to meet some of the coordinators she worked with while teaching at NUS, Taufik RamadhanIndrakesuma and Johannes Loh who run the Asian Trends Monitoring research program there. So a small world indeed of foresight for development!
In addition to her work at IFTF, she has a strong Africa focus, and supports foresight activity and networks there. A very inspired and inspiring person, I feel fortunate to have me her and had a chance to ask a few questions.
It was hard to find a suitable place to conduct the interview, as we wandered through trendy and noisy San Francisco streets. We finally settled on a corner café that was ½ hour off closing. With lots of cafe ambient noise, we talked a bit about her background, how she came to foresight / futures work, her experience as game master for the Catalysts of Change project, and her work exploring how futures practices can help break people from cycles of violence, among many other interesting topics.
