The following is an adapted excerpt from a book chapter written for Rowell, L. L., Bruce, C. D., Shosh, J. M., & Riel, M. M. (Eds.). (2017). The Palgrave International Handbook of Action Research. Palgrave Macmillan. The book chapter is entitled: “Linking Foresight and Action: Toward a Futures Action Research”.

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For over a decade I have been involved in a unique enterprise, to explore, document and integrate Action Research approaches with Futures Studies. This rather obscure endeavor, which from the outside may seem arcane, for me is core to addressing the great social and ecological challenges we face today. Because of this inner direction, I continue to develop this confluence into hybrid approaches to human and social development.

After a degree in comparative literature and on the back of the experience of globalization living in Japan, Taiwan and Spain, in the year 2000 I entered a Masters degree in ‘Strategic Foresight.’ What excited me was the emphasis on systems analysis, visioning, and social change. I was attracted to the idea that a group of people could envision a future they desired and then potentially create it. I entered the Futures Studies field with a desire for transformational change.

Futures studies gave me critical thinking and tools and frameworks for exploring the long term, however a ‘discrepancy’ emerged. Futures Studies clarified the sharp challenges faced by our planetary civilization over the long term. The challenges we addressed were large scale and historical in dimensions, what Slaughter (2002) referred to as a ‘civilizational crisis’: long term climate change, casino capitalism and rising inequality, profound shifts in technology, and other issues. The gap for me related to a question of empowerment. Where and how do we discover agency in creating the world we want? Futures Studies gave me knowledge for forecasting, deconstructing, analyzing and envisioning our futures. But I needed to know how to create change.

Intuitively, I began looking for approaches that would address this gap. When I found action research, I was immediately inspired by the diversity of thinking, approaches and case studies and began playing with the potential overlaps and fusion between the two areas (Ramos, 2002). I also interned with Dr. Yoland Wadsworth, involved myself in the AR community in Melbourne and began to find synergies and opportunities to express the logic of foresight coupled with action through a variety of projects. This work has continued to guide a wide variety of current projects. This chapter details this journey.

The Future as a Principle of Present Action

Slaughter (1995) put forward the idea of ‘foresight’ as a human capacity and quality, in contradistinction to the widespread notion that the ‘future’ is somehow outside us. In sharp contrast to a future state independent of human consciousness, Slaughter located the future in human consciousness, in our human capacity to cognize consequence, change, difference, temporality. The future, he argued, is therefore a principle of present action (Slaughter, 2004). The images we hold of our futures can and should inform wise action in the present.

This simple idea represents a radical departure from previous epistemologies of time, from a fixed and unitary notion of the future to one where ‘the future’ is a projection of consciousness and culture. This embodied and constructivist concept of the future points toward the need to build ethnographic and sociological understandings for how various communities cognize time differently, and how human consciousness and culture mediate decisions and action.

In a number of professional settings, foresight informs action in a variety of ways.

·     In the area of policy, governments at various scales are engaged in a variety of decisions, many which will have enduring effects over decades and may be difficult to undo. Policy foresight helps regions to understand long-term social and ecological changes and challenges, to develop adequate responses.

·     In the area of strategy, businesses require an understanding of how market, technology and policy shifts may create changes in their operating and transactional environments. Strategy foresight helps businesses discover opportunities, address the challenges of fast changing markets, and develop a social and ethical context for business decisions.

·     In the area of innovation and design, foresight can inspire design concepts, social and technical innovations that have a future-fit, rather than only a present-fit. Design and innovation provide the ‘seeds of change’ interventions that can, over many years, grow to become significant change factors, leverage for desirable long-term social change.

The broader and arguably highest role for foresight is to inform and inspire social transformation toward ethical goals (for example ecological stewardship and social justice). In this regard social foresight can play a major role in informing and inspiring social movements and community based social action. Citizens and people from many walks of life have the power to plant the seeds of change, create social innovations, alternatives and experiments that provide new pathways and strategies that can lead to alternative and desirable futures. Foresight can inspire a sense of social responsibility and impetus for social action, at both political and personal levels. In my own life, I have found that as I have cognized various social and ecological challenges, I am compelled to act differently in the present. This has been as simple as using a heater less, changing to low energy light bulbs and installing solar panels, to more entailed commitments like attending climate change and anti-war marches, organizing social alternative events, and even co-founding businesses. The link between foresight and action is at once social, political, organizational and personal, and uniquely different for each person.

Futures Studies’ Road to a Participatory-Action

Like any field, Futures Studies has undergone major shifts over its 50-year history. From my perspective as an action researcher, and building on the work of Inayatullah (1990) and social development perspectives (Ramos, 2004a), I argue that the field has gone through five major stages: Predictive, Systemic, Critical, Participatory and Action-oriented.

From the 1950s to the 1960s, the field was concerned with prediction, in particular macro-economic forecasting, where change was envisaged as linear (Bell, 1997). From the 1970s to the 1980s, the field used various systems perspectives that incorporated more complexity and indeterminacy into its inquiry and scenarios and alternative futures emerged (Moll, 2005). From the 1980s and 1990s, interpretive and critical perspectives emerged that incorporated post-modern, post-structural and critical theory influences, where change was seen related to discursive power (Slaughter, 1999). From the 1990s to the present, participatory approaches have flourished. The most recent shift puts an emphasis on action-oriented inquiry, associated with design, enterprise creation, innovation and embodied and experiential processes (Ramos 2006).

To understand these shifts it is important to understand the epistemological assumptions that underpin these modalities. In the linear modality, forecasters believed that the future could actually be predicted. Without a relationship to subjectivity or inter-subjectivity, the future was ‘out-there’ and could be known like a ‘substance’ or thing. There were problems with prediction, however, as many were wrong (Schnaars, 1989), and this perspective could not account for human agency or the ‘paradox of prediction’ – once having made a prediction, other people may decide to work toward an alternative future. It could also not account for complexity, that is, that a variety of variables, factors, and forces interact in complex and difficult to understand ways. Hence the systemic modality was born.

In the systemic modality, instead of attempting to predict a single future, systems analysts created complex models that examined the interactions between a number of variables. Trends and forecasts were still used, but instead of assuming a single future, the ideas and practices for creating scenarios emerged. A number of World Models, including Limits to Growth (Meadows, 1972), took this perspective, providing a number of scenarios relying on the prominence of particular variables, and their interactions. A challenge to this arose when World Models and other systemically informed studies emerged that were inconsistent or which contradicted each other (e.g. Hughes, 1985). Research institutes from different parts of the world produced radically different perspectives on the future. This is where the critical modality brings such contradictions into perspective.

In the critical mode, models or systems for future change have their basis in different cultures, perspectives, discourses and interests, as well depending on whether they were from a ‘developing’ or ‘developed’ world perspective. Variables seen as essential aspects of a system, from a critical view, were an expression of discourse and culture, rather than universal ‘truths’ (Inayatullah, 1998; Slaughter, 1999). This is seen in how gendered power dynamics are expressed in images of the future (Milojevic 1999), or when people are caught in someone else’s discourse on the future, and are in-effect holding a ‘used future’ (Inayatullah, 2008). The critical mode questions default futures and develops alternative and authentic futures. The critical mode affirms the importance of questioning the role of perspective, deepened through engagement in participatory approaches.

Whereas critical futures posits that the future is different based on discourse, culture, and disposition, in the participatory mode or process, contrasting perspectives on the future will be present in the same room or group process. The exercise becomes much less abstract and far more dialogical. The challenge shifts to how people can have useful, enriching and intelligent conversations about the future, while still honoring (indeed leveraging) differing perspectives. The participatory mode uses workshop tools and methods that include previous approaches: identification of trends and emerging issues (predictive), scenario development (systems) and de-constructive approaches (critical). Participation forms the basis for generative conversations about our futures, and is a pathway toward transformative action.

An action modality is what emerges from embodied participation. When people come from culturally and systemically different backgrounds, the potential for conflict and miscommunication exists, but likewise a group based inter-cultural understanding can emerge, and this embodied and emergent meta-formation is critical in developing the potential to create change. When participants can co-develop new narratives, authentic vision and intelligent strategies, people can feel a sense of natural ownership and commitment. Group based inquiry that leads to collective foresight with an understating of shared challenges and a common ground vision for change, can call forth commitment and action.

Each stage in the process relies on previous stages. The systems modality relies on statistically rigorous trends and data to construct scenarios. The critical modality relies on scenarios as objects of deconstruction. The participatory modality relies on all previous modes to be enacted in workshop environments. The action mode relies on participants to come together to create shared meaning and commitment.

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What does this all mean for practicing foresight?

Good foresight work, in my opinion, needs to be able to straddle a ‘ladder’ of multiple epistemologies, empirical, critical realist, critical, post structural, participatory and action centered. Indeed, advanced foresight work relies on previous ‘rungs’ to make them possible.

• Systems based work that may evolve into scenarios is only possible when there is a basis in forecasts. Identification of emerging issues and trends forms the ground work by which intentions can be modelled into systems.
• When systems are modelled, what begins to become visible is that they are projections based on assumption, some cultural, others disciplinary, others institutional. Critical and post-structural approaches help us to move past naive realist beliefs in the ‘one and true’ system, and allow us to see how perspectives and systems are co-constitutive.
• Whereas in the critical and post structural approaches the idea of multiple ways of knowing is abstract (e.g. multiple discourses frame an issue), in the participatory modality multiple perspectives are embodied. The challenge is to work with the diversity of perspectives as a resource to envision the future with greater depth and power.
• Finally, in order to move to action, the participatory is absolutely essential. People need to enter into join inquiry across perspectives to come to a co-diagnosis and shared understanding, which can lead to shared commitment for action.

The following chart summarizes this ‘ladder’ concept.

Thus my opinion, all five of these modalities are needed, in different degrees, to do holistic futures / foresight work. Every context is different, but having these five modalities as resources and as a conceptual scaffold can help us to build in robust approaches to foresight and action. To a certain extent each mode is developmental, building on the previous mode. However I need to provide the caveat that this narrative of futures studies is very much from an action research perspective, and there are many that have narrated the fields history with far more detail than here, and in different terms. This version of futures is also an expression of a worldview. I hope that this framework for futures practice is useful. I have begin to use it in my facilitation and practice and it has been useful for my clients. Finally, many thanks to the various people that have informed my thinking over the years, you know who you are!

References

Bell, W. 1997. Foundations of futures studies Vol. 1. New Jersey: Transaction Publishers.

Hughes, B. 1985. World Futures: A Critical Analysis of Alternatives. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.

Inayatullah, S. 1998. “Causal Layered Analysis: Post-Structuralism as Method.” Futures 30 (8):815-829.

Inayatullah, S. 2008. “Six pillars: futures thinking for transforming.” Foresight 10 (1).

Inayatullah, Sohail. 1990. “Deconstructing and reconstructing the future : Predictive, cultural and critical epistemologies.” Futures 22 (2):115.

Meadows, D, Meadows, D., 1972. The Limits to Growth. London: Pan Books.

Milojevic, I. 1999. “Feminizing Futures Studies.” In Rescuing all our Futures: The Future of Futures Studies, edited by Z. Sardar, 61-71. Westport, Conn: Praeger.

Moll, P. 2005. “The Thirst for Certainty: Futures Studies in Europe and the United States.” In The Knowledge Base of Futures Studies: Professional Edition, edited by R. Slaughter. Brisbane: Foresight International.

Ramos, J. 2002. “Action Research as Foresight Methodology.” Journal of Futures Studies 7 (1):1-24.

Ramos, J. 2004a. Foresight Practice in Australia: A Meta-Scan of Practitioners and Organisations. In Australian Foresight Institute Monograph Series edited by R. Slaughter. Melbourne Swinburne University of Technology

Ramos, J. 2013. “Forging the Synergy between Anticipation and Innovation: The Futures Action Model.” Journal of Futures Studies 18 (1).

Ramos, J. 2006. “Action research and futures studies.” Futures 38 (6):639-641.

Sardar, Z. 1999. “The Problem of Futures Studies.” In Rescuing all our Futures: The Future of Futures Studies, edited by Z. Sardar, 9-18. Westport, Conn: Praeger.

Schnaars, S. 1989. Megamistakes: forecasting and the myth of rapid technological change. New York: The Free Press.

Slaughter, R. 2004. Futures beyond dystopia: creating social foresight. London: RoutledgeFalmer.

Slaughter, R. 1999. Futures for the Third Miillenium. St Leonards, N.S.W.: Prospect Media.

Slaughter, R. 1995. The foresight principle,. Westport, CT: Adamantine Press, .

Slaughter, Richard A. 2002. “Futures Studies as a Civilizational Catalyst.” Futures 34 (3-4):349.

Stevenson, T. 2006. “From Vision into Action.” Futures 38 (6):667-671.

Over the past year I’ve been in the process of conceptualizing a new approach to action oriented foresight. The approach is called the Anticipatory Experimentation Method (AEM), or “Bridge Method” for short.

The method provides a clear pathway to move from developing a robust and transformational vision of the future, to creating ideas, solutions and prototypes that can be implemented through real-world experiments. The method is a way of bringing the preferred future into the present through experiments that can scale.

In many ways, the method is a culmination of my 17 years working at the intersection of action research and futures studies / foresight. The method integrates a variety of different approaches that I have learned over the years, including the use of games, metaphor, visualization, role-play, reflection and modeling.

Expressions of interest

We seek expressions of interest for those who are interested in applying this method to their organizations.

Because the methodology is new, we seek to offer a significant discount to potential clients and partners, so that we can test the application of the method, refine it and build from this experience.

We would also like the application of the method to be “open-source”,  so that others can learn from its application, however the terms can be negotiated. We want to focus on social impact, and are therefore seeking clients and partners who are oriented toward innovating breakthrough solutions to societal challenges.

The initial application of the method would take between 2 days in a workshop / consultation environment, with the option of further development work if needed. This 2 days can be spread out over a longer period if necessary.

This EoI will remain open for the next several month, or until we find a suitable partner of the application.

More about the Anticipatory Experimentation / Bridge Method

The AEM method entails five stages:

1. Challenging the used future
2. Developing a transformational futures vision
3. Creating a number of prototype ideas
4. Choosing which prototype ideas to experiment with and running real-world experiments
5. Upscaling and investing in the experiments with the best promise

First, we challenge the “used future”, which entails exploring the assumptions and images we have about the future, as well as learning about the emerging issues, trends and weak signals that are transforming our social horizons. This is an unlearning process of challenging existing assumptions, moving past what we think we know about the future.

Secondly, we help you develop an integrated vision and support you in creating a transformational futures narrative. The transformational futures narrative articulates the movement from your past to present to preferred future. It is an open ended narrative that requires the world to participate in its fulfilment, a call to action for others to work with you to create this future.

Thirdly, we use methods such as the Futures Action Model to bridge your transformational futures narrative with ideas and prototypes. This includes an R&D process that begins with scanning the landscape of global pioneer projects, and then develops prototypes and models connected to your stakeholder ecosystem. This is done through a combination of R&D and gaming (e.g. the Futures Action Model game).

Fourthly, we set up an experiment using an action learning approach – anticipate, design, connect and evolve. The experiment is that small piece of the future you are bringing into the present. We make sure learning happens that builds in systemic capacity for renewed experiments.

Finally, experiments can be evaluated to see which ones show the most promise and are best aligned to enact your vision. These can then discarded, adjusted or upscaled and invested in to accelerate the movement toward enacting the vision.

Contact Us

For those interested in applying this method in your organisation, please get in contact with us by through our website.

For those who might think that the method could be useful for others that you know, please pass this invitation on.

Anticipatory Governance denotes large scale participatory processes and systems for exploring, envisioning, direction setting and developing a strategy for a region. Anticipatory Governance builds on experiments in Anticipatory Democracy popularized by Alvin Toffler and Clem Bezold,[1] combined with new developments in network based foresight.[2] Anticipatory Governance allows a city to harness the intelligence and wisdom of its citizens in charting intelligent directions for their cities.

In today’s world change is rapid and unpredictable and there is a need for a city to prepare for the horizons of change which bring both threats and opportunities. Tapping into citizen knowledge can create the requisite awareness of change that provides agility and new pathways for city policy making and change efforts. Without anticipation a city’s policies are likely to be reactive at best and misguided at worst. Anticipation allows a city’s policies to be adaptive while driving toward preferred futures, policies that intelligently surf the tsunamis of change.[3]

It is also important that the direction or vision for a city or municipal region reflect the common good for all of its people. One potential pitfall in envisioning the future of a city is when a future vision or direction for a city is framed by narrow interests or a ‘used futures’ – images created somewhere else but super-imposed uncritically or serving special economic interests, a particular lobby group or other.[4]  We can see the ‘Smart City’ discourse as one such ‘used future’. It is fashionable and employed by some very large corporations to paint a picture of a high tech, automated, internet-of-everything city, however it has strong technocratic tendencies that exclude real inclusion in city governance and participation.

Democratizing the future means that the future is not just framed based on narrow commercial interest, a policy clique, lobby groups or other special interests, but rather that a city’s vision and purpose is driven through the multifaceted and dynamic knowledges and wisdom of its many citizens. Ultimately a city’s direction and vision, and the policies that stem from them, should ensure a mutuality of benefits that support the urban commons. The very process of foresight exploration and action should be seen within a commons governance framework. Critically, this democratization of foresight based exploration and response-ability can specifically focus on threats to and opportunities for the protection and extension of the urban commons. Framed in such a way, Anticipatory Governance is a key ally in supporting positive urban commoning outcomes.

Strategies For Anticipatory Governance

While there are many ways to establish an Anticipatory Governance process, here are some basic building blocks:

First, it is important that it is an ongoing process, not just a once-off exercise. The world is not going to stop changing, so formulating and developing a continuous process is key.

Next, a city government in partnership with citizens should establish well resourced systems and structures that allow for continuous citizen involvement, townhall style conversations, as well as crowdsourcing of futures-relevant knowledge. Task forces need to be created which promote and develop engagement approaches and strategies across various sectors, citizen groups, government, businesses and among other specialist groups. These task forces, based on specialist and embodied knowledges, can be data to knowledge to wisdom engines of futures-relevant knowledge.

Large scale citizen-city partnerships can utilize knowledge management systems that help analysts to organize data, from workshop data to big digital data, and across various input sources. This is ongoingly presented and used in live participatory workshops and other engagement modes to develop collective intelligence and deeper wisdom of futures relevance. Collaborative teams emerge from these sessions to carry out policy development, social innovations, projects and other actions, based on this clarified awareness of threats and opportunities. Citizens and other groups are not just providers of knowledge, but also potential sources of social innovation, policy ideation and other change factors.

Supported by government but co-run by citizens, Anticipatory Governance fits within the Partner State model as advocated by Bauwens,[5] in so far as dedicated public resources are required to establish and support a platform for citizen involvement, but citizens are critical to the energy needed, data requirements, creative responses and the governance of the process. As such an Anticipatory Governance system should not be solely controlled by a municipality, but rather exist within a commons management framework. While obviously it is not a standard “common resource pool” as articulated by Elinor Ostrom, it is nonetheless a shared group of elements that requires a participatory governance framework. These elements include:

• The vision(s) for a city, the image of its future and associated ideas,
• The processes undertaken to explore the future and develop creative responses,
• The systems and structures (e.g. knowledge management systems) that allow sharing, data gathering and rich analysis,
• The outputs of the process, knowledge, projects, social innovations, etc.

Examples

• Seven types of Anticipatory Governance strategies
• Examples of Anticipatory Democracy
• A guide to participatory foresight
• Network foresight
• Institute for the Future discussion paper
• The Institute for the Future has used its “Foresight Engine” to run a number of crowdsourced futures visioning and collective intelligence exercises for cities
• Futurescaper system is being used for a variety of government foresight projects

Policy Recommendations for Cities

• Create a multi-year commitment toward implementing an anticipatory governance approach, not just a one off.
• Pilot crowd sourcing and knowledge management platforms based on citizen / user experience along with functionality and data, and scale a working model across sectors.
• Twine online data gathering with live intelligence building workshops that allow citizen foresight potential to develop and build.
• Make citizens and government true partners in the management and development of the system.
• Make sure that end goals for the system are made explicit and served: nimble future-informed policy making, ‘smarter’ citizens, robust future visions, social innovation, inter-organizational knowledge sharing etc.
• Leverage the process to support citizen learning, deeper citizen connections and synergies, and critical social capital across all sectors, in particular the marginalized.

[1] Bezold, C. (1978). Anticipatory Democracy: People in the Politics of the Future. NY: Random House.

[2] https://www.academia.edu/3525646/Foresight_in_a_Network_Era_Peer-producing_Alternative_Futures

[3] Adage by Jim Dator

[4] Inayatullah, S. (2008). Six pillars: futures thinking for transforming. Foresight, 10(1).

[5] https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Partner_State

Quick Details

What: A personal-professional development program and process

Location: Melbourne CBD (with limited experimental online / remote intake)

Initial session times: Session 1, Wed 22nd Nov – 6:30-8:30 pm. Session 2, Wed 13th Dec – 6:30-8:30 pm. (further times to be arranged as a group)

Program duration: 12 months (approximately 10 once-a-month sessions) (2 hours in length), plus a weekend retreat

Cost: $200 for year and $100 for retreat

Expression of interest link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/KCGV6ZK

**WE HAVE FILLED ALL SPOTS AND ARE NO LONGER TAKING EOI FOR 2017-2018. HOWEVER, YOU ARE WELCOME TO PUT IN AN EOI FOR 2018-2019. 

Introduction

The Mutant Futures Program supports people in developing their hybrid and futures oriented professional practices. Jose Ramos conceived the program, after several years of his own soul searching and the writing of this essay “Mutant Futurists in the 21st Century“. Inviting four others (see testimonials below), a pilot program was run between 2016 and 2017, and was very valuable for all, so it is now being opened up as a program to be run for others.

The program is meant to help us unearth deeply purposeful and creative practices that can have unpredictable, surprising and of course positive impacts on the world and ourselves. It aims to help people to develop their ‘mutant futures’ thinking and practices through a variety of approaches. It is a self discovery process and a business discovery process that intends to support the creative development of the inner and outer alignment of our work.

Premise

We are moving into an era of trans-disciplinary and multi-modal practices that are not segmented specializations. Increasingly practitioners combine a number of talents, knowledge domains and fields to create hybrid approaches. This can be daunting, because people are playing in the space of the unknown, but is also deeply creative and central to the capacity for people to realize their true potential to contribute to the world and general wellbeing.

Many people undertake professional development processes, but have difficulty enacting personal change, because our inner narrative (what we tell ourselves about ourselves) is not aligned with what we are consciously trying to create in the world. Often, while we consciously strive for a particular future, at the level of our unconconscious we lack alignment. We may therefore not actually believe what we are saying, or there is a conflict or double bind, or there exists some other mental aspect that contradicts our outward expression. The process we take in this program works toward an alignment between the inner and outer dimensions of our practice, such that who we project ourselves as in the world (our personas) are deeply aligned and supported by our life narrative and our sense of purpose.

What happens

The program is an integration of “Ying” and “Yang” movements, both letting come (emergence) and making happen (pushing). Participants gather once per month (for 2 hours) over a year to relate and learn together. We discuss readings and ideas, and we talk about our aspirations, intentions and progress. We also give and get coaching from each other. We take a “no one left behind policy”. We understand that in the nexus of personal and professional development there is an ebb and flow, and life’s context and circumstances can create challenges. Through this we allow ourselves and each other to be at different stages of development, but aim to continue to support each other and hold each other to account.

The following is a rough guide to the process that we take:

• We draw on the work of Joseph Campbell to begin to explore the role of myth and metaphor and their role in forming a dialog with the unconscious.
• We do the “CLA of the Self” process developed by Sohail Inayatullah (CLA stands for Causal Layered Analysis) to explore core life narrative and create deep shifts.
• We work on our practices to develop: clarity of purpose, self expression, service prototyping / experimentation and visibility.
• We use the Futures Action Model to help us conceptualise potential enterprise models and the partnership ecosystems needed to support innovation.
• We use FuturesLab as a processware fablab to help us test new services and products through an open experimentation ecosystem.

We draw on a variety of literature and ideas to help us in the inquiry and to build our practices.

• On myth (the works of Joseph Campbell)
• On inner selves (the works of Hal and Sidra Stone)
• On narrative (the works of Sohail Inayatullah, Ivana Milojevic and John Hagel)
• The 5ps (Key Person of Influence) method (Daniel Priestly)
• Start With Why (Simon Sinek)
• Man’s Search for Meaning (Viktor Frankl)
• The War of Art (Steven Pressfield)
• The Artists Way (Julia Cameron)
• many others

Dates, Times and Places

• We meet once a month for a year in the Melbourne CBD area.
• There are approximately 10 meetings, each about 2 hour long.
• The program will begin October 2017 and run 12 month until October 2018.
• We have one weekend retreat in the program, sometime in late January / early February, which is 2 days, in country Victoria (Elms Retreat).
• While we were all Melbourne based in the last course, we are open to having a few remote (non-Melbourne based) participants in this one using web-based communications. However this stream would be experimental.

Who can join?

Anyone who wants to build a hybrid practice that brings in foresight / futures in some shape or form.

How much does it cost?

We have tried to keep the cost as low as possible. It is $200 for the year (not counting the retreat costs which is an additional $100), which goes toward program administration to to make everything go smooth.

How do I join?

Please fill out this Expression of Interest as soon as possible: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/KCGV6ZK

**WE HAVE FILLED ALL SPOTS AND ARE NO LONGER TAKING EOI FOR 2017-2018. HOWEVER, YOU ARE WELCOME TO PUT IN AN EOI FOR 2018-2019. 

Testimonials

“I have always held a deep belief in the adage that a learning journey can be best judged by how much it challenges and shifts how we see the world. With this as my yardstick, the Mutant Futures program has been one of the most powerful learning journey’s I have experienced to date. Among the plethora of practical insights around building my foresight craft, was the surfacing of the often unconscious dimensions of self. This program is an intimate voyage of self discovery and deep reflection and is delivered in poetic and reflective grace that asks you to challenge your conventional framing of self to better understand how this this framing underpins (consciously or otherwise) what we do, and do not do (and why) in the context of better understanding and developing our foresight/futures ‘craft’.” Reanna Browne

“I was deeply grateful to be part of this program. The mutant futures program itself is an emergent journey enacted through our own personal reflective rediscovery of the ‘authentic self’. Harnessed through enriching source material and practices, by focussing the lens to understand the interior of ones self. The discovery is the catalyst that drives our craft and professional pathways into our own ambitions of the future. The journey allows us to understand the weight of the past by looking back at our experiences travelled, the push of the future in having the encouragement to acknowledge our own true potential and the pull of the future is explored through personal metaphors and narratives that guide us into the future that we want to create and participate. This developmental program assists us to unearth our true value of contribution, enabling professional emergence and development within a supportive collaborative environment.” Charmaine Sevil

“The Mutants Futures Program has been a “game changer” for me. It has been a unique, deep and powerful learning experience that has enabled greater clarity of purpose and internal alignment. Unearthing certain personal narratives and metaphors embedded deeply in the unconscious was incredibly challenging and confrontational at times. However, the genuinely safe, inclusive and collaborative learning space created by fellow participants encouraged me to embark on a deeply reflective journey that has led to me identifying and securing work that is meaningful to me.” Mahesh Kandasamy

“The Mutants program gave me an opportunity to develop the skills, theories and understandings I acquired during my time completing the Swinburne Masers in Strategic Foresight. Expertly and gently guided by Jose, we worked coherently, challenging my biases and exploring my own personal narrative, within a safe and supportive environment, to develop my pitch to more clearly communicate my unique proposition and focus my own mutant foresight practice.” Stephen Reimann 

“The Mutant futures program confirmed a number of intuitions for me. One, we are better off working together to support each others emerging practices. Two, there is a real link between inner narrative and metaphor and outer professional practice – doing pro dev without inner work misses much of what really supports us in bringing forth our future selves. Three, it is possible to experiment and bring the future into the present.” Jose Ramos