Announcing the Next Generation Foresight Practitioners Awards for 2021

Amala and Srishti created the speculative recipe book on Sustainable Food Futures in India. Their proposal builds on this work to create an online platform to engage the community and to translate the recipe book into exhibits and workshops. They hope to create a locally driven global food future that combines indigenous food traditions with new food technology.

Information coming soon...

Cherie is a Yorta Yorta woman and a descendant of a stolen generation survivor in Australia. She explores futures processes and practices that consider the role of culture, systematic violence, conflict, survivance and trauma. Her proposal seeks to develop a participatory narrative foresight methodology and to launch a futures focused podcast that engages a broad range of people to creatively explore futures thinking, practice and visions in a way that tickles the imagination, evokes curiosity and enables action.

Clarice is a researcher, designer and facilitator. Her work aims to solve the contradiction between sustainability and fashion in a way that integrate consumers’ voices and cultural aspects into fashion futures initiatives. Her proposal aims to facilitate connections and dialogues between fashion activists and young futurists and to take her toolkit to countries with poor access to technology and the Internet.

Dexter and Kushal’s project explores toxic masculinity and what it might mean to be a feminist man in the future, applying feminist theory to policy development. They plan to deliver a Futures Literacy Lab focused on the “Futures of Masculinity” exploring their broader policy and far-reaching relevance for intergenerational issues.

Elias has been exploring the use of alternate reality as a tool to help decision-makers engage with uncertain and unexpected events. He led the design of a simulation for Beirut that explore future risks, challenges and gaps in infrastructure, governance and policy. His proposal seeks to explore the futures of identity and the social contract in fragile contexts and what can be applied to support strategic planning and community interventions.

Liz is a strategist, service designer, and futurist. Her project aims to establish a futures thinking lab in Mad*Pow’s Centre for Health Experience Design. The lab aims to create new experiences for the community, like workshops where we focus on crafting compelling visions of an equitable future of healthcare and to use these to create change.

Evy champions migrants’ rights through her transnational narrative work. Through survivor-focused storytelling, leadership development, and strategic communications, she ensures that migrant women are at the forefront of advocacy around labor migration. As Communications and Development Director at Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, Evy aims to change the systems that facilitate forced labor, building worker-centered communications campaigns, notably around international trade agreements

Irene has been working with foresight and graphic facilitation as part of the Prot(A)ction project run by Forwardto that is building a "community of practice" of service operators that work against human trafficking in the Piemonte region of Italy. Her proposal seeks to address a lack of young voices and diversity in futures work across Italy with the aim of spreading futures literacy and a sense of agency and common purpose.

Jessica and Heather have been using participatory foresight to explore labour markets and the skills and occupations needed in Canadian cities over the next 10-15 years. They now plan to launch a national foresight club to build the capacity of Canadian municipal staff and to develop a series of futures literacy modules for municipal audiences.

Karl has been working to promote futures thinking among startup founders and social entrepreneurs, especially as they help transition the Philippines into a circular economy. His project aims to translate futures thinking tools so that they are truly accessible to community-based entrepreneurs and people's organizations

Lee has led social enterprises that reduced food wastage and provided training for youth involvement in social and environmental issues. Building on his experiences with the #WeTellStories Community, a non-profit project that uses storytelling to advocate for various causes, Lee hopes to build the capability of civil society to use foresight methods.

Ludwig works on climate politics. He started with activism—at the UNCOPs as a youth delegate and through CSOs. Later, he joined a group of researchers at Lund University working on speculative futures and artistic practices. He's created a fictional museum of the fossil era, a travel guide to a decarbonised city and a sound walk set in an urban future. His proposal is focused on crafting a desirable future for Swedish forests.

Marcela has been working as a champion for futures thinking and youth leadership in security through her work, including a participatory futures game, Young Leaders Programme, and INTERPOL Global Horizon Scan. Her project focuses on launching a Youth Security Futures Forum, a platform that helps youth voices to shape the future global security agenda.

Marguerite has a rich experience in visual storytelling. Her project seeks to address the alienation, disorientation, and displacement of people on the African continent and of African descent. She hopes to build a community of empowered agents of change – to revolutionise and democratise the imaginings, lived realities, and origins of African futures.

Nicole has been championing futures work in the Philippines including through the Philippine Futures Thinking Society (PhilFutures), the Center for Engaged Foresight (CEF), and the Association of Professional Futurists (APF). Her project aims to strengthen indigenous and community foresight by developing decolonized Filipino futures through Hiraya Foresight, working with rural communities to bring their voices into the conversation

Kanravee, Paricha and Plearn have a dream of empowering their community of social justice changemakers in Thailand. They have been using foresight to explore justice interventions that can support vulnerable groups through hosting participatory workshops for multi sector leaders. As the first justice innovation group that uses a futures thinking approach in Thailand, they now seek to build on this work by creating a strong community of practitioners that makes for a more participatory justice future for all.

Randy is a game designer and entrepreneur working to create positive futures through games and technology. Through his studio, Leveraged Play, he has designed and run foresight games that explore the future of artificial intelligence, elections, web monetization, and much more. He also runs Story Synth, an open-source game design platform, which he plans to expand to empower foresight practitioners to create, run, and share participatory games at scale.

Reinhold has been participating in and leading participatory games to explore how Namibia can meet the challenge of the Sustainable Development Goals, working with 500 young people in Namibia. He is aiming to build on this work through workshops, and bringing these approaches to more students and learners through a simplified and translated manual.

Rodrigo co-created the WFP Youth Network – a global, diverse, self-organized platform for youth advocacy and humanitarian action at the United Nations World Food Programme. His project focuses on co-creating scenarios and story-like narratives for the future of humanitarian action. His work with different organizations and countries helps to “connect the dots” in understanding how to make a difference in the world through action and purpose.

Over the years, Samuel has learned the soft and hard skills required to drive a lasting change in Africa. His project is focused on adapting a modern rainwater recovery mechanism to help tackle the problem of potable water scarcity in Nigeria. His goal is to increase the percentage of Nigerians who have access to safe drinking water from less than 20% to over 50% by 2030.

Trishia is a feminist organizer and a foresight strategist working in gender-based discrimination in the workplace. Her foresight initiative, Third Space Feminism, has been exploring the potential of women-centric digital spaces in co-creating gender-inclusive and sustainable futures in a patriarchal society. Her proposal is focused on the creation of inclusive toilets in Bangladesh and working to enable others to co-design an inclusive future for themselves, their communities, and their workplaces.

Yelena is a lecturer and trainer, consultant working in Kazakhstan. Her project is focused on expanding futures literacy in Kazakhstan. She is working to compile a Russian manual for futures studies to address language barriers that limit uptake across society. She also hopes to develop a new course that meets the needs of civil servants and promotes futures literacy in Kazakhstan and across central Asia.

Fisayo works to identify the gaps and opportunities the agro-sector presents to different actors, with a special interest in rural communities. Her project, Farmers futures program (FFP) seeks to give farmers the agency over their future, by co-creating solutions around emerging issues, offering training on financially sustainable agro-enterprise while also opening up younger people to local possibilities.

Koen is a foresight practitioner with an academic background in business. His project aims to help the world accelerate towards a more positive future by supporting people and organisations in spotting emerging change and justifying action-taking. He plans to train people in setting up continuous future-scanning and anticipation practices, but also develop a platform that helps people implement Foresight in their organization.

Kushal's focus has been on global citizenship and the potential to liberate ourselves through vulnerability. His project is to run a pilot Futures Literacy Laboratory with young people that facilitate conversations on the futures of masculinity. He plans to publish a research paper and develop a series of multimedia resources to spark public curiosity and social change.