What would it take to build a future where gender inequality in STEM fields is history? STEMFutures by SheSOLVES is Abigael’s way of addressing the existing gender gap in STEM. It is an ongoing series of Intergenerational dialogues across four generations of women (veterans, mid-career professionals, undergraduates and girls in secondary schools) designed to serve as a melting pot of a safe space and an enabler. Exploring the power of dialogues, storytelling and scenario-based challenges, STEMFutures aims to mentor a new generation of women as future innovators and inventors in STEM fields as well as propose a new intergenerational contract that will reduce or outrightly remove barriers to gender parity in STEM fields in future. Through this project, we look to collect evidence of proven strategies that both promote positive attitudes towards STEM among young girls and empower them to use foresight in acquiring the skills required to thrive in future STEM careers.

How can we develop effective strategies to prevent citizens from being left behind as the digital divide widens due to the rapid and ongoing advancements in AI? My objective is to develop a method of engaging with communities to develop and co-create future scenarios which explore how to protect workers and citizens by providing local, grass-roots driven social safety nets as the nature of work evolves with AI. My project is about developing a robust and engaging story-telling framework that can empower communities, provide feedback loops to decision-makers, and deliver actionable recommendations that promote equitable outcomes in the face of emerging technology and AI-driven transformations.

Over the past few years, I have been part of a team developing and testing an indigenous futures tool called Te Korekoreka (www.tekorekoreka.co.nz). Te Korekoreka empowers us to imagine and navigate towards the future we desire by reconnecting with our indigenous knowledge. The tool asks us to examine our present, learn from our past, imagine a new future, and commit to a deliberate course of action that will enable us to shift from our current reality to a better one. Our hope is that Te Korekoreka can empower our whānau Māori (Māori community) to create a more equitable and prosperous future. My hope is that through engaging in this fellowship I can connect with other futures practitioners from around the globe to support our work, as well as build networks with other indigenous future makers.

The Climateverse is a media platform reporting the news from parallel dimensions where humanity is actually taking transformative action on climate and social justice issues. Through short, easy to digest creative news stories in text and video format juxtaposed against the landscape of real news, the Climateverse meets people in current topics and provides hopeful and tangible examples of what we could be doing differently in the current real world.

The HonourTheGirl project promotes gender equality and peace building through foresight techniques and empowering youth voices to eradicate violence against women and girls in UK communities. The project enables young people to use foresight techniques to envision a society free from honour-based violence and where all genders are equal. Encouraging young people to identify solutions to gender inequality within their own community, HonourTheGirl empowers young people to develop action based solutions and shape the future. Through the power of youth voices, HonourTheGirl, places young people at the centre of systems change and the building of a peaceful, equitable and safe future for all.

The main objective of the project is to establish a method for mapping patterns, trends, and potential risks associated with anti-Muslim violence and incidents in Sri Lanka. The goal is to create a timely early warning system through thorough participatory research, which will then be shared with inter-religious organizations and forums that collaborate with local communities. This will assist in supporting their programming and initiatives in the region. Consequently, it will enable the timely prevention of potential violence and triggers, particularly in areas prone to religious violence and riots.

The project’s primary goal is to create a tailored Foresight approach that seamlessly incorporates Futures Design tools and collaborative processes. This approach is specifically designed for implementation within the unique context of social organizations and government bodies in the Global South. Its ultimate aim is to facilitate the co-creation of Desirable Futures through active participation from civil society, local government entities, and academic institutions. The project’s endgame is to produce a versatile virtual toolkit, accessible in Portuguese, Spanish, and English, which will be freely available for individuals or groups interested in utilizing these resources within their respective organizational settings. In addition, the project will establish concise training courses, concentrating on the practical application of these tools. These courses will not only cover the toolkits but also delve into fundamental concepts and case studies, specifically emphasizing their applicability within Latin American and African nations.

My project aims to co-create and develop a foresight framework – including a methodology and toolbox – to inform local climate disaster relief policy, social response and infrastructure, in climate risk areas in rural Spain. This toolbox enables policy-makers, scientists and civic society to blend innovative co-creation practices, diverse voices and different data sources (predictive data, historical records, local knowledge, collective imagination and systems thinking, to name a few) to develop forward-thinking scenarios to understand the future and decide how we want to act on it, to make sure solutions are social, equal and systemic.

My project seeks to cultivate transformative and adaptive leadership among Sangguniang Kabataan leaders (SKs) and other young Filipino government officials by capacitating them with Collective Foresight, an approach that integrates Foresight with Coalition-building activities.

Transform is an experience to create connection and conversation through contact with food. Gathering people around the table to engage in tasks like chopping, peeling, and selecting ingredients, allows to create an intimate, communal space. This setup allows diverse stakeholders in the food system to discuss our collective legacy, the future, and how individual actions can contribute to collective change. More here: https://www.myceliumgastronomy.com/transform

Space for Grief is a placemaking initiative focused on destigmatizing personal and collective grief. It consists of immersive public art installations, curated works, and community engagements. The initiative is led by the team at Method Collective and is rooted in ethnographic research and consultancy work with cities, governments and organizations. It aims to increase community empathy and engagement around transitions and loss, with the long term goal of encouraging improved conversations and supports for ourselves, communities and workplaces. The installation serves as an immersive communal gathering place, where individuals can come together to learn about expressions of grief across nature and the variety of causes and manifestations of it. It acts as a participatory process for individuals to eventually inspire change in community perspectives and policies. Combinations of built form architecture and organic plant material create a surreal environment for meditation, while prompts guide visitors to reflect on experiences in their lives. Accompanying soundscapes, composed specifically for the installation, act as a soundtrack for one’s memories. Following an exceptional community response in phase one which took place at Toronto’s premier Reference Library, one of North America’s busiest library systems, Space for Grief has launched phase two, driving its expanding mission forward.

In a rapidly changing world, it becomes essential for the new generations to acquire a range of skills in order to grow in their personal and professional lives. This is the objective of the TrendSpotting & WeaksignalSpectrum Observatory, which involves young people under 35 for the analysis of phenomena visible in the present and potentially impacting on the future. This process helps young people to understand the dynamics of the transformations that are taking place today, making them more aware about possible future implications. This strengthens the ability to respond in advance to these challenges and take some ‘future-proof’ actions.

‘Peshawar in 2035’ is an interdisciplinary research group inspiring Peshawar’s adoption of cutting-edge technologies for city development while offering insights and solutions to manage associated risks. The project’s goal is to publish two inspiring sci-fi stories centered on ‘Education’ and ‘Law’ using science fiction prototyping as a foresighting tool. These narratives aim to spark imagination and illustrate the potential influence of emerging technologies like Generative AI, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and 3D Printing on the future of Education and Law by 2035. These stories will inspire lawyers, educators, policymakers, and the public to envision alternative futures for education and law, serving as inspiration not only for Peshawar but also for other cities and counterparts.

James is assessing alternative heat governance futures for Sydney – focused on developing an antifragile, anticipatory and agile future for Sydney’s extreme heat management. He wants to explore what compels, motivates and apprehends better extreme heat management, and how to establish long term path dependencies for more equitable and effective heat governance futures.

In my NGFP Fellowship project, I intend to organise online creative writing workshops with selected youth from some Congo Basin countries with the aim of stimulating them to craft stories that portray the alternative futures they envisage for the Basin and the Earth. In this regard, I will work with about 15-20 young and talented storytellers to produce not necessarily realistic imaginaries but provocative alternative narratives of the future which can lead to more concrete climate action and efforts to protect biodiversity while ensuring just transitions to sustainable futures. The project will build on foresight, futures and storytelling to effect change in the area of climate change and just transitions in the Congo Basin and beyond.

Sunyeskah or Dreamfishing is the Kristang creole/indigenous epistemological method of creating or excavating words, concepts, idea-tangents and possibilities for one’s own culture or community through directed spontaneous work with the personal and collective unconscious. This project seeks to develop an Osura Sunyeskah, or a Dreamfishing Toolkit, that can be used by individuals, communities and other interested parties to support structured, authentic and respectful decolonisation, re-indigenisation and cultural, linguistic and socioemotional revitalisation.

My project addresses the globalised local issue of gentrification, using my village – a typical Mediterranean rural decaying town – as the ground for a community-led experiment. While Portugal is trending for real-estate investors and digital nomads, it is also facing a serious housing crisis, amidst rising social tensions and new environmental threats. National debate is ongoing but an anticipatory approach to the future is lacking. I then thought about what could be done to anticipate these transformations, actually harnessing their power, starting grassroots. What if the local community prepares beforehand, to harness the forces of “gentrification” to trigger positive transformation?

Building on the work of the “Entre Voces y Relatos” initiative, which has captured historical narratives and experiences of Colombian children impacted by armed conflict, we aim to extend this lens into the future. By conducting foresight exercises, we will empower these children to envision and shape narratives of preferable futures characterized by sustainable peace and ecosocial transitions. This project forms a bridge between past and future, allowing the experiences and lessons of history to foster the creation of alternative scenarios for a brighter tomorrow.

ÎntreVecini (AmongNeighbours) is a project that aims to regenerate the community spirit in urban areas in Romania, creating offline communities in order to develop sustainable local hubs. The changemaking journey for the communities starts when PV panels are installed on the roof of their block of flats and continues through various sustainability-centered activities (beekeeping trainings, circular fairs, urban gardening etc). Through these 2 pillars (clean energy, sustainable activities) we transform the local communities and we foster dialogue between very different community members, fighting radicalization, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia, ageism.

The project seeks to understand what the future of energy access and security in Zimbabwe would look like if clean energy generation projects were civilian led and managed with minimal government reliance. Foresight analysis will use a combination of extensive research with community stakeholders, literature reviews, computational models, and digital tools to draw informative conclusions that may give insight into the role of community members in energy security and the net-zero agenda.

78 years ago, two nuclear bombs were detonated, leaving a scar on the collective human consciousness. How can we ensure that this will not ever happen again in the future of humanity? Shadi and Mikhail will use experience design and gamification to create a Live Action Roleplaying game (LARP) for diverse international audiences to gain firsthand experience with moral and practical challenges related to the futures of disarmament and nuclear weapons.

What would it mean for future generations born after 2027’s landmark 1.5°C to become transboundary citizens blurring territorial lines? Through speculative fiction I explore intergenerational visioning, long-term governance models, and transformative funding mechanisms. Together, it aims to create a home for their inherited futures, What Ifs of future generations as “true” custodians of the Earth, and how newer governance and anticipatory funding models could enable future resilient realities.

Our project uses Futures Workshop Methodology to collaboratively explore, with young designers and urban practitioners, future visions for African cities. In addition, we hope to develop context appropriate futures tools, and create inclusive platforms that enable us to be bold in dreaming and shaping the African cities and urban spaces we aspire to live, work and thrive in.

Feminist Futures is a speculative fiction stories platform co-created by feminists from different generations, geographies, and backgrounds using futures and foresight methods. It reclaims the power of imagining, inspires the collective imaginary, informs advocacy and policy-making, and trains an AI model on feminist language and principles – which then generates new feminist stories.

Australia is at a critical policy juncture. We must redesign our tax system to be sustainable and equitable and allow investment into a better future. But our Government hesitates to act because of a lack of political courage and short-termism in outlook. This continues a pattern over recent decades, where politicians have focused on getting re-elected over the needs of younger and future generations. To overcome this, intergenerational thinking is required. Using foresight techniques, my project will engage younger Australians to understand how current policies will impact them over the coming decades and their values and perspectives on what Australia’s taxation system should support and prioritise instead. Results from the project will advise the government on the changes younger generations want to see in the tax reform process.

The Young Voices Awards received submissions from young changemakers across the globe, reflecting the international diversity of perspectives shaping our future. 60% of entries came from youth ages 15-17, and almost 20% were remarkably from youth 12 years of age. Spanning over 40 countries, projects flowed in from Nigeria to Nepal, Egypt to Brazil, and beyond. Project ideas from building compost solutions in New Zealand or empowering girls in Pakistan, youth foresight links to local needs but thinks globally. The diverse project descriptions reveal prevalent themes centering on sustainability, STEM innovation, equality and inclusion, education, health, economic opportunity, food production, conservation, civic participation, marginalized group empowerment, and poverty alleviation solutions. Visit Teach the Future’s website to meet the 27 winners for 2023! https://tinyurl.com/teachthefuture

What will the future be like when our populations are predominantly aged?” Adam will use gamification to engage intergenerational audiences in the exploration of the long-term consequences of population decline on our world. The inputs will contribute to the development of a serious game to enable policymakers, leaders, and concerned citizens to better anticipate and prepare for the impacts of demographic change. The ultimate goal of the game is to raise awareness of demographic change as a critical megatrend, to engage diverse audiences in the topic, and to inspire policies and behaviours that integrate the concerns and respect the rights of present and future generations.

Alija will facilitate collective speculative art-making workshops to prototype artefacts of just climate transition futures that centre the visions of historically marginalised communities directly impacted by climate change. This collection of artefacts will then be part of a multimedia sensory platform to visualise the collective imagination of frontline communities about climate futures. The platform will serve as a global resource for climate preparedness, civic engagement, and collective decision-making towards futures that benefit humanity and broader impacted ecologies. Alija envisions climate futures where legacies of harm are disrupted and the planning process for our collective futures is regenerative.

Vote Bot is an artificial intelligence solution to increase youth and women’s participation in elections in Zimbabwe. Accessible on WhatsApp, the platform makes it easier for young people and women to register to vote and educate them about their electoral rights and the electoral process in the country, in compliance with Zimbabwe’s Constitution and Electoral Act. This is one of the projects run by Courteney at his Justice Code Foundation, an organisation focused on legal tech and civic tech solutions. Vote Bot was created in consultation with local communities, using a human-centred design approach, and is now being disseminated in rural areas, in partnership with two community-based organisations.

By working within the Startup Support, Advisory, and Investment Ecosystems across the African continent, Daniel has observed that startup founders are not only more prone to failure due to the extreme volatility of their political, economic, and financial landscapes, but also fail by copying Western solutions that do not necessarily work for their context. For him, the antidote is increasing founders’ Futures literacy and foresight skills. He will deliver participatory futures workshops for startup founders across the continent and provide a web platform for interaction between African entrepreneurs. Daniel’s hope is to catalyse Africa’s economic development through forward-thinking innovations with the potential to transform societies; take people out of poverty and improve the quality of life for all.

Solar geoengineering refers to a set of speculative technologies to lower global temperatures by artificially intervening in the climate systems of our planet. Up until now, the discourse, development, and governance around it has been largely dominated by the Global North. As a Social Scientist, Dhanasree is investigating whether or not solar geoengineering would be an option for developing countries to tackle the climate crisis in the future, whether these choices would limit their mitigation and adaptation options, and to what extent this would have implications for geopolitics and security. She will conduct research with Global South countries to explore these questions and uncover their imagined futures around climate justice and equity.

Tackle social problems like poverty through entrepreneurship education and skills development for grassroots community members across ages and demographics. Edson and his team are creating empowerment spaces that equip marginalised people to become the next generation of leaders, start their social businesses, and solve the biggest problems in their communities. His project uses the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a guide for participants to develop social business ideas that tackle significant issues in marginalised communities, such as poverty and poor healthcare. Using strategic foresight, Edson and his peers decided to set up an organization to facilitate replicating their model in different countries. So far, they have been able to set up eight empowerment spaces.

Goodness is committed to increasing efficiency in crop and livestock farming. He has a business which uses the System Dynamics technology to manage and integrate the production of several agricultural and livestock products into one sustainable, more productive, and profitable system. When updated with a farmer’s data, the technological model projects future operations, provides valuable insights on possible growth patterns and challenges, and offers suggestions for risk mitigation and resources needed. Goodness plans to train farmers on how to use and operate this model so they can do business projections, forecast, run scenarios, interpret results, and extract valuable information on the current and future state of their businesses.

Julie will conduct workshops with scientists and civil society communities to explore perceptions and imaginaries around climate engineering – large-scale interventions on Earth’s climate system. She believes that, be it positive or negative, the impacts of climate engineering on our lives can be difficult to comprehend. It requires collective imagining as well as telling nuanced and place-specific stories. She will, then, use language reflective foresight tools to create new narratives and climate-engineering metaphors to enable more democratic public technology debates.

Prismatic is a futures game targeted at climate action groups. Julius envisions that, while climate action groups working across Canada play the game, they navigate through current society, sectors and trends, and build future climate scenarios. Through a crowd-sourced platform, these groups, climate change and foresight experts synthesize the data generated by the game. Indigenous and Afro-futurist artists then create various art expressions based on the synthesized dataset, and their art is disseminated to different communities, creating change in the current paradigm around climate action in the country.

Calendar Collective is a design-led research investigation that challenges the normative understanding of time as linear, objective and neutral. Through co-designed workshops, Kalyani wants to expose foresight practitioners to other ways of occupying time. Insights from these workshops will be used to develop alternate calendars or timekeepers that could enable people to inhabit temporalities of their choice. Responding to the erasure of indigenous temporalities through global imposition of the Gregorian calendar, she proposes alternate calendars as decolonization tools to unearth notions of time that have always existed and still do. Calendar Collective is a reminder that calendars are designed tools and can, therefore, be redesigned.

Melissa is a transdisciplinary designer and researcher committed to envisioning how urban design can restore biosphere integrity. Her project, “Future Tinkering: Do-it-yourself transformations to multispecies cities”, is a Berlin-based summer school for people to envision and create multispecies city futures, cities designed for all living beings. Participants will go on a transdisciplinary foresight journey with a series of design and scenario building workshops to: i) deconstruct their worldviews and imaginaries around cities; ii) embody simulations of other species’ sensorial worlds through art-based methods and immersive technologies; iii) learn how to co-fabricate with other living organisms and systems through biofabrication techniques.

It is currently hard for newcomers to a field – especially related to technologically advanced tools – to be given work opportunities due to a lack of real-world experience, which creates a vicious cycle. With her Non-Fungible Token (NFT) project, Navyashree is willing to give opportunities for people looking to break into a certain technical field to work on real-world organisations projects. They start with micro-tasks, earn in crypto currency, get displayable badges verifying their contributions and skills gained, besides accessing mentorship and networking opportunities. At the same time, organisations will be assisted with framing their micro-tasks via futures thinking tools.

Olga and Nikolay believe that schools’ curriculums are not currently fully supporting their students’ development for the world they will live in as adults. To tackle such challenge, they will develop a knowledge graph and handbook to be incorporated into schools’ curriculum and increase students’ futures literacy. Students will be taught to spot signals of change in various domains, identify emerging futures and generate insights for scenario building. Olga and Nikolay hope students will be enabled to apply futures thinking to actively create their personal and professional strategies and become agents of their own lives.

Salime’s Planetary Health for Planetary Futures is a student-led initiative that brings together medical sciences students from all over Iran who are passionate about planetary health and planetary futures. She will train this next generation of health workers in foresight and futures thinking so they can anticipate, respond to, and address global health challenges in such a way that they simultaneously provide people with sustainable health care services and promote the planet’s wellbeing. As a result, Salime envisions health professionals minimising the negative health care footprint on the climate, safeguarding the well-being of the planet, and promoting a culture of hope through planetary consciousness.

Sangam strongly believes that the relationships and mindsets that people have around nature influence the kind of futures that we move towards. He will carry out a storytelling project, with stories of individuals and communities living in different scenarios of 2030/2040 Singapore. Each scenario will be informed by a specific mindset and relationship established with nature. His objective is to raise awareness on how various possible futures can be created based on the different ways we interact with nature and initiate important conversations that lead to environmental action.

“What would technology look like if it was developed in smaller places like Melghat instead of Silicon Valley?”. This is the question that inspired Siddhi to co-create an accessible speculative design process with farmers from the tribal community of Korku, in the region of Melghat, India. Together, they have created prototypes of alternative agricultural futures. Siddhi now wants to offer a storytelling platform for farmers to participate in future scenarios building and share their dreams, hopes, desires, and needs related to the use of emerging farming technologies. Such narratives will then not only support them to create their own solutions and interventions, but also inform action plans and investment of NGOs, development agencies, governments and international funders in the region.

Tonny and his team at Jangu International developed a self-organised, self-governed, cost-effective, and “freesponsible” learning space, where disadvantaged youth unleash their potential for positive change as social entrepreneurs. They provide a pathway, foresight tools, and the mindset for participants to shape a vision for their future and create new solutions in the form of social and environmental enterprises. As many of the local areas around the NGO are not yet familiar with the digital world, they are now seeking to develop an ICT centre and expand its support to tech-based social enterprises.

Barranquilla+20 is a youth-led organisation dedicated to educate and empower children and youth, so they can be the advocates for a greener future, lead climate and biodiversity actions, and secure the planet’s natural heritage to the next generations. Xiomara, Barranquilla+20’s founder, focuses her efforts particularly in educating historically marginalised communities and civil society organisations, and uses foresight as part of her training methodologies. Her vision is to support cities and residential areas to lower their greenhouse gas emissions, protect their biodiversity and preserve their waters in order to achieve climate and social justice, intergenerational equity, and rescue traditional knowledge across regions in Colombia.

Whenever there is great uncertainty about the future, experts tend to opt for the use of different approaches. A widely used is the Delphi-based Scenarios (DBS) development process, a creative process that uses the expertise of a panel, and iterative rounds to obtain experts’ opinions convergence. The downside of it is that it is very time-consuming. Yuri developed the “Real-Time Geo-Spatial Consensus System” platform to increase, via Real-Time Spatial Delphi, the method’s efficiency in the development of complex future scenarios. The open-source platform will be first used with academic experts, governments, and citizens to develop climate change spatial scenarios in some European coastal areas in 2050 and 2100. Results will inform climate policy development.

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

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.

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

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.

Laila, a multimedia Afro-Arab artist, views art as a means of detangling the complexity of intersectionality while in turn giving space for other creatives of color. Her project intends to challenge Eurocentric curriculum and tone-deaf anti-racist curriculum by centering Black Indiginouse People of Color (BIPOC) voices in relation to their oppression, culture, and joy.

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.

Maria, Paula, Ane and Olatz win the Main Award for their ongoing work at The Future Game, a future forecasting and social innovation platform that lives in Discord and Twitch. Inspired by the UN’s SDGs, the platform helps young people discover their own power to imagine alternative futures and activate impactful initiatives collectively through a playful learning experience and impact entertainment. They hope to unleash youth potential with the prize, build digital and physical connections, and create meaningful learning content.

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.

For their work to connect and empower foresight practitioners across Latin America with a focus on community, public sector and diffusion of practice.

For their aim to democratize and scale futures thinking by leveraging social media theater to inspire widespread civic engagement with a focus on climate, data-driven technologies and systemic inequality.

For their participatory approach to encourage futures literacy, which enables the co-creation and sharing of preferred futures through the Museum of Futures, an interactive physical and online exhibition series.

Finn is a multidisciplinary designer and futurist. He is a recent graduate of Global Innovation Design at the UK’s Imperial College and the Royal College of Art. Finn’s winning project focuses on the use of participatory foresight methods to help young people and non-scientists influence their future and influence scientific research including climate science.

For their work and ambition to establish Epoch Labs and its network as a dedicated strategic foresight institute and resource for the Mediterranean.

For their project will build on their work in MMexico City to explore post-pandemic futures with excluded communities and give them agency over their futures.

For her project to tackle the unsustainable use of sand for land reclamation in Singapore, and its environmental impact beyond the country.

For her work to transform the Future Tense Community in India into a Collective experimenting with applied, indigenous, culturally contextual and inclusive futures.

For his project which will help companies in South Africa address systemic issues using foresight, shifting corporate culture and creating better futures.

For his work on academic freedom and ambition to use foresight to protect our freedom of thought from nefarious actors.

Namatai is a youth, peace, democracy and human rights activist. Namatai’s winning project aims to drive youth friendly constitutional and governance reforms in Zimbabwe and disrupt ageist normative frameworks, in the process helping African youth to shape their future and fulfil their generational mandate.

For their work combining agency, motivation challenges, foresight through art perspectives and creative challenges and ambition to scale their work.

For his ambition to expand the impact of his work taking futures literacy and his participatory futures methods to a broader group of change-makers in the global student community.

For his ambition to promote and scale futures literacy and futures education by developing a series of picture books for children and educators, building on the narratives and stories co-created with children through his Tulevaisuuskoulu (Futures School) initiative

Raya Bidshahri, from Iran, lives and works in the UAE. Raya is an entrepreneur, author, futurist and keynote speaker. Her winning project aims to create alternative pathways for schooling and help people tackle and prepare for future challenges. Support first full-time education module focused on transcendence and informed by foresight. Build future fluencies for those in the Middle East. Raya will receive USD 15,000 in funding to develop her foresight work, and will attend SOIF’s flagship annual foresight retreat, as well as receiving other support to help her develop her foresight practice.

For their research on capacity building for on-ground humanitarian workers and communities to solve their own problems through the creation of a Humanitarian Futures Lab.

For her project which aims to develop an online course that draws on the concept of ancestral accountability to catalyze Canadian foresight practitioners to become champions of reconciliation.

For the collaborative project Menged Le Sew, which tackles threats of rising air pollution, public health decline and unsafe streets through urban futures and sustainable urban design and transport planning in Ethiopia.

Her project proposes to establish an emergency health foresight platform and movement to co-develop and implement a Marshall Plan for urban health in Africa and to co-design, test and evaluate interventions in cities in Africa.

For her “Futures from the Periphery” approach that uncovers the rituals, inherited knowledge and lived experiences of people in cities through intimate stories, as a means to challenge mono-cultural imaginations of the future.

Pilot of Prototype testing the Futures Literacy Labs in Nigeria

Pilot and development of a simple framework to distil futures analysis into key policy messages and recommendations for decision-makers.

All Tomorrow’s Futures: connecting artistic and creative practice with foresight. A project series starting with futures of energy in Australia.

To support the Future Governance Agency for a deeper purpose of promoting an increased understanding of governance innovation.

Project to drive positive and future-fit community planning in a town planning context and pilot for an urban planning ‘Futures Toolkit’

A project to support designers to design future possibilities in Mobility for congested metropolitan cities.

Creation of a school for young futurists (15-25 years old) to promote social justice globally and in their local contexts.

To translate futures games from analog to digital to allow their impact to scale across communities through online resources, training and tutorials.

A participatory approach to experiential futures to help build capacity and communicate complex emerging problems.

Visual stories on global risks: spinoff of her award-winning 2016 political comic book The Global Kid to enlighten both youth and adults on today’s global risks, how they may evolve in the future and how we may tackle them.

Addressing internal barriers to self-valuation, and quality of decision-making in the lives and futures of Mexican women.

Solutions for water-energy-food security Nexus in MENA and SSA, using participative foresight.

Prateeksha is a multidisciplinary designer based in Canada and India. Her project collaboratively explores how applying a living system lens to a design-futures and arts-based practice can provide additional tools and perspectives for working with complex yet adaptive challenges. It seeks to take her inclusive futures framework called Lotusand to create an online interactive resource for all practitioners.

Participative scenarios to address Brazilian development challenges.

Creation of a futures space in Bangladesh to support people to explore and create their preferred futures.

The future identity of Kazakhstani citizens.

Future-maker: Bringing futures to schools to help kids to deal with complexity, uncertainty and accelleration and to become an entrepreneur of their own future – to build visions and shape their future. Aileen seeks to scale and bring their work across Germany.

A 7-year effort to understand what a community-led foresight means in practice and in theory; what does it mean to build the individual and organizational capacity to think systematically about and imagine the future in the context of marginalized communities.

Development of a futures lab to bring participatory foresight approaches to young professionals across Africa and support them to shape their future.

Futures Literacy – A collaboration to enable 15-17 year olds to reach their potential. Designing innovative processes for schools to shift how futures work and careers advice works in Wales and internationally.

Foresight pollinators: a multidisciplinary community of practice building the wider field of futures-led inquiry.

Building on experience driving a collaborative, human-centered approach to tackling future-shock in American healthcare, Daniel aims to explore how Colombians feel about a peaceful future… to explore future memorials and devleop a collective memory toolkit.

Communication, communication, communication. Elliot aims to further develop a platform for communication in foresight, early warning and conflict analysis – to create a space for sharing, debate on trends, theory and practice in the “Slow Thinking Resource Centre”.

Having pioneered the Future According to Women at MISC Magazine, Emily seeks to understand representations of female genitalia in popular culture to speculate on the future of those who identify as women – from iconography to new aspirations.

Pilot in Netherlands to embed futures work into Primary and Secondary schools alongside teacher in training programmes. Erica is capturing and sharing best practice approaches and tools. Helping students become the entrepreneur’s of their own future.

Working towards a center for prospective and strategic thinking in Latin America, that can support the region to understand take advantage of disruptive technologies and the fourth industrial revolution.

Foresight for Cities. Working with cities to help them support their citizens and better prepare for cities – through participation and novel methods including future tables, future maps, games and prototyping. Justyna aims to develop a blueprint for cities to use foresight with impact.

A personal experiential futures technique – Making the futures present with inspiration from theatre and design to drive creativity and challenge assumptions.

Founder of the Young UN Policy Lab on Frontier Issues. A crowd-sourcing platform to identify emerging issues that will impact future societies. Ozge seeks to expand the labs ideas in providing and generating out the box solutions for Agenda 2030. A future UN that is fit for the future.

Decolonizing Futures: Exploring Storytelling as a Tool for Inclusion in Foresight. A novel, non-Western approach to foresight inspired by folk-storytelling tradition, Kaavad, from Rajasthan, India, this tool is the first and only Foresight method directly derived from a non-western practice/tradition. Pupul will be broadening the approach to non-native speakers through translation of her approach, and workshops with multilingual communities.

Building on his experience building makerspaces and a Sustainable Living Lab in Singapore. Veerappan aims to build futures-based communities and create a toolkit to help people imagine and design their own futures.