Future Thinking Guide
Your guide to Future Thinking about the brightest possible future. Welcome to the Future Thinking Guide! This guide lets you experience how the voice of future generations and their well-being can be included in the decisions we make today. At the bottom of this page you will find information on how to invite a facilitator to help you experience Future Thinking together.
How can we include the well-being of future generations in our decisions?
We live in a turbulent world and know that today’s actions, or lack thereof, will affect tomorrow’s generation. We hold the future in our hands. We are in a position to design the future for ourselves and for generations to come. But how might this be done? This guide supports you with this.
What kind of ancestor do you want to be?
Currently, we are so focused on solving short-term problems in our daily lives that we tend to get caught up in the present and lose sight of the bigger picture. Let us dare to dream about the brightest possible future, not only the most desirable present and ensure that the decisions we take now also represent the well-being of future generations.
Guide to Future Thinking
Future Thinking is a skill that develops and needs to be nurtured over time. The Lab for Future Generations developed a series of Future Thinking Tools in support of its Future Thinking Toolkit. The Future Thinking Toolkit will be expanded upon over time to include proven experiential methods. Some examples to get you started and give you a feel for what Future Thinking entails:
1. Video message: Once you were the future generation
The young people involved in the Lab have given voice to future generations. With the video message, they seek to inspire others and raise awareness regarding the impact that today’s decisions may have on tomorrow’s children. Watch the video message: Once upon a time, you were the future generation.
2. Seven Generations Empathy Exercises
In situations involving societal challenges and issues, the Lab Future Generations works with ‘immersion exercises’, during which the brightest possible future is discovered in a group setting. Bring the Empathy Exercise to a gathering and take ten minutes to sit very quietly together and immerse yourself in the future. This is a way to envision the brightest possible future together.
3. The FutureChair
A FutureChair teaches you to take long-term interests into account in the present. Do you want to know how future-oriented thinking and acting can take shape in your organisation? Place an empty chair in the room; it represents the voice of the future. Include the interests of future generations and their well-being in each decision you make. The empty chair reminds you that future generations matter and that they need you to represent their interests. Build the FutureChair together!
4. The Future Council
Organise a Future Council together! The Future Council is a group of people in an ever-changing composition. They empathise with future generations by looking closely at what is going on in society today and actively considering what this may mean for generations to come. The Future Council can provide solutions for any long-term challenge. We would love to show you how to best organise a Future Council. You can invite us to do so.
5. Future Thinking Guide
The Future Thinking Guide is a conversation starter, an experimental and interactive experience developed by young trainees in consultation with the Lab for Future Generations. Through this relationship gift in the form of a dice with questions and experiential tools, we can engage in a dialogue with our future children and great-grandchildren.
The Future Thinking Toolkit is a growing collection of methods that enable us to tailor our decisions for the good of future generations. The developed actions and methods help us to envisage the future, see opportunities and determine how we might integrate the voice of the future in our decision-making processes.
Inspired? Start Future Thinking!
Would you like to be part of an interactive experience and be guided in Future Thinking? Do you also want a Future Thinking Guide? The Future Thinking Guide can be ordered for EU 15 excl. shipping.
Maybe you want to organise the Future Council or place a Future Chair? Are you ready to start thinking beyond the ‘now’? Reach out to the Lab for Future Generations for assistance. Together we realise the brightest future possible!