This really got me thinking about how futuring reframes imagination - not as escape or speculation, but as design for continuity and care. I keep coming back to the idea that transitions are the frontlines of the future, where the next version of an organization, community, or self begins to take shape. Healthy transitions honor the past, inclusive ones widen the circle of belonging, and effective ones build the structures and stories that sustain what’s next. In that sense, every transition is a futuring exercise: a rehearsal for a world that doesn’t yet exist.
Thanks for this Lisa! Over this Sunday morning's coffee I would say that in my world, the kinds of futures facilitation that feels engaging, accessible and, well..'fun' looks quite a bit like material speculation. What I mean by that is creating artifacts from possible worlds that provoke conversation, not necessarily consensus. Creating dialogue in a hands-on and somewhat kinetic fashion. I look at futures work as not about predicting or even persuading, but designing invitations to notice what kinds of futures we seem to be most implicitly constructing. (The other way around that is wondering out loud and consider that it is a question to wonder 'who's future am I living in?') The kind of futures facilitation I see is all about exploring a kind of 'field of fragments' — the things you might find if you imagined yourself trying to understand a world only from the artifacts it left behind. Less frameworks and more objects that ask questions rather than answer them. Facilitation then becomes a project of curation, where participants in the room don't just imagine, they interact with the worlds they would prefer to inhabit (or the worlds they are questioning) as if they are already within it.
Love these reflections - thank you for sharing! So many nuggets to absorb on these reflections, including a provocative opening to invite organic and emergent reflections and conversation: "Less frameworks and more objects that ask questions rather than answer them." This suggests that part of the "craft" is also getting comfortable with ending a convening with more provocation and questions, not next steps or "consensus" as you share...which can be hard to get comfortable with if you're used to facilitating for closure. I'll be sharing more about Futures Faciltiation soon and am excited to continue the conversation and learning...it's such a rich and important topic!
This really got me thinking about how futuring reframes imagination - not as escape or speculation, but as design for continuity and care. I keep coming back to the idea that transitions are the frontlines of the future, where the next version of an organization, community, or self begins to take shape. Healthy transitions honor the past, inclusive ones widen the circle of belonging, and effective ones build the structures and stories that sustain what’s next. In that sense, every transition is a futuring exercise: a rehearsal for a world that doesn’t yet exist.
Thanks for this Lisa! Over this Sunday morning's coffee I would say that in my world, the kinds of futures facilitation that feels engaging, accessible and, well..'fun' looks quite a bit like material speculation. What I mean by that is creating artifacts from possible worlds that provoke conversation, not necessarily consensus. Creating dialogue in a hands-on and somewhat kinetic fashion. I look at futures work as not about predicting or even persuading, but designing invitations to notice what kinds of futures we seem to be most implicitly constructing. (The other way around that is wondering out loud and consider that it is a question to wonder 'who's future am I living in?') The kind of futures facilitation I see is all about exploring a kind of 'field of fragments' — the things you might find if you imagined yourself trying to understand a world only from the artifacts it left behind. Less frameworks and more objects that ask questions rather than answer them. Facilitation then becomes a project of curation, where participants in the room don't just imagine, they interact with the worlds they would prefer to inhabit (or the worlds they are questioning) as if they are already within it.
Love these reflections - thank you for sharing! So many nuggets to absorb on these reflections, including a provocative opening to invite organic and emergent reflections and conversation: "Less frameworks and more objects that ask questions rather than answer them." This suggests that part of the "craft" is also getting comfortable with ending a convening with more provocation and questions, not next steps or "consensus" as you share...which can be hard to get comfortable with if you're used to facilitating for closure. I'll be sharing more about Futures Faciltiation soon and am excited to continue the conversation and learning...it's such a rich and important topic!