futures literacies
write, create, collaborate, imagine, play, question, wonder...
[I]t matters how we enter the future, what senses of futurity we bring into play, which modes of relating to the not-yet we enable knowing and thinking practices to nurture.
(Wilkie et al., 2019, p. 5)
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Futures literacies refers to the entire spectrum of ways we do and might perceive, sense, enact, dream, and create the future in the present. Building upon and extending from Futures Studies, a discourse that inquires into possible, probable, and preferable futures through social and technological innovation, futures literacies here refers to the vast array of creative and performative ways we might reach imaginatively into the darkness of the yet to be. Futures literacies is not a prescribed set of skills or techniques, but rather it is an open invitation:
- to become critical readers of the future narratives all around us,
- to push the frontiers of imaginative possibility,
- to inquire into one’s own feelings and sensations about the future,
- to cultivate care for future others, both human and other-than-human, and
- to develop and play with new ways of thinking and being in time together.
- If we approach the world and the curriculum with a futures literacies perspective, we begin to see that futurity is not a foregone conclusion. The futurities that are embedded in the narratives we live by can (and must!) be rewritten towards more preferable future outcomes. But before we take on the problems of our times – there is still a little time to play. The games included in this website are an invitation to play with your futurity, to rethink what you think you know about yourself and your future, to turn it all upside and imagine something different. I hope you have fun!
- All the imagery on this website was created in conversation and collaboration with the midjourney bot. I highly encourage you to engage in your own visual futures imagining with an Artificial Intelligence (I will include some wonderful links in the resources page). This kind of creative visual storying can add surprising imagery to your own narratives.
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Finally, please send me email with any thoughts, comments, feedback, or questions. I’d love to hear from you!
Warmly,
Rachel Horst