The Civil Society Foresight Observatory
Weaving together formal foresight practices with other lived and learned experience to create a shared Foresight Commons that will make it easier for funders to fund the future and help civil society organisations anticipate and adapt to changing conditions.
Report: A Constellation of Possible Futures
The Discovery Report is setting the direction for the Civil Society Foresight Observatory. What does foresight look like in the third sector?
About the Discovery Report
Why do we need a new approach to foresight in civil society? And what have we discovered about the observatory so far?
What is the Foresight Observatory?
The aim of the Observatory is to weave together formal foresight practices with other lived and learned experience to create a new foresight commons.
We want to show a plurality of possible futures that are rooted in communities not board rooms, and bring them to life in accessible ways that can be used and reused by funders and civil society organisations. The ambition of this first stage is to create a resource that can power collective intelligence and investment from funders, while also inspiring more strategic leaps in those working to shape the future.
Some of the most influential foresight work in the UK is driven by either the market or the state, and much of it doesn’t take place in public. This project is an attempt to galvanise a collective opportunity for civil society to show and share its wisdom, and influence better outcomes for more people.
The Foresight Observatory is being seeded by The National Lottery Community Fund, with a growing number of other funders as part of the steering group; over time we hope it becomes a shared investment in knowledge infrastructure, useful to many and built together, showing many possible futures.
Get involved
We are actively looking for collaborators in the civil society sector. We’re recruiting a panel of contributors from across the UK so that we can work with them to turn their more organic foresight into the beginnings of a Civil Society Foresight Framework. In the second half of the project we’ll convene expert stakeholders from a range of disciplines to come and stress test the work we’re doing. If you’d like to be involved, we’d love to talk to you.