What might a future hold in which belonging, care and repair are central tenets of innovation and institution building?

The outcomes of the Civil Society Foresight pilot show what world world-building can look like outside of the market and the state. They bring to life possible, plausible and just futures that are rooted in the human and planetary potential of community, connection, and wellbeing. This report is a guide to how those futures were created.

Using the practice of relational foresight outlined in A Constellation of Possible Futures, we worked with civil society thinkers and doers to develop three new imaginaries for 2036, fifteen years into the future. The imaginaries are described at the end of this report, and are brought to life online with artefacts from these possible futures. They are intense distillations of complex concepts and they may seem surprising at first, but they are no different in their scale of ambition to flying cars or life on Mars or brain-to-brain communication devices; the only difference is that there is plenty of social and cultural permission for innovators to dream differently about technology, but little permission for most of us to dream differently about social relations. These imaginaries touch on fear, spirituality and love — topics that rarely arise in patent applications.

The prototype method develops the notion of relational foresight as a tool for civil society. It makes visible some of the possible, plausible, and just futures that rarely surface in more traditional, top-down foresight, and make it easier for infrastructure communities, civil society, funders, and policymakers to actively shape and nurture alternatives through strategic interventions.

The interventions created in these workshops point to a radically different way of thinking about the future. And although these ideas, interventions and visions only represent the individuals who took part, this report contextualises those findings in the broader sociopolitical domain.

This process also surfaced questions about the role of civil society itself: how radical can and should it be in the face of existential crises and deepening social divisions? Should civil society align with, or become, the status quo in the context of state and market failure — or should it constantly seek change and revolution? The imaginaries in this report do not give direct answers to these questions, but they demonstrate the potential consequences of blurring the boundaries between the state and civil society, and show what an extended role for civil society in a failing system might look like.

Section one of this report explores the process we developed and took workshop participants through. This process was specifically designed to elicit a plurality of futures and multiple imaginaries from civil society. Section two of the report summarises our analysis of dominant trends seen in major trends reports — ones that do not represent civil society, but do represent the majority of outcomes from foresighting activities today. Section three explores the three major areas of need identified through the future worlds developed in the workshops. Section four outlines conclusions.

The process identified the following areas of need:

• Building new infrastructure of belonging through community engagement

• Developing infrastructure for social repair through lifelong learning

• Creating new systems of care and sharing the skills for making meaning

Human relationships and responsibilities are shaped by power and opportunity; they are not coincidental by-products of technical and economic progress, but fundamental building blocks of everyone’s future. By sharing these possible, plausible and just futures — and making intangible human outcomes more tangible — our aim is to inspire more far-reaching and intentional investment in the social and sense-making infrastructures needed to support many possible futures, and more strategic, long-term planning for civil society.

Throughout Autumn 2021 Careful Industries worked with Stephanie Pau from Studio andnand to run a series of relational foresight workshops with thirteen civil society thinkers and doers and foresight practitioners. These workshops were an opportunity to test and iterate the methodology we outlined in A Constellation of Possible Futures.

The participants were:

• Anna Nicholl, Wales Council for Voluntary Action

• Clare Wightman, Grapevine Coventry and Warwickshire

• Farah Elahi, Greater London Authority

• Francesca Valerio, Migrants Organise

• Georgina Voss, London College of Communication

• Jessica Prendergrast, Onion Collective

• Judy Ling Wong, Black Environment Network

• Rabab Ghazoul, Gentle Radical

• Richard Sandford, UCL Institute for Sustainable Heritage

• Roisin McLaughlin, North West Community Network

• Rupinder Parhar, Local Government Association

• Stephen Bennett, Policy Lab UK

• Will Tanner, UK Onward

The aim of these workshops was to create strategic foresight that allowed for the emergence of undervalued and underrepresented ideas. The first series was focussed on the concepts of power and justness; the second on life in the context of the climate crisis.

The workshop process was not created to smooth out disagreement, but rather to hold and develop multiple perspectives — to show a possible multiplicity of outcomes, rather than refine towards a single answer. It welcomed what anthropologist Tricia Wang terms “thick data”, otherwise known as “people’s emotions, stories and their models of the world”.

To surface this thick data, we used the term preoccupations as a prompt to create space for participants to articulate concerns or values that are often unspoken, particularly in formalised and corporate foresight processes, but which might combine to create and inform their worldviews.

To remove existing constraints and create space for speculation, we also asked participants to make two shifts to their perspectives. Firstly we asked them to imagine these preoccupations in the context of an alternative, neutral universe — one which was neither utopian nor dystopian. Secondly, they were asked to look ahead to 2036. These two shifts were intended to give some pragmatic freedom and liberate speculation from the limitations of the status quo, while still maintaining the context of a shared and imaginable reality.

In doing so, we were able to create a space to discuss uncomfortable topics, including:

• Emotions — including fear, grief and anger

• Areas of existential discomfort, such as making genuine connections across social and political movements

• Systems outside of the accepted status quo

As there was no requirement to settle on certainty and “known knowns”, the workshop environment created a space in which uncomfortable systems, objects and concepts were able to come to the fore.

Participants then developed and explored “interventions” — a thing or event that might happen in their 2036 alternative universe. Using the preoccupations as framing and context they mapped plural pathways from 2021 through to the world of 2036 in which their intervention is happening. Through this “backcasting” they worked through what might need to be in place to make these possible futures come about. Along the way, the groups also co-created artefacts and infrastructures, mapping some of the new institutions and narratives that would need to be in place for their future preoccupations to be realised.

The outputs of our workshops were then mapped in relation to the “official” foresight we had gathered; this allowed us to get a glimpse of the complex, plural realities that could unfold. From here, we co-created interventions.

In Section two, we summarise our research into dominant trends; Section three outlines the three key areas of need identified through the workshops. Each area of need stems from a future imaginary brought to life through a series of artefacts.

Foresighting is a popular activity in the private sector, and the scenarios, ideas, visions and rhetoric that these activities create about the future form a dominant narrative. We argue that these futures can broadly be characterised as “official futures”.

An official future is defined by Scott Smith and Madeline Ashby in How to Future as:

Dominant future narratives [or] so-called ‘official futures’... Organizations large and small lean on official futures as north stars or guidance systems, to keep employees, partners or constituents focussed on a mission... and they reflect the overriding assumptions that are necessary to believe in a mission [01]

An example of an official future given by Smith and Ashby is ‘Moore’s Law’.

... the 1965 observation in an industry paper by semi-conductor pioneer Gordon Moore, which stated that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit were likely to double every two years. Moore made this observation based on limited historical data but it soon became gospel... Many behemoth companies, like Intel and IBM, as well as tens of thousands of start-ups, plotted their research and development, as well as accompanying investment and strategy, according to Moore’s Law. [02]

Consequently, Careful Industries conducted a review exercise, to identify both implicit and explicit narratives that are part of official futures. The material reviewed included publicly available sources, from trends and foresight publications by major consultancies and organisations.

We divided the futures or trends into two categories. The first category is “the indisputables”, conceptual theories and ideologies which exist across all the official futures observed. The second category is called “the topics”, common exemplar themes which are investigated by official futures.

Scott Smith and Madeline Ashby, How to Future: Leading and Sense-Making in an Age of Hyperchange (Kogan Page Inspire, 2020), 20-21.

Ibid.

2.1.1 Capital

Each of the futures examined were bounded by the ideology, politics and economics of capital and capitalism. There are many forms of capitalism, and each of the reports take different parts of the ideology to form their vision of the future. In the traditional notion of capitalism, it is implied that private individuals and organisations will own assets that produce wealth. These assets could be physical, like land, or abstract, like patents and software. Other individuals will create wealth through labour.

Capitalist logic incorporates other ideologies that are present in Western philosophies — for example, that time is a linear construct and that we can use scientific theories and methods to draw a line from the past to the future. This concept is very much present in capitalism since in order to gain wealth from assets, there needs to be a theory about future profits. The futures examined in these reports also follow similar time horizons to these financial prediction instruments. The futures are typically more confident about horizons in the next 5-15 years. This follows a similar pattern to what is found in wealth management and investor relation reports.

Despite its pervasiveness, capitalism is not acknowledged in the official futures on a descriptive nor a normative level. However, there is implicit reference in the desire to show leaders of institutional assets, be that businesses, government departments or countries, that the continuation and growth of their assets should be their priority.

An example can be found in the McKinsey report: “The Next Normal Arrives: Trends that will define 2021 - and beyond” published in January 2021. Its focusses included; improving productivity, expanding consumerism and investing in innovative technologies for economic impact.

2.1.2 Resilience

Whereas capital has been a recurrent theme in official futures for a number of decades, ideas around resilience are more recent. Ideas around resilience intersect with sustainability, and therefore environmental and ethical concerns fit into the “resilience” bracket. Despite the ubiquity of the idea of “resilience” the application of the concept differs. For example:

• Resilience needs futurism: Using futurist methodologies and strategic foresight is a important part of the future itself. For example, the mandate of the EU Strategic Foresight department on “future-proof[ing] EU policymaking”.

• Sustainable practises for ensuring the future of the planet and of labour: The need for environmentalism and worker wellbeing comes from the need for continued economic prosperity. For example, the World Economic Forum’s “Chief Economists Outlook” from June 2021 looked at inequalities exacerbated by Covid and proposed upskilling and reskilling policies which would improve the labour market. McKinsey identified how stakeholder capitalism is good for profit: “a majority of the executives and investment professionals surveyed said they believed that environmental, social, and governance programs already create short- and long-term value and will do so even more five years from now. In the same report they looked at the environment: “There is a case, then, for businesses to take action to limit their climate risks—for example, by making their capital investments more climate resilient or by diversifying their supply chains”.

• Predicting geopolitical outcomes for profits: In order to make strategic decisions, business leaders need to have a good idea about international relations, trends and politics. This can come in many forms, whether predicting how future conflicts might disrupt supply chains, or understanding how currency fluctuations will impact business profitability. Bain produced a report in July 2021 looking to predict how Chinese businesses will operate worldwide and how Western businesses will operate in China. This report began by calling the British East India Company and the Dutch East India Company: “17th century pioneers”, and taking a view on geopolitical tensions simply through the lens of resilience and profit.

• Sacrificing short-term profits for longevity: Bain produced a report in July 2020 called “Have We Hit Peak Profits”, which looks at how businesses need to adapt for a future where corporate profits are much lower than in previous years.

From these examples, we can see that the term resilience holds both old and new ideas about capitalism. Some veer towards simply increasing wealth for private stakeholders, and others take a more modern approach to discuss ideas like equity and environmentalism. However, each of these lenses perpetuates the idea that current institutions should exist in the decades to come, and that the strategic foresight initiatives will help shape a future in which that is guaranteed.

In essence, the idea of resilience perpetuates the stability of existing power structures. Those with existing authority do not want to disrupt the status quo, and although they envision futures where this could happen, they fear disruption, and so seek to create futures which mimic the past and the present.

Most official futures include predictions about how technology will contribute towards institutional assets and growth. The reports we examined from 2021 looked at themes that have been common for the past decade, for example, around data collection and personalisation for consumers (see “Are You Ready for the New Era Of Consumer Data” by Bain in October 2020; “Learning from the Future” by Accenture; “Digital Assets, Distributed Ledger Technology, and the Future of Capital Markets” published by the WEF in May 2021; and “Technology Futures: Projecting the Possible, Navigating What’s Next” by the WEF in April 2021).

Two reports looked to coin phrases for a future kind of reality where physical “mixes” with the digital. McKinsey stated that the future will be “phygital” and Accenture used the phrase “real virtualities” when it comes to where we work, consume and socialise in the future. There was also interest in biotechnology for innovation — this was talked about by both McKinsey and Accenture in the previous reports.

It is fair to say that all of these themes around technology are driven by economic necessity, rather than other metrics like human wellbeing. Futures around technology are also driven by some idea of what is already being developed,
as opposed to what might be developed in the future. This is particularly acute when it comes to the Gartner hype cycles.

Next: Future One >