Futures Canvas
Futures Canvas
Futures Canvas is a digital tool for groups to build together maps of future possibilities. It uses gamification, crowdsourcing and futures thinking to address wicked problems through collective speculation and open ideation. As an exercise in collective intelligence, it reveals our implicit anticipations of the future and offers a powerful way for better-informed decision making and action.
© Anne Freitag
Futures Canvas is a participatory tool that gives the public a platform to openly think about the future and to share their expectations, desires and concerns.
Spring into action and think about how the future could or should look like. Explore different directions and speculate: What future scenarios do you expect to take place? What desirable futures do you wish for? What dystopian futures are you scared of?
Next to submitting you own speculation, you can pick a speculation of another participant and rate it: How desirable is this speculation? And how likely is it that it actually becomes reality? This rating process will be indicated on Futures Canvas and the collective map of possible futures will grow.
Futures Canvas has been developed by AKAW, the futures thinking initiative born out of STATE Studio. AKAW is a creative playground for bold futures exploration. Through its toolkits, methods and workshops it helps groups to set out on collective thought experiments and explore and discuss the possibilities of the future.
Related Articles
Since the launch of the Regional S+T+ARTS Centres' challenges on Futures Canvas, many European citizens have contributed to the image of the future.
Check out the interview with Christian Rauch, the mastermind behind the digital participatory tool Futures Canvas, about the power of collective speculation about the future, its implications and potential spillovers.