Meanjin Brisbane, venue for the second Oceania Futures and Foresight Symposium – an important gathering of futures practitioners from across the region. This Symposium is part of intentional work to grow futures practices that are uniquely from ‘down under’, reflecting our histories, time flows and world views. We are voyagers of the blue Pacific, connecting earth, sea and sky and coming together to navigate the future together.
How do we make the value of foresight visible without flattening it into yet another KPI? Our first online gathering of the Oceania Futures Network considered this critical question at its first meet up. Guest presenter Sabrina Sullivan sharing her vast experience and research findings. Sabrina is a Canadian foresight, researcher, and founder of by+by foresight, based in Calgary, Canada. She is one of the co-authors of the Foresight Spectrum, a global research project exploring the roles and “enablers” that shape foresight practice.
Over the last six months I have been collating Intergenerational Ambition: A Wayfinding Tool for the Future. This resource explores the Aotearoa context for intergenerational fairness and future generations. We are the people who must create the way forward. This resource shares some of the why and how.
At this week’s #ŌtautahiFuturesCollective #ŌFC gathering Alicia Poroa shared how she facilitated a personal futures wānanga with a group of Māreikura, female Māori leaders from the North Island. She used a number of futures methodologies with deep, personal insights that are so important for us all to consider.
Are you awash with trends, blogs and articles about the future in 2024? My in box is full! And I hate it, especially when people create a list of forecasts as if they are predicting the future. Some of the lists come up with the obvious extension of here and now. Others express their points as siloed ideas and discrete ‘future’ chunks. Others come up with a funky name for something of little consequence. So I’m not going to do that.
We have been growing futures thinkers in Aotearoa and connecting people within the network. This extends from the Ōtautahi Futures Collective through Aotearoa Futures Network and into the Oceania Futures space. The more we connect and learn together the more we grow our futures muscles! It also provides the opportunity to celebrate successes across the network.