Transformative Research Module: Futures Literacy

Equip yourself with essential skills to navigate future scenarios effectively.

Futures Literacy

This module covers the foundational aspects of Futures Literacy, designed to equip you with the essential skills to navigate future scenarios effectively. The purpose of this module is to delve into the multifaceted nature of imagining and understanding multiple futures, challenging our anticipatory assumptions, and fostering a deeper awareness of the present. Join Loes Damhof and Raul Correa-Smith in exploring the three key anticipatory systems: planning, preparation, and exploration, encouraging you to embrace complexity and enhance your perception of the world. By exploring diverse futures and questioning established norms, you’ll gain the insights needed to navigate uncertainty with confidence and creativity.

Learn More:

Loes Damhof

was elected Lecturer of the Year of all Higher Education in The Netherlands in 2016 and currently occupies the UNESCO Chair on Futures Literacy in Higher Education at Hanze University. In addition to her research and teaching practices, she consults and trains staff of global organisations such as FutureWomenX, UNESCO, UNFCCC, ClimateKIC, FORMS, UN, and Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies. She is a Future Fellow at Hawkwood College, a steering committee member of the Futures Oriented Museum Synergies, co-editor of the Journal of Futures Studies and co-founder of Emergence Academy.

Raul Correa-Smith

is dedicated to processes of collective engagement that aim to spark flexibility within social systems that are generative of meaning, intelligence, imagination, and a renewal of intents for people and organizations.

A dual citizen of Brazil and the U.S., he combines his background in architecture and urbanism with a sensitivity to spatial and relational dynamics. Based in Amsterdam since 2017, Raul led the creation of FORMS (Futures-Oriented Museum Synergies), a global network exploring the future of museums through collaboration with artists, curators, and educators.

Previously, he coordinated Studio-X Rio, a Columbia University think tank focused on reimagining urban spaces for well-being and belonging. In 2022, Raul helped develop the first UNESCO Futures Literacy Chair hosted by a museum, launched by the Museum of Tomorrow in 2023. He also teaches at the Amsterdam Architecture Academy.

Additional sources

Demystifying Futures Literacy
Can we teach futures like we teach history? in SCENARIO, page 52
What is Futures Literacy and why is it important?
Riel Miller has always been crucial to our thinking. His book Transforming the Future is essential reading, and offers the FL theoretical Framework as well as practical case studies of FLLabs
Some of his semi-academic articles are also good introductions:
- Embracing Complexity – R.Miller
- Making experimentalist Leadership practical – R. Miller
This article by Hanze’s UNESCO Chair is about a HE faculty program and the learning outcomes of futures literacy.
Another basic source on Futures Thinking that offers a slightly different approach is Sohail Inayatullah’s Six Pillars. The Causal Layered Analyses (aka the iceberg!) is also his work.
If you are more interested in Futures Literacy and experiential Design, check out the work of Stuart Candy.
A great publication by Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies is this Scenario edition on Futures shaping Art.
These medium posts by Loes might offer some different insights on Futures Literacy
Sensing and sense-making
Doing or not not-doing: the rebirth of agency
Teaching Futures Q&A

Other sources we used

Biophilia, by Edward O. Wilson. In this book the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner shares his insights from his own response to nature and argues that our natural affinity for life is the essence of our humanity and bonds us to all other living things.
Daniel Christian Wahl is one of the catalysts of the rising reGeneration and was awarded the 2021 RSA Bicentenary Medal in recognition of his outstanding contribution to regenerative design. In this article he shares his thoughts on the emergence of a new cultural narrative in the relationship between humanity and the beyond human world. https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/we-are-a-young-species-growing-up-3072588c5a82
I’m sure many of you will have read this before, probably years ago, but written, as it is, from and in the very land in which we journeyed for four days, it may now hold and reflect even more connections with emergence. Cider with Rosie, by Laurie Lee