A seminar on design and futures
One of today's greatest societal challenges is to recreate our ability to imagine and create hopeful futures. In this panel, we will give examples of and discuss the role design can play in the work of exercising our imagination and creating a sense of belonging and responsibility for our and others' futures. Visions of the future are often characterized by a strong belief in constant development and endless possibilities. Sometimes this is described as technological optimism. At the same time, we are also increasingly faced with dystopias and darker images of the future. Both in fiction and media, a world full of crises linked to climate change, war and increased political polarization is made visible. A major problem with these polarized visions of the future is that they do not mobilize commitment but rather paralyze us. An overly optimistic vision of the future can easily lull us into a false sense of security that industry will solve our problems for us, while overly dystopian visions of the future can create a sense of resignation.
In a collaboration between Form/Design Center and the newly launched research center Imagining and Co-Creating Futures at Malmö University, we invite you to a conversation about how we can use design to create other kinds of images, stories, performances, contexts and processes that invite engagement, participation and responsibility in relation to the future, even if it may feel uncertain and challenging. Where can we find these images? Who is involved in creating them? How are they created? What role does the past play in how we see the future?