Untethered Cities: A Futures Literacy Lab in Bengaluru

What good does a wild imagination do? With the right tools, it can shape an entirely new future. That’s the core of ‘Futures Literacy’ (read more about it here or watch this short video), which invites us to challenge our assumptions. Rather than trying to prepare and plan for the uncertainties and complexities of tomorrow, we can consciously work towards shaping a vision for a world that we’d like to live in and pass on to the next generations.

This October, we apply this creative, exciting exercise to imagine radically different futures of time and mobility in Bengaluru. This city, with its trees, congested roads, and fascinating history has meant so many things to so many people. But what do we want it to mean tomorrow, or a year from now, or after a century?

Join us as we are guided by two excellent facilitators, Siddhi and Kushal, to explore this question, as we draw from history and art, memory and the depths of our imagination. The workshop will include icebreakers, games, practical exercises, and group discussions. Together, we will unpack our assumptions about the city’s prospects, develop different scenarios for Bengaluru’s future, and ideate what actions we can take in the present to realise our collective vision for the city.

Date: Sunday, 13th October, 2024
Time: 10:00am to 5:00pm
Venue: Bangalore International Centre, Domlur.
Tea and lunch will be provided at the venue.

Registrations close on 11th October.

We hope to see you there!

During this session we will draw from various futures literacy tools. Here are a few of the activities that you can expect:

Snapshot sharing: present day observations
Reflect on Bengaluru’s current trajectory through the lens of futures thinking. You are invited to share photos, sounds, and words that capture your observations of today’s world, anticipating how these snapshots might hint at the city’s future. This exercise allows you to become a futures explorer, uncovering patterns, and stories that shape tomorrow.

Persona play: life in the ideal Bengaluru
Step into the shoes of diverse personas—children, politicians, animals, and more—to experience life in the Bengaluru you’ve imagined. This exercise blends foresight with empathy, asking you to explore how different identities and experiences shape relationships with the future city. How does your ideal Bengaluru serve everyone, human and non-human alike?

Grounding the vision in action
Reflect on how to transform futures thinking into practical action. This exercise encourages you to identify roles and responsibilities for bringing your vision to life, grounding your futuristic ideas in tangible next steps. What is your personal role in shaping Bengaluru’s future? This is where anticipation meets action!

Kushal Sohal is a Futures Literacy Designer. He is a Design Process and Facilitation Lead with the School of International Futures, developing a programme with emerging leaders to address childhood sexual violence. Prior to this, Kushal worked for three years with the UNESCO Futures Literacy and Foresight team, codesigning, implementing, and evaluating futures projects with UN agencies and government ministries. Kushal is an award-winning Next Generation Foresight Practitioner (NGFP); this fellowship supports his independent efforts to advance futures literacy with community groups and universities, often focusing on matters of identity in India. He holds a BA in History from University College London and a MSc in Modern South Asian Studies from the University of Oxford. His publications can be found here.

Siddhi Ashar is a futures strategist at Forum for the Future employing long term thinking towards just transitions in food, energy and business. She is also a Next Generation Foresight Practitioner 2023 fellow exploring what it might mean to build climate governance beyond the bounds of the nation-state. With a multidisciplinary background in international studies and experience as a documentary filmmaker, she is passionate about developing inclusive spaces for imagining more equitable futures. Her approach involves using speculative fiction, game design, three horizons and futures wheels to explore more equitable futures.

Futures Literacy is a capability that builds on the innate human capacity to imagine. It is a competence that allows people to better understand the role of the future in what they see and do. Not only is futures literacy about exploring how and why we use the future to prepare and plan, but it concerns diving deeper into our anticipatory systems and processes.

As Futures Studies and those that have researched and explored the discipline of anticipation teach us, the way that we anticipate is different from each to the next, shaped by culture, memory, context and so much more.

It is, therefore, vital that we learn to unearth and reframe the assumptions and sources that shape different ‘images of the future’. Too often we see dominant narratives colonising the spectrum of future possibility, with marginalised imaginaries left outside of decision-making spaces.

Futures Literacy Laboratories invite us to open up to the plurality of futures and the full spectrum of possibility – including the probable, preferable and reframed. Through such activities we harness collective intelligence, learning to embrace the novel and the emergent, wonder at the unknown and diversify our actions. Futures Literacy is a skill that is in-built with humility, for the only certainty when it comes to the future is uncertainty and complexity.

The strategic application of this skill to policy making and organisational strategy is often called foresight. When applied to its full potential through a creative combination of design tools and approaches, it has the ability to embed long-term perspectives and invite more creative and innovative action.

Indeed, in advancing our Futures Literacy we become better able to ‘use-the-future’ to advance transformation in the present.

1. UNESCO Futures Literacy and Foresight, 2024
2. UNESCO Futures Literacy Laboratory Playbook, 2023
3. Riel Miller, Transforming the Future: Anticipation in the 21st Century, UNESCO and Routledge: 2018