Futures Literacy Summit 2020 (Virtual)
8-12 December 2020

UNESCO is inviting the world to learn about Futures Literacy at an innovative virtual Summit that will start on December 8th and run to December 12th. This event marks the culmination of a highly successful strand of UNESCO’s work as a global laboratory of ideas. By collecting evidence of the power and impact of empowering people to ‘use-the-future’ more effectively UNESCO has set the stage for advancing a new essential competency for the 21st Century: Futures Literacy. The Covid-19 pandemic shock has amply demonstrated both the importance and timeliness of this work by pointing out that yesterday’s approaches to the future generate dangerous fragility and brittleness. Transforming the Future: Anticipation in the 21st Century (available in English, Arabic and French)

Register: https://unes.co/futures-literacy-summit-register

Webinar: Future Scenarios for South African Coal – Exports and Eskom 21 October 2020

With global sentiment around coal having never been so negative, and South Africa still highly dependent on the fuel for years to come, what are the potential future pathways for both the South African export price, as well as local coal prices for Eskom?

This webinar, presented by African Source Markets CEO Bevan Jones and hosted by Creamer Media’s Contract Publishing, aims to explore some of the key drivers and issues facing both domestic and export coal markets. It will also consider the changing South African landscape, as both production and demand start to shut down. It will also focus on issues around the Just Transition, and whether the weak South African Rand will continue to save South Africa’s coal miners.

This is a must attend webinar for anyone interested in the future of the South African energy sector, exploring some of the likely pathways from 2020 to 2040.

https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/webinar-future-scenarios-for-south-african-coal-exports-and-eskom-2020-10-06

Capacity to Decolonise (C2D)

The co-design workshop held in May 2020 allowed for the creative, collective design of the C2D project, using Futures Literacy (FL) as a method.

In an increasingly complicated, fractured and uncertain world, it is becoming even more important for communities to build their capacities to imagine and ultimately design their own futures – even more so in a post-colonial context. This realisation has profound but unresolved implications for traditional development research, practice and funding theories and practices.

The Capacity to Decolonise (C2D) is a proposition for a large, multi-year action research programme focused on the role of “futures literacy”* as a core capability to expanding imagination, choice and agency for action. As such, we hypothesise that building FL in communities can contribute to empowering them through and for decolonisation. The premise is to use the future in capability-based development which makes that development novel and efficient by strengthening a community’s ability to use their own local traditions, culture and values in defining and addressing local key challenges. Geographically the project focuses initially on Africa, but will also acknowledge the global context.

http://foresightfordevelopment.org/c2d/

Imagining Feminist Futures After COVID-19 methodology now online

The COVID-19 crisis is highlighting the flaws in our societies. From the patriarchal, capitalist, racist underpinnings of everyday life to the staggering inequalities within and between countries.

Imagining Feminist Futures After COVID-19 is a project coordinated by IWDA with support from actors across the feminist movement. It aims to enable feminist organisations and networks to imagine COVID-19 as a catalyst of future opportunity providing tools to think through the ways in which the COVID-19 crisis is changing the future trajectories – both positive and negative – for feminist social change.

Step 1: Convene – Host a workshop with your organisation or networks to explore feminist futures in 2030 using a new, adaptable methodology designed by Changeist with a consortium of feminist futurists.

Step 2: Share, reflect and organise! – Use the outcomes of your workshop to inform your own storytelling, advocacy and organising. Share the findings with IWDA so they can be added to this webpage and contribute to the broader Imagining Feminist Futures After COVID-19 project, and help build a diverse, vibrant and multifaceted picture of possible feminist futures in 2030!

https://iwda.org.au/feminist-futures/

The Future of Global Economy: Growth Challenges and Risks of Depression

E-Discussion – 11 August 2020

This symposium will try to foresee the future of the global economy, find answers related to its growth trajectories after the Covid-19 pandemic, and explore the challenges facing it. It will focus on the following topics:

• What will the return to economic activity look like at the global level.
• Will the imbalance between countries and trading blocks increase as the return to economic activities vary in speed?
• New business models as the neo-normal: A look into the post-Covid-19.
• The future of international economic institutions and their role in the post-Covid-19 era.

http://trendsresearch.org/event/the-future-of-global-economy-growth-challenges-and-risks-of-depression/

Call for Interest: MuseumFutures Africa

The Goethe-Institut calls for expressions of interest for our new "MuseumFutures Africa"-project, targeting active and running museums from all of Africa.

The project aims at enabling museum-driven processes of innovation, change, or adaptation. The central tenet is for museums to drive their own change, through facilitated peer-to-peer learning between African Museums. It's a collaborative and experimental process that requires a high level of openness to and interest in change. Participating Museums will be twinned with relevant museums on the continent in order to share new experiences in redesigning strategies.

The MuseumFutures - Africa project is based on an original concept produced collaboratively by a team of practitioners from the art and museums fields, namely Bernard Akoi-Jackson, Khwezi Gule, Flower Manase, Molemo Moiloa, Nashilongweshipwe Mushaandja and Nontobeko Ntombela.

Download brochure