"We are living inside of someone else's imagination for how the world would work and we need to exercise our own imaginations in order to come to a different way of structuring the world."
—adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategist
The future isn't fixed. Who gets to imagine it matters.
When we expand who gets to dream about tomorrow, we unlock the collective wisdom needed to create the world we all deserve.
Discover what happens when communities have the time, space, and resources to imagine futures that uplift everyone.
The Future We Want Starts with Imagination
But who gets to imagine our collective futures? And whose visions shape the world we're building?
This report shares what we learned about why we must democratize the imagination of the future from seven years of funding futuring practitioners—artists, organizers, social workers, youth leaders, and visionaries—who are expanding who gets to imagine what's possible.
"Historically the most marginalized communities—their visions of the future, because it implied their own freedom—actually has brought about the biggest transformations in society for the better of all."
—Aisha Shillingford, experiential futurist and artistic director
What Becomes Possible
When people have the time, space, and support to imagine differently, transformation emerges:
High Schoolers in Oakland, California
At the Museum Of Children’s Art, high school students imagine Oakland in 2045 as an anti-racist, inclusive city. Through art, they express visions of the city they want to live in, creating artifacts of the future like a bracelet that helps you tap into the wisdom of your ancestors. These young people are now stepping into their role as creators of the future with confidence, rather than passive recipients of it.
Social Workers Nationwide
At the Social Work Futures Lab, social work practitioners, scholars, and students take part in imaginative activities, like creating "Monuments of the Future" which celebrate future worlds where society’s biggest challenges are solved. By dreaming together, these social workers are honing their futures thinking and foresight practice, strengthening their everyday work and the profession in creative and purposeful ways.
Young Futurists in Jackson, Mississippi
With the Young Futurists Project, an afterschool program at Jackson Medical Mall, students build skills, confidence, and a purposeful vision for their future. Combining art, technology, and strategic foresight, this next generation of leaders and innovators see new possible futures emerge for themselves and their community.
Rural Communities and Native Nations
Flexing skills in trend spotting, future-oriented visioning, and long-term thinking developed as participants in “Field Trips to the Future,” leaders from rural communities and Native nations are infusing futures-thinking in their work to forge healthy places where everyone belongs, lives with dignity and thrives.
What We've Learned About the Future
The Future Is Ours to Make
To influence the future, we must develop a healthy relationship with it. We must not turn away from possible futures that worry or frighten us but turn toward futures we want. Fighting oppression and inequity in the present is vital; spending time in the future we're fighting for fuels the work. The alternative is to continue to inhabit futures that others assert for us.
The Future Can Help Connect Us
Unleashing imagination and working together to dream healthy futures can be a path toward talking across differences. Speculative visioning creates distance—a safer place for questioning assumptions and hearing others. When we are together in an imagined future, the stakes are not as high, and we may be more willing to play.
The Future Can Offer Hope and Healing
Engaging with the future in a critical and imaginative way can be refreshing and regenerative. It can connect us with our childhood selves—the time when we could imagine freely without judgment. Spending time in a liberatory future can be part of a healing journey for traumas caused by structural bias.
The Future Shines a Light on Our Present
When we spend time imagining futures where everyone thrives, we see our present inequities in stark relief. Looking back from even a short visit to a liberatory future can reveal the ways dominant narratives control or limit imagination.
The Future Needs Our Love
If we want to get to a sustainable future, we have to be in a meaningful relationship with it. We, individually and collectively, have to fall in love with the futures we want to emerge. When we do, we'll want to take loving action today to keep that future alive and on track.
See the Full Story
Meet 13 futuring practitioners whose work is expanding who gets to imagine what's possible. Explore their methods, hear their insights, and discover how this work is transforming individuals, communities, and entire fields.
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