New Metaphors for Imagining Futures

About the event

We often use metaphors when thinking about the future: horizons, pathways, the road ahead, things looming, brighter futures or darker timelines. Yet these common, dominant metaphors can limit our thinking, trapping us in particular ways of understanding and imagining how things could be different. We know our collective futures will be heavily affected by multiple intersecting systemic crises around climate change, health crises, social injustice, biodiversity loss, and environmental pollution—but also that a lack of imagination will make taking action much harder. 

But what if we explored new metaphors for imagining futures? How do we create them? How can we apply them in different contexts, from design to community organising, from our relationships with nature, to radically reimagining society? How can they be part of a creative participatory method for working with stakeholders, to pluralise imagination and rethink possible futures? 

Join Dan Lockton, Josie Chambers, and Palak Dudani for this intensive, immersive, and international masterclass workshop, hosted by the Institute for Sustainable Worlds at Norwich University of the Arts. In an open, exploratory, supportive atmosphere, you’ll learn a process for deconstructing metaphors and creating new ones with a critical yet imaginative eye, and explore new ways to approach futuring through design and creative social science, systems, and fiction methods. In partnership with the Broads Authority, we’ll have a real case to work on, around a collaborative visioning process for the future of the national park, including a field trip on which you will ‘collect’ some new metaphors.

Your work will also contribute, with credit, to a new edition of New Metaphors, the creative card deck for generating ideas and reframing problems which has been adopted internationally in education and research contexts and included in the OECD’s Observatory of Public Sector Innovation toolkit library.

Who should join?

The workshop is suitable for: designers, researchers, policymakers, artists, PhD or Master’s students, people working in futures and foresight, systems thinking, community development, energy and food transitions, public services, climate adaptation, social enterprise, local government, or for NGOs, on a broad range of social and environmental topics. We will build the workshop around your interests and priorities. Places are limited to ensure a convivial and close experience.

Ticket price

The price of registration for New Metaphors for Imagining Futures is £550 (no VAT).

What’s included

• We start with a welcome reception (optional but recommended) on the evening of Sunday 21 June.
• The main programme starts at 9.00 on Monday 22 June and runs through to 18.30 on Wednesday 24 June.
• Lunches on Monday–Wednesday, and a group dinner on Monday evening are included.
• Accommodation is not included, but we can suggest reasonably priced options close to the venue.

Timings

Your facilitators

Dan Lockton is Professor of Design & Imagination at Norwich University of the Arts, UK, and director of the new Institute for Sustainable Worlds. He is a designer/researcher working on tools and methods for collaborative re-imagining: helping people create and explore possible futures, imagine new ways to live, and understand ourselves and the world around us better, in an age of crises and transitions in climate, health, and social inequalities. Dan created the New Metaphors toolkit with Devika Singh, Saloni Sabnis, and Michelle Chou, and runs the Imaginaries Lab, based in Utrecht, Netherlands. He is a fellow of the Centre for Unusual Collaborations and a member of the international advisory council of the Design Research Society. 

Josie Chambers is Assistant Professor in the Urban Futures Studio at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, Netherlands. Her research develops and examines approaches to questioning so called ‘inevitable’ unjust futures and fostering collective imagination and agency towards more just and sustainable societies. She weaves together critical and artistic approaches to collaboratively explore possibilities for transformative changes with diverse societal groups. Josie shares experiments in social dreaming in her blog Utopian Pulses. Her latest publication Utopia*Art*Politics is a collection of work by 33 artist-researcher practitioners experimenting with how artistic practices can enable radical imagination and politics.

Palak Dudani is a hybrid designer based in Oslo, tinkering at the intersection of systems and futures. At present she’s looking at renewables, and the possibilities and challenges they pose for green transition. She serves on the board of directors of the Systemic Design Association and runs Imagination Workers Collective, partnering with people and organisations exploring flourishing equitable futures. She is a strong advocate for systemic approach to design and believes that designers hold crucial roles and responsibilities within our transitioning societies. 

About research at Norwich University of the Arts

Situated in the heart of Norwich, England’s first UNESCO City of Literature, Norwich University of the Arts is a vibrant specialist university with award-winning teaching. We are engaged in the dynamic debate about the nature and future of creativity through different practices and disciplines, established and emerging art forms, research, and experimentation. Our research and knowledge exchange community is a creative team of practitioners, theorists, and historians, who bring together teams from diverse backgrounds to work on tackling global challenges. Our aim is to demonstrate how creative approaches can help solve complex global problems in order to bring about long-lasting transformation in our city, region and beyond.

The Institute for Sustainable Worlds is a new home for research applying creative methods to acts of collective imagination. We help people, together, create and explore possible futures: imagining, designing, materialising, and experiencing new ways to live, in an age of crises. We aim to show that other worlds are possible, grounded in understanding our world better.